SwordSearcher Blog – Page 4 – Software for Believing Bible Study.

Version 7.2 Hotfix 2 available

A small, free “hotfix” update is available for SwordSearcher 7.2. This is the second hotfix for version 7.2 and addresses a few more minor problems that have been reported recently. This update includes the fixes from Hotfix 1, so there is no need to install the previous hotfix if you haven’t already done so.

This update is recommended for all SwordSearcher 7.2 users.

Open SwordSearcher 7, click the Help menu, and select “Check for updates.” Click the link in the page that loads to download the update and install it. That’s all.

After running the update, your SwordSearcher version will be 7.2.1.3.

If you are running a version older than 7.2, please go to the Upgrade FAQ page instead.

What is a hotfix?

A hotfix is a small update that fixes specific bugs found after the software was released.

What is fixed in this update?

This free bug fix update addresses the following issues that were discovered after 7.2 was released:

Fixed up/down keys not scrolling text on some systems.
Fixed rare crash bugs relating to live spell checking in editor.
A few subtle corrections to rendering borders in some windows.
Fixed some other rare potential crash bugs.

Included from the previous Hotfix 1:

Fixed condition where program could freeze when deleting user module.
Fixed incorrect daily reading time division for custom reading plans based on daily time desired with certain types of reading segments.
Fixed some rare potential crash bugs.

How do I get the Hotfix?

2015-05-01_14-17-50

Open SwordSearcher 7, click the Help menu, and select “Check for updates.” Click the link in the page that loads to download the update and install it. That’s all.

After installing the update, your version number will read 7.2.1.3.

Again, This hotfix update is for users of 7.2 only. Thank you!

SwordSearcher works on Windows 10

A few days ago, Microsoft began rolling out free Windows 10 upgrades to the public. I’ve received several emails asking if SwordSearcher works on Windows 10.

Yes!

A screen shot of SwordSearcher 7.2 running on Windows 10 — SwordSearcher 7.2 running on Windows 10

The current version of SwordSearcher (7.2) has been tested on preview releases of Windows 10 over the course of the last several months, and tested with the final public release as well. There are no known problems using SwordSearcher 7.2 on Windows 10. So if you want to upgrade to Windows 10 and just want to be sure that SwordSearcher will continue to function, there’s nothing to worry about. If you do an in-place upgrade and keep your apps and settings, SwordSearcher will continue to “just work,” your settings will stay the same, and any user books and commentaries you have will still be there.

Please note that only the current release of SwordSearcher is supported on Windows 10. Previous versions may not be completely compatible. If you are not sure what version of SwordSearcher you have, or want to know how to upgrade, please open SwordSearcher, go to the Help menu, and select “Check for Updates.” Or head on over to the Upgrade FAQ.

Using the Find Related Verses tool (video)

Cross-referencing is the most powerful and reliable method of understanding verses, because it allows the Bible to speak for itself.

SwordSearcher contains many tools to enable comparison of Scripture with Scripture.

One of these is the Find Related Verses tool. This video demonstrates how you can use this feature to develop your own cross-references on any passage.

Watch the video here.

Version 7.2 Hotfix 1 available

A small, free “hotfix” update is available for SwordSearcher 7.2.

This update is recommended for all SwordSearcher 7.2 users.

Open SwordSearcher 7, click the Help menu, and select “Check for updates.” Click the link in the page that loads to download the update and install it. That’s all.

After running the update, your SwordSearcher version will be 7.2.1.2.

If you are running a version older than 7.2, please go to the Upgrade FAQ page instead.

Continue reading “Version 7.2 Hotfix 1 available”

Video quick-tip: How to search for punctuation in the Bible

SwordSearcher supports powerful search “tokens” including Boolean operators like the exclamation point (to find a verse that does NOT have the word), and the wildcard character question mark.

So then, how do you search for actual punctuation characters using SwordSearcher, since those characters have a special meaning to the search engine? It’s easy. This video demonstrates how to use the “character string search” function to search for punctuation or any other exact sequence of characters in the Bible.

Do you use Webroot and have trouble with copy and paste?

Occasionally I will get a support question from a customer who is unable to use the Windows clipboard with SwordSearcher or is unable to copy-and-paste their download information from their purchase email.

After many hours spent, both by me and by my customers, the “root” of the problem has been discovered: Webroot Identity Shield. Apparently, one of their methods of securing a system is to disable the Windows clipboard for “unknown” applications. This questionable measure would not be such a problem except that absolutely no indication whatsoever is given that Webroot has disabled basic Windows functionality on your behalf, so you are left wondering why nothing happens when you press CTRL+V. Indeed, many customers of Webroot have literally spent hours and hours trying to figure this out.

The authorization code that you are sent when you purchase the download delivery of SwordSearcher is best copied, not typed. If you are using Webroot and you are unable to get the paste feature to work in the setup downloader, you may need to temporarily disable Webroot Identity Shield.

And once SwordSearcher is installed, you will also need to add SwordSearcher as a known/allowed application in order to prevent Webroot from interfering with the Windows clipboard functions of the software.

I am sorry for this inconvenience, but I have absolutely no control over this.

Know that you are not alone. Other Webroot users have wasted countless hours trying to diagnose this problem, as this poor guy did. As you can see here, this is a fairly common issue among Webroot users, and is not limited to SwordSearcher.

This post on the Webroot forum might be helpful in changing your Webroot settings so that it stops breaking the clipboard.

So far, only users of Webroot seem to have to deal with this problem. I have not yet seen other anti-virus programs interfere with basic Windows clipboard functionality.

New video quick-tip: Expand to Chapter in Commentary Panel.

Sometimes you will want to be able to “read through” a chapter of commentary text continuously. This video demonstrates using the “Expand to Chapter” feature of the Commentary Panel in SwordSearcher, which loads all of the commentary entries from a chapter at one time. Watch the video here.

This is an enhancement in the new version 7.2 release.

SwordSearcher 7.2 Released

I am pleased to be able to announce the release of SwordSearcher version 7.2.

If you’re already a SwordSearcher user you can read upgrade details here.

Here’s a details list of what’s new in 7.2 (since 7.1). The complete revision history is also available here.

Library Additions:

Williams’ Exhaustive Concordance of Bible Numbers [book: jgwNumbers]
Teach Us To Number. Every number mentioned in Scripture, from zero, through fractions, to infinity; all organized in a thorough concordance and easy to reference. By J. G. Williams, Copyright 2012.
James Ussher’s Annals of the World [book: juAnnals]
A Bible-honoring history of the world, from the creation of man through 73 AD, organized by year.
F. W. Grant’s Bible Notes (commentary from the Numerical Bible) [commentary: FWGrant]
Expository Notes from the Numerical Bible.

New features and improvements:

Speed improvements:
- Significant speed improvements on main search bar suggestion list population.
- Significant speed improvements to any phrase searches in library (any module type). This extends to any functions that rely on phrase matching (such as some of the StudyClick pop-up hint windows, etc).
- Speed improvements to library search result panel text loads with previews taken from very large entries.
- Book or Commentary quick-search can be aborted.
- Faster loading of panels from global “go to verse” setting, etc.
Improvements to Commentary panel:
- In-panel expanded view of multiple entries:
  - New “expand to chapter” toolbar button in the commentary panel automatically shows all entries from the chapter. This is an easy way to read though commentary text on a whole chapter.
  - Manual entry of verse ranges in the commentary panel entry selector is also possible (up to a full chapter can be shown).
  - Highlighted module tabs in commentary panel work with expanded multi-view as well, and switching between commentary tabs maintains the current verse range.
  - For official (Deluxe Edition Library) commentary modules, multi-entry view is optimized to remove “see comment on, commentary continues on, etc” placeholders.
- Improvements to commentary entry selector and drop-down list scroll position, especially when viewing an empty entry in the commentary panel.
- Commentary entry title list honors custom abbreviations.
Verse reference tag display (and copy/export) improvements:
- “Psalm” is used instead of “Psalms” unless it is a reference to the title of the entire book.
- Reference tags omit chapter number (1) for books with only one chapter (Jude, etc).
New copy/export formatting options:
- Added Superscript number option to copy/export formatting styles i, j, k, and l.
- Added “All Italics” option to copy/export formatting; forces the entire output to be in italics.
Additional MP3 Bible support and improvements:
- Added support for Hendrickson Scourby DVD and CD audio file names AND verse-level synchronized playback. See help file for details on linking MP3 Bibles in SwordSearcher. You can purchase this MP3 Bible on Amazon or from Hendrickson.
- __MACOSX folder filled with duplicate file names is ignored now. It’s no longer necessary to manually remove those superfluous folders before linking the audio files in SwordSearcher.
- (If you have previously linked an MP3 Bible in SwordSearcher you do not need to worry, nothing will change for you.)
- Better choice of scrolling/highlighting method (File, Configure Bible Audio).
Reading plan/schedule improvements:
- Added option to deactivate a reading plan (removes it from the daily reading schedule but does not delete the plan or progress.) Deactivated plans can be reactivated or rescheduled.
- Added support for importing reading plan template from a plain text file (daily readings per line) (Advanced users.)
  - You can create a highly custom plan manually in a text file by putting each day’s reading (verse references) on a line.
  - This text file can be imported as a SwordSearcher reading plan. Select Devotional, Add New Reading Plan, then click the Import Template from File and change the file type to “Daily Reading Per Line Text Files (*.txt)” and open your file.
  - Coverage of the plan will be reported so you can verify that the list of days were correctly interpreted.
  - Reading plan templates can be saved as a day-per-line text file.
  - A reading plan can now be saved as a template even if it is not a template.
Additional Preferences and Settings options (File menu):
- Text Display Options, Additional Bible Panel Settings: “Bible column spacing,” for users who want less or more white space in the Bible panel.
- Fonts and Colors: “Underline Links” preference option. Un-check this to turn off the underline which is applied to links by default.
Added count of chapters containing matches to Bible Search Result Info and Stats information list.
Bible margin edit commentary links show preview (if any).
Library search result preview shows “edit” link next to title of editable module entries.
Editor improvements:
- Added strikethrough formatting option.
- Send Link to Editor function restores and focuses the editor.
- Insert Verse Link dialog more flexible with input recognition.
- Insert Link to Entry dialog has better entry selector; works as book and commentary panel entry selectors do.
Added two additional filtering options in module set editor:
- Show only modules currently in the selected module set
- Show only modules currently not in the selected module set
Improvements to the verse reference recognition system.
Searching for “usward, youward” etc in a Bible module will automatically match the intended hyphenated compound words (“us-ward, you-ward,” etc.).
Opening a clone panel with ctrl-click opens the panel at mouse position instead of over “parent” panel when not in auto-dock mode for clone panels.
Added Verse List right-click menu option to open verse in clone panel.
Many visual improvements. (Smoother text panel scrolls, loading, some minor style changes, flickering of some list boxes fix, etc.)
Reduced memory impact of a full-library search.
Added “edit” to URL protocol. (Advanced users; see help file section on URL Protocol for details.)

Fixes:

Reading plan manager fixes.
Fixed small menu lines on high-DPI systems.
Fixes related to full library search result display updates after user module edits.
Fixed synchronized MP3 audio playback scrolling not working properly on some systems.
Fixed design mode editor preventing audio pause/resume with Ctrl+Space.
Fixed text panel scroll positions not restoring properly at startup.
Various stability and other minor fixes.
Minor updates to KJV, KJVSL, SRV, SRVSL, RVG, SGreek, SHebrew, SME, and Easton modules.

Analyzing verses from a Bible search

Here’s a somewhat obscure but interesting and often useful feature of SwordSearcher.

The Passage Analysis feature (added in version 7.1) gives you lots of details about sections of the Bible, such as a book or group of books. (See this detailed video for details.) Information includes a full list of words ranked by frequency of “uniqueness” to the passage, word count, versification metrics (number of chapters, most verses in a chapter, most words in a verse, etc), and more. The Passage Analysis tool is normally opened from the Search menu.

However, what’s not obvious is that the Passage Analysis tool can also be invoked based on a verse list. This option means that you can analyze verses from a search result. (In fact, you can do this with any verse list, including ones loaded from the Scan Text for Verse References tool or from Book and Commentary Panels.)

For example, do a search for the word scripture, and you will get a verse list result like this:

To “analyze” just the verses from this search, right-click in the verse list panel and select “Analyze All Verses” from the “Passage Analysis” menu item:

Right-click menu for verse list, Passage Analysis, Analyze all Verses.

This will open the Passage Analysis tool and analyze all of the verses from the search results. This is what it looks like:

Passage Analysis of all verses in the Bible with the word "Scripture" — Passage Analysis of all verses in the Bible with the word “Scripture”

This can be quite interesting. For example, take a look at the “Most Unique” ranked word list. Scripture is the first word in the list, because that’s the word we searched for, so every verse in the Bible appears here. But right below that we can see that the words foreknew, foreseeing, noted, and private only appear in verses that also have the word Scripture. Now this may or may not carry some significance, but the only way to find out is to start studying.

Again, be sure to watch the video demonstrating the use of the Passage Analysis tool to see if this could be useful with any of your own Bible search results!

Different Bible text display modes

In its default configuration, the SwordSearcher Bible panel shows text in a columnar format along with a “study margin” for fast access to verse-based material within the chapter.

Watch the video (1:52)

Sometimes you will want to quiet things down a bit. For example, during devotional reading it can be advantageous to switch off the margin area to devote more visual space to the Bible text, or change to paragraph format for a different reading flow.

There are two helpful toolbar icons in the Bible panel that can be used to change the display format with one click. There is a button for margin toggle and one for paragraph mode toggle, as you can see in this screen shot:

Continue reading “Different Bible text display modes”