Search tips for version 3

[csterg]

Here are a few tips for searching the Bible text with ver.3 of TheWord:

- To begin a search either:
a. click on F3 or
b. select a word or phrase from the Bible view, right click on it and select 'Find "<word>" [Translation]'.
If you click on F3, the focus will move to the active search view, or a new search view will be created if none exists. (alternatively, click on the search icon on the main toolbar).

- To find a word, just enter it in the search text box and press enter.

- To find an exact phrase, enclose it in double quotes ("). For example: "law of Christ" (the double quotes are part of the search phrase) will find verse that contain exactly this phrase.

- If you enter more than one words without double quotes, then the software needs to know if you want to find verses that contain any of them (OR) or all of them (AND). For example, if you enter the words 'God' and 'Christ', TheWord needs to know if you want to find verses that contain both of these words, or contain any of these words. Now, as you type these words, you will notice that at the bottom of the search panel, there is a panel named "Is this what you are looking for?". This panel actually displays what TheWord will attempt to find. By default if you just type the words "Jesus" and "God", this panel will display: "jesus AND god". Notice that the word AND is in blue: this means that TheWord will search for those verses that contain both these words. This is just the default behavior which you can easily change. To force TheWord to search for either of the words, click on the "Detailed" tab in the bottom, and select the option: 'default "OR" (match any word)'

- As you probably understood, when you perform a search the program needs to make some assumptions on what you really want. You can configure these 'assumptions' from the 'Detailed' tab. The options you set there are applied to the 'Fast' search also. For example, you can set whether you want to match 'Whole words only' or 'Ignore case and diacritics' when searching for a word.

- The real power of the search is that you can easily "drive" the program using some operators when you enter a search phrase. Remember to always check the "Is this what you are looking for?" panel to see what TheWord really understands from what you enter. Taking the example above, instead of entering the 2 words 'Jesus' and 'God' (and let TheWord do the guesswork of what you really want), you could enter (without the quotes) 'Jesus and God' directly. Or you could enter 'Jesus or God'. Now you can start thinking of more complicated examples.

- Let's say that you enter 3 words: 'Jesus', 'God', 'miracle'. By default, TheWord will understand 'Jesus AND God AND miracle' (e.g. will find those verses that contain all 3 words). You can instruct it to search for more complicated combinations by entering the operators yourself, for example: 'Jesus AND God OR miracle'. Notice that this last phrase can be interpreted in 2 different ways:
1. Find verses that contain the words 'Jesus' and 'God', or verses that contain the word 'miracle'
2. Find verse that contain the words 'Jesus' and one of the words 'God' or 'miracle'.
Obviously, the above 2 cases are different. The trick here is that you need to define which operator (AND or OR) should take precedence. As before, TheWord will make a guess, but you can avoid this by using parenthesis ( ). Notice how TheWord parses this phrase by checking the "Is this what you are looking for?" panel.

- Continuing on the previous example, you could write 'Jesus and (God or miracle)' to match case number 2. You should now be able to perform more complicated searches by combining operators and parenthesis! For example:
1. (Jesus OR God) AND (miracle OR glory)
2. Jesus AND (Peter or Paul or Mark)

- There are more operators that you can use! Click on the 'Detailed' tab, and check the buttons that are just below the search text box (And Or Not Near Xor () "..."). Pause your mouse over each one of them to get a description of their use and a small example of usage.

- Remember that you can have unlimited number of words, phrases, operators and parenthesis to express what you want to find. One operator of special attention is the operator NEAR! It allows you to find words that are in adjacent verses. For example, you want to find verses where the word 'Jesus' is near to the word 'Peter'. Just enter 'Jesus NEAR Peter'. By default, TheWord will look at 3 adjacent verses to find these words (you can know this by lookin at the 'Is this what you are looking for?' panel). If you want to force the program to look into more verses, enter the number after NEAR, for example 'Jesus NEAR9 Peter' will look for those cases where the 2 words are within 9 adjacent verses.

- Now, combine all the above:
1. '(Jesus OR God) NEAR Peter
2. '(Jesus NEAR God) and NOT (Jesus NEAR Peter)'
3. '(Peter NEAR Paul) OR (Peter NEAR (Jesus AND Christ))'

- Finally, notice that each operator has a 'shortcut' which is a symbol. For example AND is represented with &. These shortcuts are 100% equivelant with the operators, so entering '(Jesus | God) # Peter' is the same as entering '(Jesus OR God) NEAR Peter'. TO find out the shortcut for each operators, just read the tooltips of the corresponding buttons in the 'Detailed' tab.

Hope the above is helpful to get you started with searching the Bible with TheWord.

Costas

[Stephan]

Hi Costas,
your search tips are very helpfull!
I´m amazed about this easy to handle but still powerfull search function. Especially the idea with the panel (named "Is this what you are looking for?") is very clever.

Thanks a lot!!

Forumiker

[Leoram]

Thanks for the tips!!!
Also good to mention here is the graphical query result. It's nice and appealing. I don't know what bro. Costas' final idea would be in this regard but I like how it works now. I'd love to use it when searching for Strong numbers becomes available.

[csterg]

I'd love to use it when searching for Strong numbers becomes available.

I think this is the next thing i will do. Too many requests
Costas

[hopeful]

Hi,

Awesome software! Thank you so much! On boolean AND/or searches, one must type several AND's and OR's but here is a step saver Bible Works uses: Just precede the search with a single character like this:

.Jesus prayed thing same (returns all verses with all words)
'Jesus prayed the same thing (returns only an exact match)
/Jesus Christ Mess* (returns verses with any of the words, including words with a "mess" root)

Saves a lot of typing in the long run. Never a need for sets of double quotes, multiple OR's, multiple AND's, etc.

Here is a snippet of the very short and elegant operators BW uses:

.jesus
containing the word Jesus

.jesus christ
containing both "jesus" AND "christ" anywhere in the verse in any order

/jesus christ
containing either "jesus" OR "christ"

.jesus !christ
the word "jesus" but NOT the word "christ"

'jesus christ
the phrase "jesus christ"

'christ jesus
the phrase "christ jesus"

.paul
the word "paul"

.paul barnabas
"paul" AND "barnabas"

/paul barnabas
either "paul" OR "barnabas"

.paul barnabas;5
"paul" AND "barnabas" within 5 verses of each other

.paul !barnabas
the word "paul" but NOT the word "barnabas"

(/Martha Mary).!(.Martha Mary)
either Mary OR Martha but NOT both (an exclusive OR search)

.paul !barnabas;5
the word "paul" but NOT the word "barnabas" within 5 verses

(/paul saul).(barnabas)
either "paul" OR "saul" AND barnabas in the same verse

(/paul saul).5(barnabas)
either "paul" OR "saul" AND barnabas within 5 verses

(.paul barnabas;2)/(.paul silas;3)
"paul" AND "barnabas" within 2 verses OR "paul" AND "silas" within 3 verses.

'*dom of god
phrases like "wisdom of god", "kingdom of god", and so on

/*ite *ites
words ending in "...ite" or "...ites"

.*wom?n
words of the form "women", "woman", "bondwoman", and so on


Thanks again

Love,

Me

[csterg]

Thank you hopeful for the suggestion.
It is in the todo list to add 'quick' operators in the search parser!
Thanks for all the hints,
Costas

[hopeful]

Thank you hopeful for the suggestion.
It is in the todo list to add 'quick' operators in the search parser!
Thanks for all the hints,
Costas

I just can't believe how much this software will help the world. God's Spirit is clearly helping you!

L,
H

[andley]

Costas,

Is there a way to search in the Compare-View?

For example, I want to search the word "spirit" in the English Bible, and wondering how this word is translated into Chinese Bible, so I switch to the Compare-View.

However, after the search, TW3 always backs to the English Bible view ....

Thanks,
-Andley.

[csterg]

Costas,

Is there a way to search in the Compare-View?

For example, I want to search the word "spirit" in the English Bible, and wondering how this word is translated into Chinese Bible, so I switch to the Compare-View.

However, after the search, TW3 always backs to the English Bible view ....

Thanks,
-Andley.

Hi Andley,
yes there is.
1. When in compare view, if you right-click on a word in the view, you will search for it in the Bible that belongs (notice the popup menu also names the name of the translation that it will be searched)
2. In the Bible search view, click on the 'Options' tab. Uncheck the 'Jump to searched Bible when clicking on a verse'. Now, when you click on a search result, the Bible view will not go back to the english module but will stay at the Compare mode.

Does this help?
Costas

[andley]

THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOOO MUCH !!

[tschmidt]

Hi,

how can I get the total number of matches for a word search instead of the number of verses the word was found in?

Thank's for help
Thomas

[csterg]

Hi,

how can I get the total number of matches for a word search instead of the number of verses the word was found in?

Thank's for help
Thomas

Sorry, this is not available.
There have been discussions about it and i have promised it as a feature to be implemented really soon after the release of ver.3
Costas

[vffinder]

Hi Costas,
I'd like to know if is possible to search a word or expression trough a multiple bible modules.
Thanks.
VF

[csterg]

Sorry, this is not possible for now. it's programmed for TW4

[DarrelW]

This another of those (new user) questions - Can I search everything at the same time? Say I want to search all Bibles, commentaries, dictionaries and books for the word "thorn", can I do that? Or do I need to search Bibles first and then the rest in another search window?

Darrel