Navigating Schaff's "Fathers"

I'm all happy about the inclusion of Schaff's Early Church Fathers in BW. I still seem to have a little navigational problem, however.

Take, for instance, 1Ki 17:11, where a reference to Sermons shows up. I can of course click on it, be transported to a footnote, and then, via the link, to the actual sermon text. I'm just wondering: Whose sermon? This link drops me right into the middle of Schaff's immense work and, since the table of contents on the left hand of the help window does not synchronize automatically (did I miss an option for this somewhere), I have no clue where exactly I am.

So how do I find out whose sermon I am reading here?

I found a workaround, for now at least (still don't think that's the correct way):

Right-clicking in Schaff's text, I choose properties and find out that the internal URL to that text is mk:@MSITStore:c:\programme\bibleworks%208\database s\ecf.chm::/npnf212-001.htm#ha177.

I'm most interested in the last part, npnf212-001.htm. I figure "npnf2" is for "Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2." Checking the table of contents again, I find "NPNF2-12 Leo the Great, Gregory the Great." And, indeed, under "Leo the Great", I find my way back to the "Sermons" page I started out from. So now I know who was the preacher.

My wife also suggested another way: Enter the found sermon text in Google and find out who's the author. But both ways somehow beat the purpose of having Bibleworks, don't they?

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Originally Posted by toph

I'm all happy about the inclusion of Schaff's Early Church Fathers in BW. I still seem to have a little navigational problem, however.

Take, for instance, 1Ki 17:11, where a reference to Sermons shows up. I can of course click on it, be transported to a footnote, and then, via the link, to the actual sermon text. I'm just wondering: Whose sermon? This link drops me right into the middle of Schaff's immense work and, since the table of contents on the left hand of the help window does not synchronize automatically (did I miss an option for this somewhere), I have no clue where exactly I am.

So how do I find out whose sermon I am reading here?

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Sounds like something to submit to them, so that it can be improved. There should be a better way to identify the proper text. Meanwhile, this is the best workaround I can think of for now. Highlight a select portion of the text near where you're working and copy it. For instance I copied "The holy widow of Sarepta discovered" and then on the left margin of the HTML module, click the Search tab and search for that string. That will bring up the right place. It's found in Leo's Sermons.

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Originally Posted by Michael Hanel

Highlight a select portion of the text near where you're working and copy it. For instance I copied "The holy widow of Sarepta discovered" and then on the left margin of the HTML module, click the Search tab and search for that string. That will bring up the right place. It's found in Leo's Sermons.

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Of course, I can do this. But the page I find is the same page I started from. It's simply titled "Sermons", has no indication that they are Leo's and nowhere I can see where this page is located in the page tree -- so I have no means to go e.g. up one level and discover that this is filed under Leo the Great.

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Originally Posted by toph

Of course, I can do this. But the page I find is the same page I started from. It's simply titled "Sermons", has no indication that they are Leo's and nowhere I can see where this page is located in the page tree -- so I have no means to go e.g. up one level and discover that this is filed under Leo the Great.

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On my computer, after I search in the HTML file and click on Sermons, I then click the Contents tab in the HTML. The tree is open to the right place. (Sorry I skipped that last part).

You're right: After searching, the tree does synchronize.

I'll submit a feature request for some improvement, but I fear already that this really is a shortcoming of the Windows help system and might not be fixable by the BW guys.

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Originally Posted by toph

You're right: After searching, the tree does synchronize.

I'll submit a feature request for some improvement, but I fear already that this really is a shortcoming of the Windows help system and might not be fixable by the BW guys.

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Well regardless of whether it is a problem in the Windows Help System (not sure on that), they can tweak the titles so that you wouldn't see just "Sermons" but something like "Leo the Great: Sermons" or "PNF vol (whatever): Sermons." So I'm not sure on what level it can be fixed and made more clear, but there definitely is some room for improvement on this one.

Just submitted a bug report.

After some further research, I found out that the Microsoft HTML Help Control that BW uses requires unique page titles for TOC auto-syncing to work. Schaff has a lot of duplicate page titles, which probably explains why the TOC doesn't sync there, but does on other modules.

Now we just have to hope for a quick fix from those fantastic programmers!

They might have provided fully qualified titles in the individual html pages.

For example, a page with the above mentioned property npnf212-001.htm#ha177 could be titled something like:

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers > Series 2 > Volume 12 > Leo the Great, Gregory the Great > Leo the Great > Sermons > Sermon Title

Although the actual hierarchy is different, see http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0622.htm for the general principal.

I am a bit surprised that they let it ship this way. Perhaps BW acquired this module from dedicated hobbists who might have overlooked this and that there was not time to fix it for the BW8 release. I would think that we'd all have to admit that we'd prefer to have it this way than not at all.

Regardless, I am confident this will get fixed.

By now, I got an email from Glenn Weaver, confirming that this is an oversight and will be fixed shortly.