Creating a Verse List

[Glenn Weaver]

At work we have 100 documents that are updated regularly with new Scripture passages added, rearranged, and deleted. There are over 10,000 Scripture passages in these 50 page documents. What I need to do is to create, and update regularly, verse lists with Bible text for each of these documents. The verses must appear in order of appearance, not canonical order. Given the fact that these are updated regularly and that the documents are large, does anyone have an idea how I can automate this? Currently the updating is done manually, and it is very time consuming and prone to errors. I don't see how to do this in BW, but perhaps someone has a creative solution.

Thank you for your help. If BW can't do it, but someone has another option, please contact me. Thanks!

Glenn Weaver
weavergl@comcast.net

[Charlie]

Can you give some more details of what you are trying to do?

[Glenn Weaver]

Thanks for the response, Charlie.

The documents are topical studies. Within the documents are Scripture passages and references. (The references are always spelled out in full, such as "(John 1:1)".) I need to create a verse list with Bible text of all the references used in each document. I need the verse list to show each verse in the order in which it appears in the document. I don't want to sort it according to the Bible's canonical order, or an alphabetical order. At times verse appear more than once in each document. I also need to list every verse.

Thanks for thinking about this problem. It sure will save us a lot of time.

Glenn

[John Fallahee]

At work we have 100 documents that are updated regularly with new Scripture passages added, rearranged, and deleted. There are over 10,000 Scripture passages in these 50 page documents. What I need to do is to create, and update regularly, verse lists with Bible text for each of these documents. The verses must appear in order of appearance, not canonical order. Given the fact that these are updated regularly and that the documents are large, does anyone have an idea how I can automate this? Currently the updating is done manually, and it is very time consuming and prone to errors. I don't see how to do this in BW, but perhaps someone has a creative solution.

Thank you for your help. If BW can't do it, but someone has another option, please contact me. Thanks!

Glenn Weaver
weavergl@comcast.net

Glenn,

I am not aware of Bibleworks having such a tool. However, if the forum would permit me mentioning a competitive product that can help in this task getting done, here is a solution that should work.

If this can be done in Bibleworks, please let the forum know.

1) In Logos/Libronix goto the menu Tools > Bible Tools > Verse list

2) In the box labeled 'web address', place the full path of your document as well as the filename.

Note: This tool will read .txt, .xml, and .html files only. It can not read a word document. Therefore, it may be necessary to convert the document through the 'save as' feature and rename the 'save as file type'.

Note: Some Bible abbreviations are readable, some are not. For example, it can understand Gen for Genesis but not Joh for John.

Note: I recommend you convert one document and test the technology and see if it will work for you.


This may not get you to you final destination, but it should move you closer.
I hope that helps.

John Fallahee

[Glenn Weaver]

Dear John,

You are absolutely correct--the Verse List feature in Logos/Libronix 2.0 is very nearly what I am looking for. One major problem is that it truncates duplicate verses. You also have to be careful with the types of references you have in the document. If you document reads ". . . there is 1 task . . ." it will list all of Isaiah 1. Also, if you have multiple passages in one reference (e.g. Matthew 2:3; 14:2) it will only read the first part, though at times it may give unexpected results (such as giving you all of Matthew 2:3 through the rest of Matthew).

The lack of ability to retain duplicate verses has me stumped. That is the major hinderance to using the Logos Verse List feature for this purpose. I contacted tech support, but they aren't nearly as helpful as the BW staff. I submitted a suggestion for a product update to give me the option of retaining duplicate verses, but I don't know if it will ever happen. Once again, they aren't nearly as responsive as the BW team.

This is a major update to the Verse List feature in version 2.1--you can now open a Word document, and type "word" in the web address box, and it will pull the verses out of the Word document.

[MBushell]

Hi Glenn,

We'll see if we can do something for you. Would you prefer to have the verse list in a text file (in the editor) or as a BW verse list? I'll take a look and if we can do it with a few hours work we'll get it done today, Lord willing. The best we can do is take an RTF file or HTML file and extract the verses. So you'll have to save the Word files as RTF or HTML (RTF is probably better to preserve formatting).

Mike

[MBushell]

Hi Glenn,
We took a stab at it. See the executable just posted. Let me know what you think.
Mike

[Joe Fleener]

I don't want to sort it according to the Bible's canonical order, or an alphabetical order. At times verse appear more than once in each document. I also need to list every verse.

Since Glenn made the request he would be the better one to confirm that this is what he wants.

However, after playing around with it I think it is very close. I created a rather simple file (attached).

The VLM retained each verse even if listed twice, it retained those verses separated by a ';' and it extracted verse references found in the middle of a text string. All very very good.

When it imported them in the the VLM it left them in the order they were found in the document...again very good.

However, I believe Glenn's goal was to get the actual text of the verses in the order they appear in the document.

After getting to verses into the VLM I am not sure how to get to Glenn's final goal. If I export the verses to the CC it places them in canonical order and strips out the duplicate verses.

Is it possible to export the text of the verses listed in the VLM in a selected version to either the editor, clipboard or another document via the copy center?

I think this would get all the way to the finish line.

This is an excellent feature.

[MBushell]

Hi Joe,
Actually, isn't this already available in the EXPORT menu? "Copy to editor" will copy the text of the list to the editor. It's probably not labeled very well.
Mike

[Joe Fleener]

Hey Mike,

I guess you should know where everything is an how it works!

It works great!

It seems, by default, to copy the text of the verses in every version currently being displayed in the Results Window.

FYI: If someone wants the text in only one version they will need to ensure that only that vesion is in the Results Window.