Announcing the BOSS - Bible Organizer Study Suite

[Adelphos]

For those of you who have registered and used BOSS, I would appreciate any feedback on how you like the BOSS word/number scheme as compared with the WLM word/number scheme in BibleWorks, i.e., if you like the numbers separate, as they now are in BOSS, or if you like them right next to the word, as they now are in the WLM in BibleWorks.

I will probably make them both an option in the future, but I also have a few other things in mind, so any feedback you'd care to offer on this would be appreciated.

Please keep in mind the copying scheme as well, i.e., that in BOSS you can copy only the words or both the words and numbers, depending on your selection.

So again, any thoughts, feel free to share them.

[Jim Wert]

Scott,

I have just met your BOSS, and like it.
A few negative comments:

1) Verse lists display with a box immediately following each verse (the sort of box you get when the font can't handle a character).
I get the the same box as the first character in the Category Notes pane (both WLO and VLO). I can delete it in the Category Notes pane, but it comes back the very next day (actually, the very next time I save it).
I can live with it of course, but it ain't pretty.

2) Them Icon buttons - take a tip from BW and have button tips come up when you hover. On my screen I can't really make out the icon pictures, and I kicked myself out of BOSS unintentionally. I've come to realize that you are a bells and whistles kind of guy, but to have two buttons on a window that do exactly the same thing (and most people know what microsoft's X in the upper right hand corner does) strikes me as over-redundant. (I approve of redundancy between menus and buttons.)

3) I like the counts separate from the words in the WLO.
I don't like that they scroll separately. If I scroll one of them, I expect to look at the other one and see the correct information. Yes, when I click on a word, the correct number is highlighted, but I still don't like it. And it gets confusing when you have a number of words highlighted.

These things having been said, BOSS is a great thing, worth infinitely more than it costs.

--Jim

[Adelphos]

1) Verse lists display with a box immediately following each verse (the sort of box you get when the font can't handle a character).

I've never had this from anyone else, nor have I ever seen it on my other computers, or other computers from screenshots from other users. I'll check into it and see if I can find anything, but since you're the first to note this, it might very well be something specific to your system. I'll see what I can find though.

2) Them Icon buttons - take a tip from BW and have button tips come up when you hover. On my screen I can't really make out the icon pictures, and I kicked myself out of BOSS unintentionally.

There's only four icon buttons, and they all work the same, always, and they are always in the same place, always. I think this one you'll just have to get used to.

3) I like the counts separate from the words in the WLO. I don't like that they scroll separately. If I scroll one of them, I expect to look at the other one and see the correct information. Yes, when I click on a word, the correct number is highlighted, but I still don't like it. And it gets confusing when you have a number of words highlighted.

These things having been said, BOSS is a great thing, worth infinitely more than it costs.

I have a lot of work to do on the IEL files, such as make the option to have them the way BW has them, and a few other things. But scrolling I probably won't deal with since it's simply a matter of clicking on a word or number and have that immediately come into view.

However, once I make the option so that the numbers can appear right next to the word as they do in BW, that should solve those concerns anyway. Plus, I intend to make the option so that it can be toggled quickly, i.e., with a single click of the mouse or keystroke so the views can be changed back and forth at will. I think this will give the user the best of both worlds.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Adelphos]

Jim,

Just to clarify why the scrolling issue won't work, take at look at the following...



As you can see, every number beneath the selected numbers above have no corresponding word in view in the word box to left, for there is no one-to-one correspondence in the Hebrew and Greek fonts, so even if I automatically synched the scrolling, it would not work.

That's why I have it so that selecting/deselecting a word/number will automatically scroll the other into view and select it.

This is also why I plan to make it an option so it will work classic BW style as well as classic BOSS style. -

Personally, I like the words and numbers separated, but the option hopefully will give us the best of both worlds.

[MWMiles]

Hi Scott,

Your BOSS tool looks to be very nice. I plan on giving it a twirl after I get some loose ends hemmed up here.

May I ask what programming software you used to create this masterpiece?

Thanks,
Mike

[Adelphos]

May I ask what programming software you used to create this masterpiece?

I used Visual Studio 2008 and I wrote it in C/C++, straight Win32 API.

I've still got some improvements to make, but I haven't had any time since I released it to implement them yet. Probably won't be implemented till after the new year.

[MWMiles]

I used Visual Studio 2008 and I wrote it in C/C++, straight Win32 API.

Ahhhh. Good man!! I don't care much for the .NET stuff myself.

If you ever are of the mind the share the source code, I'd like to see it. I have VS2005 here and have been playing with assembler under Linux of late.