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Conference tecrus::mormonism

Title:	The Glory of God is Intelligence.

Moderator:	BSS::RONEY

Created:	Thu Jan 28 1988
Last Modified:	Fri Apr 25 1997
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	460
Total number of notes:	6198

183.0. "The Ultimate Scripture Chase" by VIDEO::LENF (Len F. Winmill) Thu Nov 10 1988 08:43

    Well Last night I got my copy of the Church Scripture program, and
    installed it on my PC clone. (simple XT with Hard Disk).
    
    I didn't have time to play much but here are some comments.
    Yes it does take a FULL 10 Meg of Disk plus.
    It requires 512K of RAM.
    It has the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl
    of Great Price, Bible Dictionary and Thesarus, All in full text.
    It is *FAST*.
    
    To look up a word, one can choose from a list using the arrow keys,
    but one can type too. If you hit the L key it jumps to the start
    of the L section, hitting O moves down to the first LO entry and
    so forth.  Being a moderate typeist, I found that before I could
    finish the work LOVE it was there. Then a return gives you the
    statistics about that word including the total number of occurences,
    This is not computed but pulled immediatly from a table. One can
    do various types of searching for combinations of wards, these take
    a little while, but on my basic XT, 4.77 Mhz clock, going through
    the combination of "Christ" (over 1000 entries) and "Love" (over
    (400 entries) took just over 10 seconds (it reports the number to
    you).  I was impressed. Indeed it is a good research tool. I am
    looking forward to using it.
    
    By the way, One can order simply the Right to copy license and borrow
    the disks from someone else. This saves a lot of the cost for software.
    So if someone has a PC compatible with a spare 10 Meg of Disk laying
    around and is in the greater maynard area (I live in Southboro and
    Work in Westford), I would be glad to loan them the disks when they
    get the license.
    
    Seminary Students, look out now.
    
    Len

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
183.1		MIZZOU::SHERMAN	Love is a decision ...	`Thu Nov 10 1988 11:40`	6
	I've seen this on my Dad's PC. If I can ever justify sinking some bucks into a PC, this is top on my list for software. I think it works with massive linked lists instead of text strings to give it the 'incredible' speed. They did a really good job with it. Steve
183.2	Sounds good!	ONFIRE::PERM	Kevin R. Ossler	`Thu Nov 10 1988 13:25`	8
	RE: < Note 183.0 by VIDEO::LENF "Len F. Winmill" > This is good to know. A piece of software can sound absolutely whiz-bang but still be impossible to actually use. What does it cost? And what does the Right to Copy License cost? /kevin
183.3	Sorry to sound negative but...	NORGE::CHAD	Ich glaube Ich t�te Ich h�tte	`Fri Nov 11 1988 11:44`	7
	What is it useful for? If all it is is a computerized quad (as I understand from an ad for it and also from .0 note), what advantage does it give me over the quad itself. It doesn't take long for me to look something up there either... Chad
183.4	great things to come ...	MIZZOU::SHERMAN	Love is a decision ...	`Fri Nov 11 1988 14:20`	19
	Well, for one thing, I often rememeber parts of a scripture, but not where it is. The Topical Guide usually helps, but sometimes I can't find it there either. This software allows you to find a scripture even if all you can remember is a little bit. The Thesaurus on board also acts as sort of a Topical Guide, too. The software is probably most powerful when you are studying about particular topics, requiring a lot of cross-referencing. But, the software, marvelous as it is, is not sufficient excuse to go out and buy a PC. The Church leaders apparently agree as they don't encourage members to go out and buy PCs just so they can run the software. This software is relatively cheap (I think around $50). The same is true for the geneaology software as I recall. I believe that in the near future we will see many Wards with PCs in the Geneaology library available for member use. There will likely also be access to the IGI and other geneaology materials via CD. Steve
183.5	Like a lot of other software tools	RIPPLE::KOTTERRI	Rich Kotter	`Fri Nov 11 1988 14:43`	19
	Re: Note 183.3 by NORGE::CHAD Hi Chad, >What is it useful for? If you prepare lessons or talks, you can have it print out all or selected passages on a given subject. If you are researching a certain gospel topic, you could conduct the research more quickly. I don't have the software, but I certainly would like to have it. I suspect its like a lot of other computerized tools, that are hard to appreciate until you've used them for a while. Then they seem indispensable. I remember the first time I heard of word processing, I couldn't imagine what advantage it had over a type writer. When it finally dawned on me that it means you don't have to type something over to do it again, I found it to be of immense value. Rich
183.6		FSTRCK::RICK_SYSTEM		`Mon Nov 14 1988 09:33`	19
	A friend of mine is running this on a 386 PC. While I was over there for dinner one night, he did a search for every occurence of the words "the" and "and" in the same verse. It found about 99,000 occurences of "the" and about 28,000 occurences of the word "and", and found about 25,000 in the same verse. Total time to do this search - 78 seconds. There is also a bible dictionary included. One of the interesting things that can be done - you can search for all the scriptures on a particular topic, mark selected ones that you think should be grouped together, and then store that collection together on disk. This makes a handy future reference for you. There is also a synonym list which is handy when looking for references similar to what you are dealing with. It is the best scripture program I've seen written.