Navigating complex books

Scripture App Builder
1

I am working on an NT with 27 Scripture books, but also with two lists of topics (in the OTH book). Each of these lists then has links to different Scripture references.

The main books can be navigated as expected–I can pull the chapter selector down from the top and choose which chapter to move to.

But for the topic ‘books’, that doesn’t work. Yes, we’ve split it into chapters for the sake of keeping things separate, but we want to navigate based on the topic. I’ve add a \cl which includes the topic name, which then shows up in the drag-down chapter selector. But since the chapters are laid out in grids, I’m only seeing a small portion of the topic name.

I don’t think the chapter selector can be changed to give a list, correct? Only the book names have the option of grid or list?

Is there any way to do what we want?

2

You might consider using a Content Menu. On the CM you would have the NT, then other buttons for each of your topic books. I’m not sure if there are sub levels of the content menu, if there are then you could make use of these. You should also be able to have the NT button appear on any additional content menus, or have it appear multiple times so if a user scrolls down, they NT button will show up again after one screen scrolling.

Hope this make sense. You could start by reading the SAB documentation on content menus.

RG

3

Thank you. I’m already using the Content Menu very extensively.

Content Menu Level 1 looks something like this:

1) NT
2) Subjects of the NT
3) Guidance according to the NT

Then, when we push button 2, we move into a Level 2 menu:

1) About God
2) Faith
3) Widows
etc

When we push one of those buttons, it then opens the page with the topic and the cross references.

The problem comes when we want to navigate to a new topic. The “easy” way would be to grab a dropdown menu from the top, and chose the new topic. The problem, as stated above, is that that dropdown menu is formatted as a grid and thus not readable.

The other option, which does work, is to open the navigation pane, chose the Contents, move through the Levels, and eventually find the new topic. It works, but it requires many more fingerstrokes and thus more time and, based on feedback from the nationals, isn’t as intuitive as the dropdown menu would be.

4

Have you considered using the LIST view instead of GRID view for the dropdown menu? This would give you a list. You can also choose a smaller or narrower font to show more letters.

Another idea is create an introduction that will appear in the Chapter dropdown for each book with a hyperlink to your secondary menu and label it BACK TO TOPIC LIST. The Introdcution button has the full width of the grid. If you do have book introductions, you still may be able to do this making 2 introduction books, one the actual Introduction and the other the BACK TO TOPICS.

Have you considered using hyperlinks and the Glossary feature. It is not exactly what you want, but you could put keyword glossary references in your NT TEXT to the Subjects which would be a separate glossary book. Then readers of the text could tap on key word and the popup window of the subject article would appear. At the bottom of each article you may be able to put a hyperlink back to the Subject list. Not sure this works, but it might be worth a try.

Blessings to you for providing a topic index. Did you create the index yourself or start with another index?

RG

5

Have you considered using the LIST view instead of GRID view for the dropdown menu?

My understanding is that Books have the option to change from grid to list view, but that Chapters to not have that option. Is that correct?

Originally the markup provided by the team was all in one chapter in PT, using the \xt tags to create the cross references under each topic. I’ve used regex rules and some python to split each topic off into it’s own chapter and to create chapter labels (\cl) which copy the topic name.

One other thing I’ve experimented with was to branch the topics off into its own Collection, where each individual topic becomes it’s own Book. That gives me access to the dropdown List (as opposed to the Grid), but it causes cross references to stop working (I think that’s a bug, and I’ve reported it).

Another idea is create an introduction that will appear in the Chapter dropdown for each book with a hyperlink to your secondary menu

This looks like an interesting idea and worth pursuing.

Is the idea that someone would click the Introduction button, the introduction would open down below, and then a link back to the topic list would appear in that intro space? Or is it possible to have the link directly attached to the dropdown introduction, so that when you click that bar above the chapter numbers it takes you directly to the level-2 contents menu that lists the different topics?

How do you create a link that navigates back to a particular topic menu (a Contents menu)?

Have you considered using hyperlinks and the Glossary feature.

I don’t think that would really apply here. Basically we just have a few words to introduce a topic, often just a single word, and then a list of cross references. If we used the glossary feature, I guess it would just act as a list of parallel passages that would show up when you clicked a word in the text. But it would be something you’d only discover as you were reading, and couldn’t be used directly by a person who thinks something like “I wonder what the Bible says about raising children” and then opens up the app to search for that.

Did you create the index yourself or start with another index?

I’m working on this as a service to a team that I’m not directly a member of, so I’m not sure. I’ve written them to ask.

6

Have you considered using the LIST view instead of GRID view for the dropdown menu?

My understanding is that Books have the option to change from grid to list view, but that Chapters to not have that option. Is that correct? YES

Originally the markup provided by the team was all in one chapter in PT, using the \xt tags to create the cross references under each topic. I’ve used regex rules and some python to split each topic off into it’s own chapter and to create chapter labels (\cl) which copy the topic name.

One other thing I’ve experimented with was to branch the topics off into its own Collection, where each individual topic becomes it’s own Book. That gives me access to the dropdown List (as opposed to the Grid), but it causes cross references to stop working (I think that’s a bug, and I’ve reported it).

Another idea is create an introduction that will appear in the Chapter dropdown for each book with a hyperlink to your secondary menu

This looks like an interesting idea and worth pursuing.

Is the idea that someone would click the Introduction button, the introduction would open down below, and then a link back to the topic list would appear in that intro space? Or is it possible to have the link directly attached to the dropdown introduction, so that when you click that bar above the chapter numbers it takes you directly to the level-2 contents menu that lists the different topics? I think you could do either. You would have to experiment. I would choose the method that is easiest to setup since the more complicated you make it, the more difficult it will be to revise/add. You will need to experiment with hyperlinks, but I think you can make a hyperlink to any book/verse. Take a look at the links in this reading Plan Note: references spanning more than a chapter will not work. eg \xt Matthew 1.1–2.12\xt* will only display 1:1-end of the chapter, but I don’t think this will be a problem for your project.

How do you create a link that navigates back to a particular topic menu (a Contents menu)?not sure about that. If you can figure out where the contents menu’s are stored in the .appDef file you can try links to those location.

Have you considered using hyperlinks and the Glossary feature.

I don’t think that would really apply here. Basically we just have a few words to introduce a topic, often just a single word, and then a list of cross references. If we used the glossary feature, I guess it would just act as a list of parallel passages that would show up when you clicked a word in the text. But it would be something you’d only discover as you were reading, and couldn’t be used directly by a person who thinks something like “I wonder what the Bible says about raising children” and then opens up the app to search for that. The Glossary is also a collection of all the glossary entries and explanatory text in a separate book collection called Glossary. This seems like what you want for the 2nd use you describe above. This is the collection that you can hopefully find a way to have a table of contents at the top which is a set of links to each subject entry. And then you can have a link next to each topic header that is a “Back to Top/Contents”
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