So, I'm creating my first eBook - It's only 1,100 pages...

[mazdaspeed]

Quite honestly, I've gotten a great deal of mileage from MobileRead and I've never posted. My project is a version of the Holy Scriptures edited from a mid-1500's, Spanish manuscript.

I'm volunteering for the non-profit publisher that previously had this Bible ePublished on Amazon and various other platforms, until it was recently recalled from the sub-contracted, for profit, publisher.

The intention is to now re-publish and distribute the Spanish and English versions, free-of-cost. The InDesign files were obtained for the print layout, but no ePublished files were obtained, and that's where I come in.

I've done an InDesign EPUB export that actually came out in a very workable fashion, and I've now have some really clean html5 and a reworked CSS stripped of InDesign's signature mess.

Considering I've never done more than use Calibre on a few occasions to convert some PDFs to mobi, I'm feeling pretty good about this project. I have a working, 3-level, internal TOC with crosslinking of all books and chapters, and it even passes the EPUB validator at http://validator.idpf.org/.

What I'm here for at this time is to figure out if it's possible to exclude the Dictionary and Concordance from being searched by any given eReader's search engine. I would like to think there is a way to use a <div> to flag sections to NOT be searched.

Any advice or feedback would be welcomed.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by mazdaspeed

Quite honestly, I've gotten a great deal of mileage from MobileRead and I've never posted. My project is a version of the Holy Scriptures edited from a mid-1500's, Spanish manuscript.

I'm volunteering for the non-profit publisher that previously had this Bible ePublished on Amazon and various other platforms, until it was recently recalled from the sub-contracted, for profit, publisher.

The intention is to now re-publish and distribute the Spanish and English versions, free-of-cost. The InDesign files were obtained for the print layout, but no ePublished files were obtained, and that's where I come in.

I've done an InDesign EPUB export that actually came out in a very workable fashion, and I've now have some really clean html5 and a reworked CSS stripped of InDesign's signature mess.

Considering I've never done more than use Calibre on a few occasions to convert some PDFs to mobi, I'm feeling pretty good about this project. I have a working, 3-level, internal TOC with crosslinking of all books and chapters, and it even passes the EPUB validator at http://validator.idpf.org/.

What I'm here for at this time is to figure out if it's possible to exclude the Dictionary and Concordance from being searched by any given eReader's search engine. I would like to think there is a way to use a <div> to flag sections to NOT be searched.

Any advice or feedback would be welcomed.

No. I mean, I can sit here and blather on, but the answer is, quite simply, NO.

For the same reason that "choose your own adventure" books can't limit where the readers go, or stop people from peeking at answers in the back, etc. You cannot hand over what is basically a 1990's website to someone and then try to use programmatic limitations in an environment that doesn't support those.

Hitch

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by mazdaspeed

What I'm here for at this time is to figure out if it's possible to exclude the Dictionary and Concordance from being searched by any given eReader's search engine.

While you might be able to use JavaScript to hide contents in epub3 books, it'd next to impossible to maintain epub2 compatibility.

You might want to consider the following two suggestions:

1. Release the book as iOS and Android apps. (There are many free toolkits that allow you create HTML/CSS based apps.)
2. Remove the dictionaries from the book and release them as StarDict dictionaries for ePub apps and Kindle dictionaries for Kindle readers and apps.

[najgori]

"Scripture app builder helps you to build customized Scripture apps for Android and iOS smartphones and tablets."
and there is also
"Reading App Builder helps you build customized apps for Android and iOS smartphones and tablets."

[Quoth]

However an ebook will work on now unsupported iOS and Android that already had ereaders and on all eink.
Why block concordance and dictionary?

Personally I'd not install a book related thing as an app, ever, on Android.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by Quoth

However an ebook will work on now unsupported iOS and Android that already had ereaders and on all eink.
Why block concordance and dictionary?

Personally I'd not install a book related thing as an app, ever, on Android.

why even have a concordance- that's an ancient redundant relic of printed books - redundant because a reader device search does the same thing, but automated and thus not error prone ?

same applies to including a dictionary within the book if that is what's planned. e-readers come with dictionary pre-installed.

[Quoth]

No, a search doesn't do the same exactly as a concordance. It's a specialised dictionary that would have a definition for each entry (like a dictionary) but ALSO have a link to each verse were that particular meaning is used.
So one aspect can be be done poorly with search and one aspect done badly with a separate dictionary.

I just dug out Cruden's Concordance and a more modern one to check. So you'd not want a separate dictionary, that should be integrated to the concordance.
Some words have quite different meaning in a Bible to an ordinary dictionary. The Old Testament may use different words for the same thing or personal names (Joshua = Jesus, Mary = Miriam, James is not even in the Greek, I forget what it should be, that was a sop to King James). I've no idea about Spanish.

• The concordance needs the biblical dictionary included/integrated.
• It needs to connect OT and NT things that are spelled differently but actually the same.
• It needs phrase entries as well as single words.
• It needs to have separate entries for the same word / phrase that have completely separate usages. Links then to every verse.
• It need to be searchable in book and in ereader and be a top level with the Books of the Bible. Chapters then Level 2.

Some ereaders have issues with 3 levels and more in TOC, so only more headings textually in the "in book" Contents pages.

[stumped]

ok - conceding the need for a concordance ( if God had trouble keeping all the names straight between OT - NT, should have revealed it to George Martin instead of a bunch of semi-literates ) ....

Why is there a need to block the reader search engine from searching said concordance
I mean if readers are not supposed to access this stuff - why not write the whole thing only in Latin .... what's that? oh it was tried - didn't end well

[Quoth]

The OT is in Hebrew, apart from the bits in Aramaic.
The NT is in Greek, but not the sort of Greek of the Classics.
So often different names & and translators.
Additionally the OT was translated into another kind of Greek, but with some words and most names left in Hebrew by Jewish Scholars, maybe in Egypt, perhaps at different times between 300 years and 50 years before the start of the events in the NT. The NT was written by Jews in Greek (Luke was a convert to Judaism before a Christian and probably wrote Acts and Luke). It's not 100% clear who wrote some NT books and less clear who wrote, or in the case of older ones, wrote down older Oral accounts. A lot of the OT was probably written or finalised in the Babylonian captivity. The Book of Daniel is mostly in Aramaic.
Then in the 4th C. the Christian Religion sort of became official rather than persecuted. So towards the end of the 4th C. the Vulgate was created in Latin. It did make use of the Septuagint as well as official versions of the "Hebrew" OT and various versions of the NT in its "different" Greek.
So later translators to other languages used all of those and also early English translations. Curiously the official Catholic English translation used the Protestant King James. Today's King James Version isn't the original, but even more oddly used some aspects of the Catholic English Version. (numerous versions of the Douay and Douay -Rheims over 200 years! In 1960s there was a new English Catholic version translated from a new French Version called the Jerusalem Bible).
After the KJV (nowhere near the first English) there are too many English versions and revisions to list before the 20th C.
Originally many languages got Bibles either from whatever was the current KJV, or the Douay-Rheims or the Vulgate.
So crazily the OT + NT for Jewish Christians using Hebrew was originally from the KJV!
IN the later half 20th & 21st C a lot of work has been done using original sources, but comparing with Septuagint and Vulgate, direct to languages.

I've no idea what the Spanish version discussed here is in terms of sources.
Concordances with notes outlining possible alternate readings (not always as notes in the text) are important.
Ezekiel: The Jerusalem version reads "Marked with a Cross". The NIV reads something like received a mark. The hebrew is a single letter, Taf, which in the OLD alphabet is like X, but not only that, in old Hebrew and Aramaic is means also "mark". In plural in modern Hebrew it might be used for keyboard (from typewriter days). And what did people do when asked to sign and couldn't write? They put their mark, an X or + (cross).
Edit:
Also in Greek there is the letter Tau (maybe related to Taf as Greek alpha Beta comes Aramaic/Hebrew Phoenician Alef Bet and becomes the Roman/Latin we use). It's used from earliest times as a symbol of the Cross the Messiah (=Christos in Greek) was crucified on.

Indeed it's a mad idea to block the concordance/dictionary.

[stumped]

i don't want to turn this into a religiou debate, but after googling some more re concordances

the idea seems to be that the concordance is a list of important stuff + a cross reference to where name A actually = name B ?
Different concordances make different choices as to what is important
its not clear ( to me yet) if the concordances are typically produced by the folks who also masterminded that bible edition / translation, or if they get added much later.
so we have e.g. the famous A.V. / King James bible , commissioned of course by King James in 1603, finished ~50 years later, but I don't recall him commissioning a matching concordance at the time ?

seems that a later concordance could introduce an "editors" take on what's "important", and so someone who simply want to self-study the bible ( having negotiated the minefield of what edition to go with ) is arguably better of with machine generated, neutral search results for where words / phrases occur

[phillipgessert]

I'd think search results from a dictionary and concordance would be valuable, and for a 1500pg manuscript the relative clutter from them would probably be pretty negligible.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by stumped

i don't want to turn this into a religiou debate, but after googling some more re concordances

the idea seems to be that the concordance is a list of important stuff + a cross reference to where name A actually = name B ?
Different concordances make different choices as to what is important
its not clear ( to me yet) if the concordances are typically produced by the folks who also masterminded that bible edition / translation, or if they get added much later.
so we have e.g. the famous A.V. / King James bible , commissioned of course by King James in 1603, finished ~50 years later, but I don't recall him commissioning a matching concordance at the time ?

seems that a later concordance could introduce an "editors" take on what's "important", and so someone who simply want to self-study the bible ( having negotiated the minefield of what edition to go with ) is arguably better of with machine generated, neutral search results for where words / phrases occur

What? Since when does a concordance include or exclude based on the editor's view of what's important? Wouldn't that make it an index?

Forget religion. Let's just tackle this as we would any book.

And again, WHY would you block the reader's access to it?

Hitch

[stumped]

I thought a concordance was just an index but then along came post #7. I am not enough of a biblical scholar to debate that,so I conceded the point but picked up on the possible bias thing, after more googling.

[Quoth]

Whatever about who or why the concordance created (and most long after the translations) or if there is bias or not (usually less than a translation), including it and then blocking ereader search of it makes no sense.

The two sample Concordances I found here have no dictionary built in, but could not be generated by simply searching the bible text.

Don't confuse a Commentary (Usually very biased) with a Concordance (usually no more biased than any comprehensive combined dictionary/index, which the basic ones are). A Concordance usually has no axe to grind in the indexing aspect and often the definitions will cover aspects ignored by the translator, i.e. the word used in Greek for Jesus's brothers with Mary is usually rendered Cousin in Catholic Church approved translations. No prizes for guessing why. But a Catholic study bible or a Concordance (there are ones that have the source Greek, Aramaic or Hebrew word in the definition) will admit the Greek could be translated as brothers. Or maybe brother. It's a long time ago.

I'm not stating if any view is true or false, I'm trying to explain what a Concordance is. It's not at all like a Commentary. Most English Concordances have only English and each is only for one specific edition / translation. The NIV Handy Concordance is specifically for the Anglized Edition of the NIV with 35,000 key words abridged from the 250,000 word full concordance. Bear (Animal) and bear (carry) will have separate entries. It has 1239 key word entries that list EVERY occurrence of a word. It has 260 block entries to help the reader find passages rather than verses.

The initial index of a concordance can be done by automatic search. Then an expert human has to break words of same spelling but different meaning into groups. Variants need linked (prison and prisoner) as do possessives and plurals. That's purely a basic concordance without dictionary or lexicon, which is what the NIV example is. Yet no ereader search I know could do it. No semantics.

The Compact Crudens is also lacking the dictionary. It's for the AV (KJV) and was originally produced in 1736 by Cruden. It's a 1968 update. It's 563 pages of maybe 6pt (very small) about 7.25" x 4.5".

Some concordances (ones with dictionaries, never mind lexicons of Hebrew & Greek) are multiple volumes.
All concordances are useless without search on an ereader!

[stumped]

All of post #14 seems very sensible.
Especially the last sentence!
If the concordance is not searchable on the e reader then it is pretty much unusable.