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

[Quoth]

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to stumped again"
Gah!

So you can tell I've researched this so long ago I've forgotten most of it. Mobile phones didn't exist nor PDAs, never mind smart phones or ereaders. I did have a computer. With 8" floppies.

[phillipgessert]

Grateful for this topic as for the longest time I mistakenly thought a concordance was essentially just a "dumb" index, e.g. "instances of a term" rather than a properly curated index.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Quoth

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to stumped again"
Gah!

So you can tell I've researched this so long ago I've forgotten most of it. Mobile phones didn't exist nor PDAs, never mind smart phones or ereaders. I did have a computer. With 8" floppies.

Single or double density? Hard sectored or soft sectored?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by phillipgessert

Grateful for this topic as for the longest time I mistakenly thought a concordance was essentially just a "dumb" index, e.g. "instances of a term" rather than a properly curated index.

Yes, and I still think that, mostly. Is a concordance for a Bible, perhaps, viewed a bit differently than for your basic book?? Or..? (Not an expert in Biblical bookmaking. I know the layout and basic use, bor Bibles, but unless I'm losing what's left of my noggin, I'm pretty sure most concordances that I've worked on, for both regular but also, legal docs/books, over the years, are pretty much just...just what they sound like, an alpha collection of words and instances???)

Originally Posted by DNSB

Single or double density? Hard sectored or soft sectored?

HA! Trick question, although maybe not here on MR. 99% of people will only have used soft-sectored, and both single/double density, I'd hazard a guess. Hard sectored aren't going to be known to those users.

Ah, the olden days when 8" was, well...8".

(evil grin here...)

Hitch

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Ah, the olden days when 8" was, well...8".

(evil grin here...)

But ir was still floppy....

[stumped]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yes, and I still think that, mostly. Is a concordance for a Bible, perhaps, viewed a bit differently than for your basic book?? Or..? (Not an expert in Biblical bookmaking. I know the layout and basic use, bor Bibles, but unless I'm losing what's left of my noggin, I'm pretty sure most concordances that I've worked on, for both regular but also, legal docs/books, over the years, are pretty much just...just what they sound like, an alpha collection of words and instances???)

more googling ( before the thread is over-run with floppy disc reminiscences) tells me that the whole bible concordance thing has had everything including the kitchen sink thrown at it. All the words therein have been counted, and numbered ( by someone called Strong) hence the Strong concordance...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong%27s_Concordance
and google is awash with answers to what is the last word [amen], the shortest verse [Jesus wept} and the answer to every trivia question that you could dream up...
I am not seeing any corroboration for " concordance contains [only] the " important" stuff - it does seem to contain everything, but with some human assistance to separate multiple use words like bear ( verb) vs bear ( animal) which a dump indexer would not pick up. Maybe I was wrong to suggest a concordance maker could add bias.

ok - back to the far more interesting debates on which side should your floppy disc be buttered, how many floppy discs does it take to store a bible , with or without a concordance, etc.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by PeterT

But ir was still floppy....

Touché, sir!

Originally Posted by stumped

more googling ( before the thread is over-run with floppy disc reminiscences) tells me that the whole bible concordance thing has had everything including the kitchen sink thrown at it. All the words therein have been counted, and numbered ( by someone called Strong) hence the Strong concordance...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong%27s_Concordance
and google is awash with answers to what is the last word [amen], the shortest verse [Jesus wept} and the answer to every trivia question that you could dream up...
I am not seeing any corroboration for " concordance contains [only] the " important" stuff - it does seem to contain everything, but with some human assistance to separate multiple use words like bear ( verb) vs bear ( animal) which a dump indexer would not pick up. Maybe I was wrong to suggest a concordance maker could add bias.

So...we've all decided that there's no definitive authority on the topic of Concordances? If it's a Biblical concordance, it's the kitchen-sink and weight of importance, but for anything else, it's anything goes?

Alrighty, then. Good to know. (sigh).

[quoteok - back to the far more interesting debates on which side should your floppy disc be buttered, how many floppy discs does it take to store a bible , with or without a concordance, etc.[/QUOTE]

In which time period? ;-) (insert evil grin here)

Hitch

[stumped]

Originally Posted by Hitch

..

So...we've all decided that there's no definitive authority on the topic of Concordances? If it's a Biblical concordance, it's the kitchen-sink and weight of importance, but for anything else, it's anything goes?

.

The King James Authorized Bible has 783,137 words

and Mr Strong "got religion" badly enough to build his concordance, BY HAND

1. In
2. the
3. beginning
...
...
783,137. Amen

Jesus wept.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by stumped

The King James Authorized Bible has 783,137 words

and Mr Strong "got religion" badly enough to build his concordance, BY HAND

1. In
2. the
3. beginning
...
...
783,137. Amen

Jesus wept.

The very thought of doing that, by hand, makes me

Hitch

[Quoth]

Have you seen the size of the full size Oxford Dictionary?

The second edition, comprising 21,728 pages in 20 volumes, was published in 1989.
Work began on the dictionary in 1857 … 1884 that it began to be published … The first edition in TEN BOUND volumes was in 1928

No computer.

According to the publishers, it would take a single person 120 years to "key in" the 59 million words of the OED second edition, 60 years to proofread them

Wikipedia.


Though the Z1 computer was in 1939 and Lyons Tea & Cake shops ran its first business application in 1951, computers were not used much before mid 1960s in publishing and book preparation. They gradually crept in during the 1970s, with the first Home Computers being from about 1976, five years before the IBM PC.
Some authors still use CP/M, developed in the 1970s.

I'd not go back to paper or a typewriter. I had to type my reports on a purely mechanical typewriter in the mid 1970s.

Some Bible Concordances were done in about 2 years by one individual. Commentaries have taken several life times to complete.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Henry He didn't actually quite complete it and he used other sources without crediting them, including Jewish Commentaries.
See Mishnah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mishnah and Gemara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemara

So anyway, putting any species of Bible translation, concordance and dictionary together and publishing it used to be VERY expensive. Starting point now is cut off binding, sheet feed on industrial scanner and OCR. Then you can tell the difference between proofed properly and just hacking it out from IA / Wayback machine. Unless you are crowd sourcing, proofing that, even with computers, is expensive.

I remember in the 1960s my dad getting "plates" made for the illustrations and photos of a magazine. Different company to the one typesetting (with real moveable type).

Ah, we don't know how lucky we are! You ever tried writing and reading cuneiform on clay tablets, or a bamboo brush on rice paper? I've made and used a quill, actually easier than a cartridge fountain pen to write nicely with, if you can cut the quill with your … penknife. The ones sold today as penknives are useless, a scalpel or similar craft knife is good.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Have you seen the size of the full size Oxford Dictionary?

No computer.
Wikipedia.


I'd not go back to paper or a typewriter. I had to type my reports on a purely mechanical typewriter in the mid 1970s.

Some Bible Concordances were done in about 2 years by one individual. Commentaries have taken several life times to complete. .

What would be really annoying, after doing all that, would be a bunch of not-fake dead sea Scrolls turning up and having to start over with those included

So how many floppy discs needed for the full Oxford?

PS I worked at a computer bureau for a few months in late1970s writing typesetting code in Fortran. They did not do Bibles but they had contracts for some enormous shipping lists, encyclopedia stuff that needed annual updates. And had lots of embedded tables. The compiled fortran code drove the presses, as I recall, so if you messed up your widows and orphans subroutines or whatever and no one noticed in testing ,it would all have to be pulped and done over. Dunno why Fortran was used. It was some weird Unisys flavor, not IBM, all based on 6 bit bytes , and 36 bit words, not 8 bit. There was no concept of modular design, if a new book order came in you were given the spaghetti code for the most similar previously done book and told to hack it to fit. Head programmer had an aversion to subroutines, liked if....goto... nests. And some of us programmers had to join national Union of journalists and pay union dues, else the presses would not roll.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Have you seen the size of the full size Oxford Dictionary?

No computer.
Wikipedia.

I have indeed. That's why my constant companions are the New Shorters, in their two-book set and the online version. I mean...I was already driven from one home by lack of space for books; adding the full Oxford would probably be grounds for divorce that Mr. H could win! :-)

Hitch