4 documents = 4 columns in parallel?

Software
1

Here is a problem that I can’t seem to think of a solution for. Maybe this is more for the Automators forum, but since I want to find a solution on the Mac, I’m asking here.

Every week I have 4 different versions of the Bible that I want to compare for the next Sunday. I’ll include an example of 4 below.

What I want is to have each of them parallel to one another, in 4 columns. (Assume that this would be laid out on US-Letter or US-Legal paper in “landscape” format.)

Ideally, I would like to have all of the verses line up, so as I look across, I can find, say, verse 5 from each one, without having to scan the text for it.

When I try to put this into columns in Pages, what it does is put all of the 1st version into columns, and then the 2nd, and then the 3rd and 4th. That makes sense for more things, but it doesn’t help me for what I want.

I’m guessing I could make 4 ‘text boxes’ and set them into columns, but that seems very manual and very fiddly to get them the same width, etc.

Any other ideas out there?

Thanks!

Example Texts Below

Luke 4:1-13 (NASB)

1 Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, He was hungry. 3 And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” 4 And Jesus answered him, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’” 5 And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 And the devil said to Him, “I will give You all this domain and its glory, for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I want. 7 Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.” 8 Jesus replied to him, “It is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.’” 9 And he brought Him into Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here; 10 for it is written: ‘He will give His angels orders concerning You, to protect You,’ 11 and, ‘On their hands they will lift You up, So that You do not strike Your foot against a stone.’” 12 And Jesus answered and said to him, “It has been stated, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13 And so when the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time.

Luke 4:1-13 (NRSV)

1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” 5 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” 9 Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ 11 and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” 12 Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

Luke 4:1-13 (NIV)

1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” 4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’” 5 The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 If you worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’” 9 The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. 10 For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; 11 they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” 12 Jesus answered, “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13 When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.

Luke 4:1-13 (MSG)

1-2 Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wild. For forty wilderness days and nights he was tested by the Devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when the time was up he was hungry. 3 The Devil, playing on his hunger, gave the first test: “Since you’re God’s Son, command this stone to turn into a loaf of bread.” 4 Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: “It takes more than bread to really live.” 5-7 For the second test he led him up and spread out all the kingdoms of the earth on display at once. Then the Devil said, “They’re yours in all their splendor to serve your pleasure. I’m in charge of them all and can turn them over to whomever I wish. Worship me and they’re yours, the whole works.” 8 Jesus refused, again backing his refusal with Deuteronomy: “Worship the Lord your God and only the Lord your God. Serve him with absolute single-heartedness.” 9-11 For the third test the Devil took him to Jerusalem and put him on top of the Temple. He said, “If you are God’s Son, jump. It’s written, isn’t it, that ‘he has placed you in the care of angels to protect you; they will catch you; you won’t so much as stub your toe on a stone’?” 12 “Yes,” said Jesus, “and it’s also written, ‘Don’t you dare tempt the Lord your God.’” 13 That completed the testing. The Devil retreated temporarily, lying in wait for another opportunity.

2

I’m not aware of any way to automate this, but tables may be what you want.

At least, what you’re doing sounds similar to something I wanted to do in graduate school: create a list of vocabulary terms in one column, with their definitions lined up with them in a column to the right.

I tried every which way to set up the columns in Word (I was using Windows at the time). I scoured the help files, to no avail. I kept getting the newspaper-style columns you describe.

What put me on to tables, I don’t recall. I just remember thinking, “Gee, Microsoft, if I’d known I was looking for tables, I wouldn’t have needed your useless help file…”

3

Have you looked at diff tools? Something like Kaleidoscope (which I’ll admit is quite pricy) can compare the text and highlight the differences. Obvious this is intended for code, but there’s no rule you can’t use it for text.

4

Ah diff tools! A pet subject.

The Mac has a good one built in, called … FileMerge (I always have to look it up). I think it’s in the Utilities folder, but it might be part of Xcode.

For some granular comparisons, however, I have found little that works as well as MS Word — I keep it around pretty much just for this. By granular, I mean, for example, comparing contract versions, where the different blocks of text (paragraphs, items, etc.) are similar but not necessarily identical. FileMerge and some other tools get confused, and start to mark as “changed” identical passages separated by some inserted text. MS Word tends to be better about that.

Of course, if you really want to do diffing right, use git!

Another alternative: parse the text and put each verse into a spreadsheet (or table) in column for each version. Will line up beautifully even if the verses are very different lengths, and the scrolling will work too.

Form your examples, you could use regex and split at \d; or get fancy with Python (or whatever language you know best) and use the verse numbers to put each version into an array or dictionary, using the verse number as a key:


[“version 1”, “ version 2”, “version 3”, “version 4”]



{“v1”: “t text”, “v2”: “t text”, “v3”: “t text”, “v4”: “t text”}
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5

If it is the case that the only numbers/numerals will be the verse numbers, it would be (reasonably) easy to part each verse into separate strings based on the verse numbers. A bit of cleverness will be needed since I note that some of the versions have range numbers, eg 1-2.

I think the idea of putting the verses into a table makes the most sense. Each row is a verse number; each column represents one of the 4 different versions.

If you make a template in AppleScript, you could the script inserting the verses into the proper table cells, and for the case where there is a range of verses in a number (1-2) you could at the end script a cell merge to make everything lay out correctly.

You could likely also script this into Pages in a similar fashion if that would work better for you.

I suspect it will not be terribly difficult, but probably take some time to ensure you get all the details right.

6

This is a great iPad app for the purpose of parallel Bible versions.

I don’t have a Mac that can run iPad apps, so can’t test it on there, but I find it very helpful.

7

I have Kaleidoscope but I don’t think it could do a 4-way comparison at once, which is really what I’m looking for.

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8

That’s an interesting idea. I have TableFlip so I could do it in a Markdown table. The trick would be finding some way to automate at least some of it so I don’t have to do it all manually, if possible.

Good thought, thanks!!

Yes, that’s the fault of The Message which doesn’t always give verse numbers if the ‘break’ comes in the middle of a sentence. But I could do that, I suppose. Have to keep thinking on it.

OH MY. This is great.

It doesn’t have The Message but it does have the other 3, and you don’t have to use the iPad app, you can just use the website Parallel Plus by TheBible.org.

I’m a little embarrassed, as I was just listening to Automators #96 where @RosemaryOrchard was talking about The XY Problem but I failed to even look for a website solution, and I (now) wonder if there’s one out there that would include all 4 of the versions that I’m looking for.

Even if this is as close as I get, it’s not a bad solution, it gets me 75% of what I want with zero effort on my part.

9

This is the kind of problem that page-layout programs are designed to handle (at least, for print output). Adobe’s InDesign can handle this easily. Yes, it requires 4 separate text boxes (each of which can flow over many pages), but there are tools to do this quickly and consistently. And, of course, it has templating system so once you design it, you never have to do it again.

I’m not aware of any scripting in InDesign, but it is quite easy to add text. No copy-paste nonsense – you “place” a text file within a text box and it automatically flows across as many pages as needed.

That said, InDesign is probably overkill for this simple use. But Affinity Publisher by Serif might be able to do the same thing for considerably less money.

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10

I’m surprised, given what you want placed in parallel, that you aren’t using Logos? I do it in a 2x2 configuration myself, but it allows for narrow columns if that’s your preference.

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11

This is what I was going to suggest. Logos can do this with Bibles, commentaries, and any other resources that key off verses.

12

I own Logos and it’s incredibly powerful, albeit with a ‘challenging’ user interface and requiring considerable resources if you don’t have a high-end Mac. (Although, in fairness, their web version is getting much better).

It’s a very expensive solution if you just want view verses in parallel when there is a free alternative (which also includes word/verse studies, note taking and highlighting). It convenient having the indexing across resources, but I picked up ebook commentaries for a third of the price elsewhere.

13

I think the site ‘Blue Letter Bible’ (an excellent Bible study/reference site) lets you view at least two parallel passages in a window. Maybe have 2 tabs open side by side, would that do it?

14

Yeah, agree on the price. Logos is rarely the cheapest route from Point A to Point B.

The main reason I’m specifically suggesting it for TJ is that he’s a pastor, so I’m thinking this is likely an overlooked tool he already owns. I could swear I’ve heard him mention using it in previous forum posts.

It also has various sentence diagramming tools and other fun stuff built in for people analyzing version differences is a little more of an academic way. It’s definitely overkill if this is the only use one has for it, but if it’s already a tool in one’s toolbox I don’t see any reason not to use it. :slight_smile:

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15

Purely technically, it doesn’t always even respect verse order within a sentence. Sometimes there are situations where the content of verse 2 will occur before verse 1. This is because it was originally written as blocks of un-delimited prose, without a plan to even apply verse numbers.

The verse numbers were a post-publication “we have no idea why people are using this as a study Bible, but I guess we should give them verse numbers” sort of afterthought. :slight_smile:

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16

Yeah - I’d put Logos in the “right tool for the job” category. The indexing across resources is game-changing for resources that you plan to use for your entire life.

I know I paid hundreds of dollars for Logos when I was in school, but, unless I’m mistaken, I haven’t paid a penny since. Maybe I had to pay an upgrade once and forgot?

17

If you buy Logos once, upgrades to the basic features of future versions are always free - and all your previous books move forward to the new version.

“Basic features” always includes the stuff like resource sets and synchronization. Getting the whiz-bang “new features” always costs money, but they have a reasonably-generous upgrade program where the feature upgrade works out to a couple hundred bucks per version. They typically even release a small amount of free video training with each version that covers the basic changes.

Given an approximately two-year release cycle, that’s not that horrible considering their target market is very much “people who use this tool for a living”.

18

Yes, I do own Logos, although I’d sort of given up on it in frustration because it’s such a dog, performance-wise. Maybe I should give it another chance in the Apple Silicon era.

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19

I’d probably do this in AppleScript, using Moom to arrange the four windows and Skim to search for the Book/chapter/verse. See course-creator/Find day TTh.applescript at master · derickfay/course-creator · GitHub for a similar application searching a PDF for a particular date.

20

And if you’re reinstalling, make sure to give it the indexing time. Leave it running overnight or something so that it gets that out of its system. :slight_smile:

I’ve never found it to be that bad for basic stuff like parallel versions and linked resources.

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