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- When a selected resource does not contain strong numbers, STEP will carry out the search on the ESV but display the results from the selected resources. This obviously means that the results will not be clickable.
- When passing full unicode, STEP may decide to remove cantillation/pointing/accents/vowels depending on options and searches to ensure search results are found correctly. Unicode is also normalised at index time. This means the different combinations of characters in the Unicode word will not affect the results.
Combining data types
Default values
Ordered queries
With powerful individual searches comes the power of combining searches. Combining terms (a term is something like type=data) allows the following operations:
- Looking up a specific Bible passage
- Restricting a search to a portion of the Bible (e.g to the book of Genesis, or several books, etc.)
- Refining searches of the kind (e.g. carrying out one search, then reducing the results by another, etc.).
- Combining different types of searches to get great results
A few rules govern how a 'command line' is interpreted. A 'command line' is the entries q paramater (e.g. reference=Genesis.1|version=ESV|version=NIV|strong=H0001)
Data types are combined with the pipe character: |
Governing rules
Defaults for missing parts
All 'lookups' (whether a search for a term or displaying the Bible scriptures to display on screen) relies at minimum on 2 key elements:
- A "version" (i.e. a Bible or Commentary).
- A reference
If the version is omitted in the URL, the ESV is assumed. If the reference is omitted in the URL, then one of two things happens:
- if there are proper search terms (i.e. not version= and not reference=) in the URL, the search will be defaulted to the entire module. A command line of "version=NIV|version=ASV|text=Abraham", then the word Abraham is searched for all references between Genesis and Revelation
- If there are not any proper search terms, then the first chapter of the selected text (or ESV if there are no selected versions).
Order of the command line
Furthermore, the order of items may affect the results. In other words, the elements in the command line are a list, not a set. STEP may decide to re-order these to optimize the search order. However, the order is particular important for all version= data elements. The first version= token identifies the versification.
The below example illustrates this. (OHB is the Hebrew text)
- version=OHB|reference=Psalm.3.2
- version=ESV|reference=Psalm.3.2
- version=OHB|version=ESV|reference=Psalm.3.2
- version=ESV|version=OHB|reference=Psalm.3.2
The following observations can be drawn:
- The blue command lines are identical in meaning
- The red command lines are identical in meaning
- The blue lines refer to a different verse to the red lines.
This is because the OHB module numbers verse 1 in the Psalms as the canonical Psalm heading.
STEP has very strong support for versifications and supports a growing number of versifications. This is always done transparently. This means STEP can support searching across Bibles that are made of different versification. STEP can also display parallel views or interlinears and will transparently line up Psalm 3.1 in the Hebrew with Psalm 3.2 of the English text.