Reformed Confessions
| Christian Creeds & Reformed Confessions |
About Westminster Seminary California
This application provides a searchable library of the major creeds and confessions of the Reformed Christian Faith, with hyperlinked scripture refrerences and proof texts.
The application uses navigation and user-interface elements which will be familiar to all users of the iPhone or iPod touch. Accordingly, this document will concentrate on what is unique to this application. Please contact technical support with any questions.
| Magnifying Glass | Tap to open the Search View. |
| Left/Right Triangles | Tap left to move back through your browing history, right to move forward. |
| Links | Tap to show or hide scripture references, temporarily overriding the default value in Settings. |
| Question Mark | Tap to open the Help View. |
As an aid to navigation and to increase performance, the documents are generally broken up into many smaller pieces. At the top and bottom of each document are links to the 'Next, 'Contents' and/or 'Previous' sections of the document. Tap 'Next' and 'Previous' to read the document sequentially; tap 'Contents' to see a table of contents for the document. After each sub-section of the document, 'Top' and 'Bottom' links are inserted; tap these to move quickly to the top or bottom of the current page. (The 'Top' and 'Bottom' links are shown or hidden along with the proof-text links.)
The left and right triangles on the toolbar allow you to navigate your browing history, including hyperlinks, without regard to sequential order.
Scripture references appear as hyperlinks. If an internet connection is available and an online bible has site has been selected, tapping them will take you to the online site specified in Settings. Proof texts (KJV) for the documents are stored on the phone and are available while off-line or when no online bible site is selected. To access the proof texts, tap the parenthized letter or number at the beginning of each set of scripture references.
For example, tapping '(c)' in the sample below will open a page containing the subsequent scripture references, from the KJV. That page is stored on your device and will be available regardless of whether or not you have an internet connection. Tapping 'Titus 2:14', on the other hand, will display the verse at the online site specified in Settings, provided an internet connection is available.
You can access the Settings View and the Help View by tapping the appropriate buttons on the toolbar. Any changes you make in Settings will be applied immediately to the current document, as well as to subsequent documents.
If you have a document open when you exit the application, your position and navigation history in that document are saved and restored when you reopen the application.
Font Size -- Select font size as a percentage of the default. Only text in the Document View and Help View is affected.
Highlight -- Sets the foreground and background colors used to highlight the area surrounding a selected search result.
Show Proof Texts -- Show or hide scripture references and superscripts. The setting here can be temporarily overidden in the Document View, but this setting is restored when a new document is opened.
Site -- Sets the online bible site used for scripture links, or 'None' to ignore external links. Press the 'Edit' button in the upper right to delete or rearrange the items in the list, or to add a new site. Press 'Done' when complete. You can also delete a site without pressing 'Edit' by swiping from right to left across a row, then tapping the 'Delete' button that appears. Press 'Restore Defaults' to restore the default list.
Scripture references will be appended to the end of the string you provide, in standard SBL format, with '+' signs inserted where spaces occur in the scripture references. (This format is accepted at almost all online sites. Please contact technical support for assistance if your preferred site does not.)
You may also edit the existing URLs if desired. To select the NIV translation at the BibleGateway site, for example, change 'ESV' to 'NIV'. (Note that the BibleGateway site has a number of non-English translations available, that can be selected in the same way.)
During text entry, a small 'x' icon appears on the right that you can use to clear the current input. Otherwise, a small 'open book' icon will be visible; tap it to open the Search History view.
Search Behavior and Syntax
1) To search all documents, launch the search from the Library View. To search within a single document, first open that document, then launch the search from the Document View.
2) To search, enter search terms in the search text box and tap the "Search" button on the keyboard. Search results will be displayed in the rows underneath, each containing the document in which the text was found, and a small amount of context text (if any) surrounding the search terms. Search terms are bracketed.
3) To view a search result, tap a row in the search list to open that document and jump to the found text. The context text will be highlighted with the colors specified in Settings. You can navigate within the document as usual; highlighting will be retained until you return to the Library View.
4) To return to the Search View, tap the 'Search' button on the toolbar. Search results are retained until you perform a new search.
5) To close the Search View without searching, tap the search text box, then press the 'Cancel' button.
6) Search keywords are AND, OR, NOT, and NEAR, which must be capitalized to be effective. (You may wish to enable the iPhone's "Caps Lock" feature -- see the iPhone Settings app, under General | Keyboards.) Searches are not case sensitive and most punctuation is ignored; however, placing quotation marks around a phrase will search for that entire phrase, and the asterisk functions as a wild card. Text recognized as a scripture reference is automatically enclosed in quotes. By default, NEAR means "within 10 words". The effect can be narrowed or broadened by adding a foward slash, '/', followed by a number -- e.g., "NEAR/3" means "within 3 words". Parenthesis can be used for grouping terms.
The text search database includes common words like "of" "the", "and", etc. However, words such as these should only be used in constructing phrases (enclosed within quotes), to avoid long searches with essentially meaningless results.
Sample searches:
| faith NEAR just* | matches 'faith' and 'just', 'justify', 'justified', etc., within 10 words of each other, in either order. |
| faith NEAR/3 just* | ditto, but within 3 words |
| faith OR just* | either word or word group |
| faith AND just* | both words or word groups |
| faith just* | same as above, "AND" is implied |
| faith NOT just* | 'faith' is found, but NOT 'just', 'justify', etc. |
| faith AND (justify OR justified) | matches 'faith' with either 'justify' or 'justified' |
| "justified by faith" | matches that exact phrase |
| John 3:16 | finds that reference |
| "John 3:16" | same as above -- scripture references are automatically quoted |
| John 3 | finds all references to verses in John 3 |
| all of the | returns 350+ results, each containing 'all', 'of', and 'the' |
| "all of the" | returns 1 result, containing 'all of the' |
Selecting an item closes the view and inserts the selected text into the search text box, where it can be edited or reused. Selecting an item moves it to the top of the list.
Tapping the 'Cancel' button on the toolbar returns you to the Search View.
Tapping the 'Edit' button on the toolbar allows you to delete and rearrange the history items. To rearrange, touch and drag the icon on the right. To delete, tap the left icon, then press the 'Delete' button that appears on the right, or tap the left icon again to cancel the process. Press 'Done' when finished to leave 'Edit' mode.
You can also delete a row without entering the 'Edit' mode -- simply swipe from right to left, then press the 'Delete' button which appears, or tap elsewhere to cancel.
Deleting an item cannot be undone (except by entering it again, of course!)