Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Toraware's App Now Accessible for an Android Install

Two days ago my toraware app got published in Google's Play Store.
(I needed a Private Policy for my site because children can use it too.)

For some strange reason, inside the Play Store, upon searching for "toraware", scores of Chinese apps appear in the results well before mine. My app appear somewhere near the bottom of that very long list.

To get around that problem, I added an image link on my website, in the form of an icon at the bottom right, and now the user can link to the Play Store -- with my app already "found" for him, to have it installed. There's no need for the user to do a search for my app because the my link's API finds the app with pinpoint precision, bringing the user one click away from an install!

The new Home Page of http://toraware.com today, sporting its new icon link, is shown below:


P.S. 
The iPhone version will not be pursued. For one thing, it requires a $100 yearly fee. And this website, as well as its app, are free and generate no income. Google's Play Store charges a one-time $25 fee. I think Apple should pay the developers, and not that developers should pay Apple!

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

A Birthday Present from Hashem, 21 Tammuz 5780

By divine providence, I managed to upload my toraware app to Google Play store. It happens to be my birthday, the 21st of Tammuz. It's now in queue, "up for review".

The Chassidic dictum comes to mind, "Think good; Will be good!"

Exhibit A:
Source: Transaction with Google Play's Console.

It took some hours, but this submission began on my birthday!

By divine providence, after an exchange of emails with a responder to one of my posted questions, as I surf the internet for solutions, this contact suddenly points me to a site - his own site - and sure enough, a few days later, I was well on my way to bringing my goal to fruition. More like a dream than a goal. Because I've been for many years coding and hoping this app would end up portable on a handheld device.

So it happened, that I succeeded following Android's path, after failing to fulfil the Apple Store's pretzel-loop discombobulate requirements. So, Boruch Hashem, and it all happened within a week, and toraware shall be available for download from the Google Play store, where it ought to be catalogued under "REFERENCE" (or perhaps "BOOKS and REFERENCE")

By the way, the product that helped out immensely (by divine providence!) is by a zealous fellow called George Henne, who runs https://volt.build/about/. His web service, which runs from a "cloud": zips your project, uploads to VoltBuilder, and downloads executables for Android or iOS. So here I shout out a thank you to George! (I had visited 3 or 4 other sites promising to do the same; I croaked with each; But his runs like a smooth engine.)

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Thank G-d, Toraware's App is Finally Born!


Thank God, that which I started out planning, several years ago, has finally come to fruition. From the start I meant to create code that I could "stuff" into a handheld gadget. That aimed-for gadget then became the smartphone. And since my design always held that end-goal in sight, it made the final metamorphosis of my website code into an app rather easy to accomplish. The image above is the face of my new app!

It would have been impractical or burdensome to transform my website version into an app because most of its methods are not of practical use. Only its first two search methods have real preacticality for everday use. So I stripped away the impractical and remain with the Find a Word and Find a Phrase methods.

Those other methods on the website I had added in the course of time just in case somebody has use for these eccentric searches.

Any learner of Torah would find the Find a Word and Find a Phrase methods extremely handy.  There are so many times this app finds relevance in everyday experience. Until today I use my own app almost every day.

This app is now suitable for deployment onto an Android. Soon enough it may also be suitable for an iPhone, iPad or a Windows mobile gadget.

It turns out that in the end I did not even need to learn the native languages used by Apple and Android, because other technologies came along to let me bypass these steep learning curves. To master these would have years to learn. As the chasidic saying goes, "think good and it'll therefore turn out good!" I began my project in 2015 or 2016, to be sure, even as Xcode and Android Studio lingered forebodingly on the horizon. Just as I was about 100% completed with my program's code, thank G-d, other easier deployable solutions suddenly came along and showed promise, like PhoneGap, like Chrome developer, the PWA (Progressive Web Application) route, and software products that turned Javascript code into native languages. All of this thankfully vindicated my original choice, namely, to use the browser platform for my code.

Actually, just now, my program can be downloaded for an Android device. It requires the user to go to a specific site and therefrom download my app. So, I must now still give instructions to people on how to download the code. But soon enough - which I'm presently working on - is to get the software into the app STORES and then my instructions to everbody can be to tell them which store to go to to get it.

Because apps require responsible handling of distributed code, which requires that a secure server handle the distribution, this move was something I could not yet afford (I live on a small pension). But just then the GitHub website came along and provided me with a website on which to deploy my site securely, security being a key issue for PWA, for free.

So, for now, here's how you, the reader, can now get this free app.
Using Chrome, type in https://toraware.github.io, and
then "Add to Home Screen".

Did it ever occur to you "Where in Tora is the first mention of a particular word"?
Or, "How many times does such a word repeat itself in Tanach"? Or, instead of a word, maybe you want information on a set of words or phrase.

Toraware is a small, free, handy Torah tool with which you can instantly search through Tanach. In 2 or 3 clicks you can find any word or phrase, instantly. If you can do a "Goggle Search", you can easily learn this adept Torah tool to full advantage. And especially for learners of Torah, this reference tool is perfect for you.

Hope you'll try it, and if you have suggestions or comments, I'd appreciate your feedback.

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Consecutive Possukim that Begin with Vov


Here's an interesting tidbit:

How many possukim that begin with the letter Vov can you find in succession in Torah?

Answer: 52

And how many .. in all of Tanach:

Answer: 71 (see below)


Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Version 55 Combines 4 Methods into 2

Until now, version 54's Home Page showed 8 methods in total, occupying 8 lines.

But if more methods were contemplated, the list would become too long to neatly fit on the Home Page.

So I came up with the idea to combine Roshe Teivot and Sofei Teivot into one method, displacing their choice to the Options Page instead. Similarly, I combined the Roshei Possukim and Sofei Possukim methods into one method, the choice between them being shifted to the Options Page as a choice.

I thereby saved two lines on Home Page and, in fact, render the program and its display more economical.

Here now are the new views entailed in these changes:








Tuesday, January 29, 2019

A Significant Step Towards Creating an APP

The next version (54) of toraware was needed to convert toraware.com's website to run as a mobile app.

The main obstacle had been one of the options for the gematria method where I allow the user to choose between keyboard textual input or numerical input.

Although from the very beginning of my development I foresaw adapting my website to be suitable for an app, as you can see from the site's navigation paradigm, I did not foresee that this option to display for use of the keyboard would get in the way. Because deploying the site as is would have the site's keyboard and the smartphone's keyboard both be on display the same time.

In other words, I had created a pop-up keyboard feature that would be intrusive to the user of a mobile gadget when his screen pops up a 2nd keyboard, besides his usual mode of keyboard entry. So I had codeo my way out of this problem.

(The two images below demonstrate that troublesome 3rd option still existing in version 53, one that I originally introduced when it wasn't very common to have Hebrew language input readily available on the casual user's computer screen. It's the one that reads, "How will you enter the value?")

User can enter a number directly
Keyboard pops up on this option













In effect, I had coded myself into a design dilemma. But then I realized how to easily remedy the situation. I could simply suppress all keyboard display on my part, leaving the user with only his own gadget's keyboard for entry, and all I had to do was identify - inside the program's code itself, whether the input was numeric or textual. Problem solved with some change of code, is all.

Here's how the new Options Page for the Gematria Method looks like now. Note how the 3rd set of options on this page has been bypassed.

User can now enter EITHER text OR a number in the same field
With this significant change in place, app creation will probably be rather simple.

These changes, in fact, relieved the size of the download by more than 20K bytes.

Inasmuch as this new version is to expedite navigation to a working app, the previous version remains deployed as the version in production.

Thursday, November 29, 2018

10 Ways to Search for a Word in Tanach

Here's a shot of the Options Page in the toraware website, after making the choice to "Find a Word" on its Home Page.


Look how many ways you can search for a word in Tanach at toraware.com: One subset of options has two options while the other subset offers 5 options, so altogether you have 10 combinations to search with. Not that you'd use them all, but they're there in case you need them.

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

A Speedy Way to Explore Torah

How often do you want to know, on a moment's notice, where a word, or verb, first appears in Torah? Or, is there such a name found in Torah at all? Or how many times does a phrase or word exist in all of Torah or Tanach?

Sure you can do a search and find your answer on the internet, but that’s still a rather burdensome task. That is, at best, you can still find that word, phrase or verb after a few minutes of surfing and clicking.

There are plenty of sites with such facilities to navigate through, but you’ll still spend way too long – so you’d never even try to satisfy your momentary curiosity because the delay isn’t worth it. Even a few minutes when your doing something else, like cooking or eating, can be too troublesome so you let your spontaneous curiosity waste away.

But that’s because you don’t know of the Toraware app that gives you rather immediately in the palm of your hand the answer to your sudden urge to know or explore or validate.

In two clicks, the first to open the app from its Home Icon, and the second to click on “Find a Word” or on “Find a Phrase”, and you’re ready to type in the letters formed in your mind, and a 3rd click then brings you immediate visual results. Three clicks is all it takes in most cases.

With the use of only two buttons, and typing the word you're thinking of, in a matter of seconds, you get immediate results. Each click on the “GO” button can scan through all of Tanach in a second, or two seconds, and display the list of results.

By default, that’s the way it works. But each search method (and there are 10) also sports a different set of options, so you can, if you want, come up with unique ways to find what you’re looking for.

For instance: Suppose you want to know the number of times Moshe is mentioned in Torah.

(As a side note, names are easy to catch in Hebrew text in that they always are either mentioned by themselves, with no extra attached letters, or the attached letters always are placed in front of the name. That makes it easy to program a search that focuses on the suffixes of words.)

So you use the method “Find a Word” (1st click). On the next page, the Options Page, the best option to choose would be: “ENDS with my letters” (2nd click). Now type in the 3 letters משה, and hit the “Go” button (3rd click). Every single word in Torah (the default search range is already set from בראשית to זאת הברכה) that has as its last 3 letters the letters you typed in (“משה”) immediately appears in a list before you (the Results Page). The number of such “hits” is 721.

Now, not all these hits are good hits. For example, many in the list include the irrelevant word “חמשה”, because this word too ends in those 3 letters. So you have to be clever with use of this tool, to devise a way to narrow in on your answer.

So let’s now search how many times the letters “ חמשה” are found.  Then we can subtract this number from 721. So you hit the “Back” button; The options you selected previously remain as is, so all you do now is type in the word “חמשה” and press “Go”. You get 72 hits. So now we know that from the 721 results we have 72 to take away, leaving now 649 alleged times Moshe is mentioned. You’re left with all significant hits, such as:
משה
במשה
למשה
ומשה
ובמשה
etc., all of which are mentions of משה.

Besides being clever, however, you also have to be lucky, lucky to have learned Torah. I learned this the hard way, unaware of two such mentions in Torah, by once publishing a faulty blog post; I had missed these two words. But I now know of the two times these same 3 letters have a different meaning, so the real answer is 647. There are two false positives among the results list, which whittles it down from 721 to 649, and then to 647. In Shmot 12:4 it means “less than one calf”, and in Devarim 15: 2 it means “creditor”. Of course these two words are pronounced differently in Torah but the Toraware tool doesn't inspect pronunciations.

This search can be further explored, if the range is set to all of Tanach (just extend the Range on the opening Home Page, which defaults to the Torah limits). Now the 3-letter search yields 920 hits. Let’s subtract how many times the insignificant ending “חמשה” is found, That’s 150. Thus we get 920 – 150 = 770. Don’t forget two of these we know are false positives, so our final total becomes 768! Let’s not forget that in Tanach there may be other words besides חמשה that might throw us off, but personally I doubt it.

P.S. I wrote about this previously, over here, although back then the Toraware tool hadn’t been as useful as it has become presently, in its 54th version.

P.S. Ever wonder how many times Jerusalem is expressly mentioned in Torah, or in Tanach? I discuss that here.

Sunday, November 18, 2018

Found a Bug in the New Options of the "Find a Word" Method

Suppose you seek the letters בח, and the program comes across the word במזבח.

My logic was: If the Bais yields a hit, as it does, on the 1st Bais in במזבח,
then I'll search for the letter ח next.

If these letters are grouped together, then the "BOUND" qualification is true. But here, because the first ב and the ח are not grouped together, I get a false result -- because there's another ב in the word that does have a ח bound to it, which I fail to detect.

I'm back at the drawing board and must resort to deploying the 49th version until I resolve this bug.

UPDATE: (11/20/18):
Redid the code (more modular and less complicated) and now, thank G-d, it's flawless. Reinstalled as Version 53.

The Options Page of the "Find a Word" method is now, again, like this:

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Some Torah Numerology

Here's an interesting numerlogy: If you begin reading the 1st chapter of Genesis (in the original
Hebrew language) and find the first T (ת in Hebrew). The first occurrence of this letter is the last letter of the very first word (בראשית). Then skip the next 49 letters to read the 50th letter as vav (ו). You continue this way two more times, every 50th letter, to obtain the word Torah, “תורה,” the Hebrew word for the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch).

(You'll find too, that from that 1st Tav in Genesis, were you to skip therefrom over 132 letters,  i.e, every 133rd letter therefrom, you'd also arrive at the same word, Torah. I only checked up to the skip value of 250; So there may well be more such, but larger, equidistant-skip findings.)



Monday, September 3, 2018

Yet Another Option for FIND A WORD Method


The "Find a Word" method now has yet another new option to help you find the word you seek. (With all these options you now have available, you'd be hard-pressed not finding the word you want.)

This new option is called "my letters in SEQUENCE". It means it'll find all words that contain your input string of letters in sequence, i.e., back to back. (The radiobutton's label should read
"my letters INCLUDED in SEQUENCE"
but I was short on space, so I compromised on the wording.)

For example, if you wish to find a word containing the letters "ראש" in sequence within a word, then the word "בראשית" would show up (given, of course, that you set your Search Range to include Parshah בראשית within your scope.

Now at version 52.

(Not that all combinations are of equal significance, but each new option actually multiplies the number of combinations available. Having added one to the lower set of options, of which there now are 5, along with the two options in the upper set, now gives the user 10 combinations of options and corresponding results.)

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

New Option for "Find a Word" Method


Often, in looking up a Hebrew word in Tanach, the word may have prefixed letters attached to it because in Hebrew these additional letters act as additional words, unlike in English where extra words are used rather than elongating the word with prefixed letters.

For example, "to Moses", "and Moses", "like Moses", "with Moses", "via Moses", "at Moses", "and by Moses", etc. -- all these terms comprise only one word in Hebrew word. Hebrew accomplishes this simply by affixing a letter or two in front of the word, extending the length of the word by one or two or more letters.

To ignore these prefix letters for your search, which you often consider insignificant, it is now possible to use "Find a Word" using a new option, now introduced, namely, letting you specify "My ENDING Letters".  Insignificant prefix letters can thus be ignored to find your word.

So, in this example, if you were just looking for words that contain Moses, you can specify "משה", use the option "My ENDING Letters", and words ending with your 3-letter word will show up without having to know beforehand exactly what insignificant letters begin the word.

With this option you'll get hits such as:
למשה
במשה
ומשה
ממשה
ובמשה
כמשה

Now at version 51.

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Hit-Limit Reminder Installed

Version 50 of Toraware now sports at the end of the Results List a line of text in case the hit-limit count was encountered. This would now remind a user there might, in fact, be more results forthcoming were he to just increase his hit-limit count. Without this text-line-reminder, the user may well not realize he came to the end of the list prematurely.


Now at version 50.

Saturday, March 24, 2018

How Many Times is "JERUSALEM" Mentioned in Tanach?

The answer may surprise you. Expressly, never in Torah. That's not so surprising since the Jews entered Eretz Yisrael in 2488, whereas Torah chronicles what happened during the prior 40 years in the desert.

In Nach, however, it appears no less than 669 times! Imagine that.
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Options Page:

Results Page:












:
|
:



Wednesday, March 21, 2018

New Option for "Find a Word" Method

The Find a Word method now has a new option, which allows the user to specify the leading letters of a word for his word search.


In effect, this method now has 6 choices for ways to search out a word.

This deployment constitutes version 50.