QBLCMNDR- A FileMaker Gematria Toolkit and Qabalistic correspondence manager
What it is:
QBL-CMNDR (Qabalah Commander ) is a tool that will calculate gematria in several ciphers, focusing primarily on English, Hebrew and Greek. The goal is to create a program that allows for more complete analysis of texts, and facilitates the entry of large amounts of text for analysis.
Gematria:
Similar functionality exists in a number of programs and web-based tools, but there's a bit of a dilemma: First, the web-based and free tools tend toward simple dictionary generation at the word-level. while they can be used to calculate for phrases, they generally don't offer a way to maintain deep documentation of the results, or notes for later analysis.
On the other horn of the dilemma is the fact that more complete gematria software tends to be very expensive, and yet still as a very limited number of ciphers, and is difficult for users to adapt and modify to suit their own needs. Gematria is a highly idiosyncratic form of textual analysis - and this is not a flaw, but one of the great strengths of the practice: it's idiosyncratic nature brings the individual to reflect on the contents of his or her or hir own mind in unique and often inspiring ways.
Correspondences:
The second section of the program will provide a framework for building Qabalistic correspondence tables. Several of the traditional tables will be included, providing that they are in the public domain. the rest, I hope, will be contributed by the community. I intend to document the process of creating such a table for import into the database completely.
BETA VERSIONS:
The development and documentation of the program is something that I hope to get some community help with. To this end, I intend to make semi-regular releases of the software on this site. Macintosh versions will come first, followed by Windows versions. There will be two versions of each: for those that have FileMaker Pro 9, that version will be available. There will also be compiled stand-alone version for each platform, that will not require the full version if FileMaker Pro.
Development Philosophy:
All versions will be released in as open a manner as possible, such that the data won't be "locked up" in QBL-CMNDER- exports of data to other formats will be available to those who want to move data out of the application. The versions released for FileMaker owners will be completely open for those who want to customize, twiddle or tweak the software. Runtime users will not have development access- that's just the nature of the FileMaker standalone builds.
License:
I thought about this for a while, and I'm still thinking about it. In the end, it's probably going to be this one:
QBL-CMNDR by Ellis Emefty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
....at least for the portions of the package I'm responsible for... http://www.filemaker.com/company/legal/license/fmpa/fmpa.html allows for distribution of this type.
RELEASES:
I'm working out the first round of bugs on the Gematria portion, and I hate the notion of releasing crippled software on the world. Bugs are another story... You, the users, get to find and report those back to me.
The first release will be available here in early October, and contains 11 English Gematria Ciphers, as well as basic Greek and Hebrew Ciphers.
QBL-CMNDR (Qabalah Commander ) is a tool that will calculate gematria in several ciphers, focusing primarily on English, Hebrew and Greek. The goal is to create a program that allows for more complete analysis of texts, and facilitates the entry of large amounts of text for analysis.
Gematria:
Similar functionality exists in a number of programs and web-based tools, but there's a bit of a dilemma: First, the web-based and free tools tend toward simple dictionary generation at the word-level. while they can be used to calculate for phrases, they generally don't offer a way to maintain deep documentation of the results, or notes for later analysis.
On the other horn of the dilemma is the fact that more complete gematria software tends to be very expensive, and yet still as a very limited number of ciphers, and is difficult for users to adapt and modify to suit their own needs. Gematria is a highly idiosyncratic form of textual analysis - and this is not a flaw, but one of the great strengths of the practice: it's idiosyncratic nature brings the individual to reflect on the contents of his or her or hir own mind in unique and often inspiring ways.
Correspondences:
The second section of the program will provide a framework for building Qabalistic correspondence tables. Several of the traditional tables will be included, providing that they are in the public domain. the rest, I hope, will be contributed by the community. I intend to document the process of creating such a table for import into the database completely.
BETA VERSIONS:
The development and documentation of the program is something that I hope to get some community help with. To this end, I intend to make semi-regular releases of the software on this site. Macintosh versions will come first, followed by Windows versions. There will be two versions of each: for those that have FileMaker Pro 9, that version will be available. There will also be compiled stand-alone version for each platform, that will not require the full version if FileMaker Pro.
Development Philosophy:
All versions will be released in as open a manner as possible, such that the data won't be "locked up" in QBL-CMNDER- exports of data to other formats will be available to those who want to move data out of the application. The versions released for FileMaker owners will be completely open for those who want to customize, twiddle or tweak the software. Runtime users will not have development access- that's just the nature of the FileMaker standalone builds.
License:
I thought about this for a while, and I'm still thinking about it. In the end, it's probably going to be this one:
QBL-CMNDR by Ellis Emefty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
....at least for the portions of the package I'm responsible for... http://www.filemaker.com/company/legal/license/fmpa/fmpa.html allows for distribution of this type.
RELEASES:
I'm working out the first round of bugs on the Gematria portion, and I hate the notion of releasing crippled software on the world. Bugs are another story... You, the users, get to find and report those back to me.
The first release will be available here in early October, and contains 11 English Gematria Ciphers, as well as basic Greek and Hebrew Ciphers.