1.0.22

Pictures behind a song's words

There are now 125, chosen by what the song sings about.

• Drawn pictures for Pentecostal worship: the Spirit's coming (the upper room, pillar of fire, open heaven, whirlwind), the worshippers (raised hands, banner, shofar, communion), the throne room (the throne, sea of glass, crowns cast down, heavenly host), breakthrough (broken chains, the torn veil, Jericho, the Red Sea, dry bones, prison doors) and new life (the well, the potter's wheel, new wine, manna).
• Photographs, engravings and paintings, all public domain or CC0, shown in the song's colours:
  • The lion of Judah, the lamb, the open Bible, the eagle, the shofar, Dürer's praying hands, the crown of thorns, the cup, a lyre, the Crown of the Andes, an alabaster jar, a helmet and breastplate, a censer, a key, the rose of Sharon and a water jar.
  • The tabernacle and temple: the ark of the covenant, the table of shewbread, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offering, the laver, the high priest's breastplate and the menorah on the Arch of Titus.
  • Renaissance paintings: Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, Bellini's Gethsemane, Leonardo's Last Supper, Grünewald's Resurrection, Raphael's Transfiguration and the van Eycks' Lamb.
• Chosen by the song: each picture has the words a song about it would use, and one whose words are in the song comes more often. A rare word counts for more than a common one. None comes twice in a song.
• Kept apart: a picture with no room clear of the other waits a few seconds or comes smaller.
• Redrawn: the broken chain snaps at its middle link, the pillar of fire and Jericho's wall stand on their ground, and the anchor fades in.

Lyrics page

• The line being sung stands forward, larger, and the lines around it fall away.
• Each line wraps to fit, with no scroll bars.
• The page is always dark below its top bar, in the light theme too. In focus mode the top bar is dark as well.

Reading

• Songs for the chapter: the ♫ button in the top bar has the AI assistant choose worship songs from your Music library to suit the chapter you're reading. A card says what the chapter is about and why each song suits it. Play songs plays them in Music, with their words in the reading column.
• Reading aloud keeps the verse being read a third of the way down the page.
• Songs in the Messianic genre count as worship songs.

Online devotionals

• Click Listen over an online devotional's page, then click where reading should start. The word being read is highlighted, as in the Bible reader.
• In a Quiet time with audio, Our Daily Bread and Heartlight are read aloud by themselves. Our Daily Bread opens at today's devotion.
• ⌘+ and ⌘− make the page bigger or smaller. Each site keeps its own size.

Quiet time

• Favourite passage: a passage of your own, such as Proverbs 3:5–6, read at the end of every Quiet time, before the closing verse. Set it under the closing verse on a plan's page.
• The menu-bar window opens under its icon on either screen.

Also

• Two-edged Sword has a website: https://two-edged-sword.davies.co.za/. Settings has a Website button under the version, the Help menu has Two-edged Sword Website, and About Two-edged Sword shows the address.
• The main window comes back no larger than its screen. With an AirPlay display attached, its saved size could double on every relaunch.

Two-edged Sword 1.0.21

Two-edged Sword has a website: https://two-edged-sword.davies.co.za/. Settings has a Website button under the version, the Help menu has Two-edged Sword Website, and About Two-edged Sword shows the address under the copyright, clickable.

Reading:

• Songs for the chapter: the ♫ button in the top bar has the AI assistant choose worship songs from your Music library to suit the chapter you're reading, in the Bible or in a book, with a card saying what the chapter is about and why each song suits it. Play songs plays them in Music, their words in the reading column as in Quiet time.
• The pictures behind a song's words are redrawn to look real, and make visions opens a viewer to flick through them.
• Worship songs: the Messianic genre counts as worship too.

Quiet time:

• Favourite passage: a passage of your own, such as Proverbs 3:5–6, read every day at the end of Quiet time, before the closing verse. Set it under the closing verse in a plan's page.
• The menu-bar window opens under its icon on either screen, and a click on the other screen's icon opens it there.

Two-edged Sword 1.0.20

Pictures while a song plays:

• Faint pictures come and go behind the words on the Lyrics page, with lyrics or without: fifty of them, from a cross in light and a dove passing over to stars, the moon, a rose window, the menorah, wheat and rain.
• They're drawn in the colours of the song's artwork, swell a little on the beat, and fade away when the song is paused.
• The larger ones keep beside the words, in focus mode too.
• Settings › Listening › While a song plays turns them off.

Reading:

• ⌘+ and ⌘− make the reading text bigger or smaller, as the text size slider does. The journal and the Study pane's commentaries and dictionaries now follow the text size too.
• Focus mode follows the text size; it used to stay the same size.
• Reading a journal entry aloud now highlights the words of a verse quote as well.

Two-edged Sword 1.0.19

Help now opens inside the app:

• Press ? or ⌘?, or click the ? at the top right, to open the help beside the screen you're on, at the part of the guide for that screen.
• Type to search every page of the guide, and follow links between pages without leaving the app.
• Ask about Two-edged Sword puts your question to the assistant instead.
• Esc closes it.

Two-edged Sword 1.0.18

Small touches to Quiet time and the menu bar:

• While a worship song plays, the Quiet time bar shows how far through it is, with the time gone and the time left.
• The menu-bar window has a speaker button beside Start Quiet time (or ⌥↩) that starts it read with audio.
• Clicking the menu-bar icon a second time closes its window, even when the main window is closed.

Two-edged Sword 1.0.16

Quiet time, refined:

• Worship songs before and after the reading are set separately, each with its own number of songs. With both, different songs play after the reading.
• Songs start by themselves after a countdown that leaves time to read why they were chosen, with or without audio.
• The line being sung has a light sweeping across it. The song's cover, name and why it was chosen stay at the top while the words scroll, and the artwork behind is darker in the dark theme.
• The screen stays awake all through Quiet time, and while Read or Compare is in front.
• Hover over a day in the calendar to see what was read that day.
• A paused plan is easier to spot, with Resume plan right beside it. Deleting your current plan asks which other plan to carry on with.

Two-edged Sword 1.0.15

Quiet time grows:

• Online devotionals now show in the reading column, under the Quiet time bar. In the dark theme they load on black with a spinner, and each site has its own moon button to invert it to look dark, or not.
• Add devotional websites of your own, with today's date in the address if the page changes daily.
• While worship songs play, their lyrics show in the reading column: the line being sung in blue, dots where nothing is sung, the album art blurred behind, and gentle flames for songs with no lyrics.
• A closing verse, chosen by the AI assistant to sum up the day's reading, can end Quiet time.
• The plan page is more compact, with its cards side by side.

Two-edged Sword 1.0.14

Ask's Claude models (Opus, Sonnet, Haiku) are now always the newest of each kind, so Claude Sonnet 5.5 is used without waiting for an app update.

Two-edged Sword 1.0.13

Every source file now carries the copyright notice and licence. The code is formatted and linted (rustfmt, clippy, Prettier, ESLint). No changes to how the app works.

Two-edged Sword 1.0.10

For Macs with Apple silicon, macOS 13 or later. Download Two-edged-Sword.dmg, drag the app to Applications, then follow the install steps in the README: the app isn't notarised, so the first launch needs Open Anyway in System Settings › Privacy & Security.

New in 1.0.10:

• Help no longer refers to a Development page it doesn't have.
• Library › Building modules explains that those texts are built with scripts from the app's source code.