PBB Update?

Dear whoever is leading the way with PBB,

Could we please get some kind of regular update where PBB is heading and when it might start arriving in Beta's? This is the number one reason I still use Libronix to access my John Gill works and other books that are only available through PBB.

Gill is languishing in Community Pricing and I have no hope for seeing it in Logos 4 except through PBB, even though there is probably no one as versed in Rabbinic literature like and no one else who has written a commentary on the Entire Bible that is still used regularly by many people of different denominations.

We have waited patiently and will continue to wait, but it sure would be nice to hear about it on a regular basis especially since it is due again... this quarter.

Thanks.

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Comments

Frank Sauer

Bob gave some great insight on not only PBB but also a lot more, here's the link:

http://community.logos.com/forums/t/33263.aspx

Michael Lyman

Thanks! It's so hard to figure out which thread the latest news you want to know about can be found. It would be great if there was a Bob e-mail list or something. If there already is please let me know how to sign up!

TCBlack

No such email list, unless you count Logos Newswire.

Floyd Johnson

There is this entry in the Wiki - though I don't know how well it is maintained:

http://wiki.logos.com/Logos_Speaks

Rosie Perera

Thanks! It's so hard to figure out which thread the latest news you want to know about can be found. It would be great if there was a Bob e-mail list or something. If there already is please let me know how to sign up!

You can do a Google search for "Bob Pritchett Posted" site:community.logos.com

Todd White

It would be great if there was a Bob e-mail list or something.

Each person has a 'My Activity' section on their page. Bob's page is http://community.logos.com/members/2130/default.aspx.

Also, you will find a link to an RSS feed next to 'My Activity' (http://community.logos.com/members/2130/activities/rss.aspx). Websites like Google Reader help you keep track of what is new in any RSS feeds you are watching.

Rosie Perera

Also, you will find a link to an RSS feed next to 'My Activity' (http://community.logos.com/members/2130/activities/rss.aspx). Websites like Google Reader help you keep track of what is new in any RSS feeds you are watching.

Cool! Thanks!

NetworkGeek

You can do a Google search for "Bob Pritchett Posted" site:community.logos.com

It may be easier to just check out the list of his forum posts here.

William Baptiste SFO

To my fellow long-suffering Logos users

May the Peace and Joy of Jesus settle deeply into your souls!

I understand the many frustrations vented in this thread. Although I had wanted it for a long time, I finally ordered the Personal Book Builder because I was upgrading to Logos 4 anyway and Logos told me the PBB would be updated for use within Logos 4 within a certain number of months (long past now). I was so excited to get it that I started building many public domain Logos books with the older software anyway, but the enthusiasm eventually died out and I decided to wait for the new version (also more pressing matters forced me to shelve these projects). So I and we still wait. Not only for the PBB but also for highlighting within the Logos iPhone application.

On the good side, Our Lord Jesus is perfecting our patience! God knows that these technological marvels will be useful not only for our own study but towards the re-Christianization/rebaptism of our culture with His Love and for His Glory. Logos' position as a Christian witness at the cutting edge of our technologically advanced "post-Christian" Western culture is an important ministry and a very special blessing to all of us, and although we can be tempted to complain about delays in the particular features we most desire, we can use these feelings of frustration as opportunities to PRAY for Logos and its many projects-in-process, utilizing the power the Holy Spirit of our adoption into God's Family has given us to unleash angels into human affairs.

Let us acknowledge our frustrations and then offer them to God in prayer for Logos Bible Software! Let us pray that God sends both (technologically skilled) men and angels to Logos' aid! In this way we can be part of the ministry which Logos has to our technological culture, supporting them AS ONE BODY by our prayers!

Besides, I have just been encouraged that Logos does not always take forever to respond to our requests. My recent post about misleading information on the new Von Balthasar Collection Pre-Pub ( http://community.logos.com/forums/t/33614.aspx ) was acted upon in only a day (albeit by removing rather than correcting the misleading sentence). So quick action is possible! Let us support it in the many more complex matters Logos deals with by being Prayer Warriors on behalf of Logos and the important service to God's Kingdom they provide as "salt and light" within the technology industry!

May the LORD bless and keep you all.

Mark Smith

Well, I have to share the frustration about the interminable delays over PBB in 4.0. I agree that we were given a bunch of assurances when offered a partially completed product. It is true we had increased functionality when we upgraded, but the promise of PBB to be delivered in 2010 was clearly made. Since that promise was made we've seen programming resources devoted to the Mac, to iOS, to some new worship presentation software, to a redesign of the Logos.com website, and a number of other initiatives, and we still have no PBB.

I don't claim to have any insight into why PBB been delayed; Bob has given his input. Still, the appearance that Logos has decided to put its effort elsewhere is clearly to be seen. Whether any of this has contributed, or will contribute, to the delay of PBB is something we don't know. It is possible that all possible resources are directed toward PBB that can be effectively done so and that these other developments have in no way detracted from the development of PBB. We don't know, but I understand the suspicion some have concerning this.

We should remember that PBB publishing was an optional extra in 3.0. Very few probably had the builder. Most of us could read PBB files even if we could not publish them.That is what we cannot do now.

I would favor giving us the ability to at least read PBB files in 4.0 even if later on those same files need to be rebuilt so enhanced features can be incorporated. Let the once optional publisher be yet in the future as it is developed along the lines we have been promised. In the meantime we'd be able to read and search our PBB files.

Can we have an interim solution that could be produced in reasonable time?

NetworkGeek

I would like to add to these concerns that with all the functionality needs that have been voiced on these forums, UserVoice, etc., both the current beta (4.3) and the current release (4.2b) both appear to be updates that are virtually feature free. It's nice some bugs are being fixed, and it could certainly be the case that infrastructure behind the scenes is laying ground work for a slew of functionality updates in the next 6 months, but if that is not happening we have gotten very little in terms of functionality updates on the PC platform since 4.2a in March. The list of small features updates needed is long too; there are a lot of small-ish improvements that are really needed to make Logos less clumsy and less oriented to the way some would have us use the product.

Money is being invested in resources on a lot of platforms, and I too am not pleased that this has happened long before version 4 replaced ALL the functions that version 3 had. I am still miffed that I lost the lectionaries I used because the ability to create our own were taken away, and very few of the popular lectionaries have been made available (certainly not the daily Roman Catholic one that I use). I miss my PBB files greatly also, and I second Mark's suggestion if Logos could at least let us read them in the interim. I am a small PBB reader compared to some, but I know exactly what resources I am missing - and there are 122 of them.

Version 4 really has a lot of rich functionality, and I love it. We should be here in summer of 2010 though, not now. I think Logos has made me very wary of the future when it didn't finish the job and has moved on to other platforms to the expense of the PC platform.

Rosie Perera

Can we have an interim solution that could be produced in reasonable time?

Bob has already told us that they've been actively developing PBB and it's going be released soon (understanding "soon" in the usual way with Logos, or any development team, where things can take longer than you anticipated, even in the final stages).

Doing some other interim solution would probably take longer at this point than simply finishing what they've already put over a year of work into.

I am one who is eagerly awaiting PBB, but I think Logos is doing the best they can to get it finish. They have different teams working on different things and have not "delayed" PBB in order to get something else done first. It's just taking longer for the PBB team (or person?) to do the work. I don't know whether putting more people on it at this stage would get it finished sooner. There's an old adage in computer science from The Mythical Man-month, that putting more people on a project does not necessarily speed up the process; the added complexity of having more people working on it (communications, understanding each others' parts of the code, documentation, etc.) can actually eat up all the extra benefit you get from having more hands at work. Just as you can't make a baby in less than 9 months by adding more human resources to the task, usually you can't bring out software twice as quickly by having twice as many people working on it. There's a magical number for each level of complexity of a project beyond which it is not helpful to add more. I'm sure they've got this project as fully staffed as they can, because it's important to them.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

Thankful for Bob Pritchett's post couple weeks ago (previously posted) => What Logos development is doing that includes:

P.S. Know a great software developer? Send them our way!

For many months, Logos has had open Software Development positions for many platforms => http://www.logos.com/about/careers

I miss my PBB files greatly also, and I second Mark's suggestion if Logos could at least let us read them in the interim.

[Y] Also wish Logos 4 could read and search Libronix 3 PBB's. Thankful Libronix 3.0g can freely read old PBB's.

Keep Smiling [:)]

Milford Charles Murray

Thank You Indeed, Rosie, for your post!

Blessings and Peace to you!

A very refreshing post. Frankly, I'm getting a little tired of all the moaning and groaning and whining I've read on these Logos Forums over the last few days. Very depressing!

Keep up your "good manners" -- and you, dear Rosie, are never "rude" (at least that I can remember!) \

*smile*

Matthew C Jones

Just as you can't make a baby in less than 9 months by adding more human resources to the task,

The Old Testament does document polygamy...................................................................... [:O]

Bob Pritchett

I would favor giving us the ability to at least read PBB files in 4.0 even if later on those same files need to be rebuilt so enhanced features can be incorporated. Let the once optional publisher be yet in the future as it is developed along the lines we have been promised. In the meantime we'd be able to read and search our PBB files.

Um, you all are making me nervous about PBB. I'm wondering if we're on the same page.

We can not read the old PBB files in Logos 4. That isn't happening and isn't being worked on. Those old PBB books were built from HTML, and we viewed them by literally embedding Internet Explorer into Libronix to allow presentation of the books.

This had many problems:

A) The books weren't in the native Logos format. They lacked some important functionality, and never integrated with notes, etc.

IE broke us over and over, and we are no longer willing to be dependent on it. (I believe many of you have supported us in that decision.)

Writing a "stop-gap" that reads the old PBB isn't going to work, because we'd have to either introduce a dependency on IE (nearly impossible, with our current platform, and technical suicide even if possible), OR we'd have to write something that parsed HTML into our internal formats, and that would be much harder than rewriting PBB from the ground up.

The new PBB will read Word documents with the same markup as we used for the old PBB. Books will need to be recompiled from Word. (Old PBB books were technically compiled from HTML, but most people built them in Word and exported them to HTML.) This should, for most people, be much easier than the old system, will involve no exporting, and will work on Mac and Windows.

If you built PBB books in HTML directly, you'll need to bring them into Word.

If you hate Word / prefer OpenOffice, etc. we don't yet have a solution other than getting your book into Word's .DOCX format.

The good news is, the new PBB generates "real" Logos format books, with complete functionality.

The first release of PBB -- in a beta -- is imminent. It will let you compile and use books. It will not yet have support for sharing the books with others, because this is more complicated in a world of synchronization. It's coming, but it's a step behind our first priority, which is books compiling (on Mac and Windows).

Just out of curiosity, for those who are anxiously awaiting PBB, what are you waiting for? The ability to create PBB books? Or the ability to read them? And if "read", which ones, from where?

Lynden O. Williams

Bob, I am looking forward to sharing PBB books. Which ones, the ones that I create, which will appear on the Logos website in their store.

Rev Chris

Just out of curiosity, for those who are anxiously awaiting PBB, what are you waiting for? The ability to create PBB books? Or the ability to read them? And if "read", which ones, from where?

Thanks Bob for the helpful response! I'm glad to hear the first PBB release is imminent. I'm guessing that is better than 'coming soon'? To answer your question, I'm most looking forward to the ability to create PBB's (and of course read the one's I created). I'm sure there are others out there that will create PBB's that are suited to my fancy, but I'm more interested in importing ebooks and pdf articles into Logos that I already have. My main hope is that there is an option to NOT publish our personal PBB's on the Logos marketplace, as there are some ebooks I've paid for that are in copyright status that I'd still like to import to Logos, but obviously couldn't put them up for public distribution.

I'm guessing by the slow response of being able to post this message that lots of people are responding to your question as well! (either that or my internet is just being slow right now)

MJ. Smith

the added complexity of having more people working on it (communications, understanding each others' parts of the code, documentation, etc.) can actually eat up all the extra benefit you get from having more hands at work.

But there is also significant evidence that many IT shops can be significantly more productive by working smarter ....[8-|]

Frank Sauer

I for one was never anxious for PBB (sermon file here) however the functionality that you are explaining the new PBB to do sounds exactly like what the original Sermon File Addin accomplished. Will the first release of PBB allow for example the same or similar "tagging" fields as the original Sermon File addin to allow a sharp accuracy within meta data and searching? If so, I believe you will have made most, if not all the Sermon File users very happy with this type of release.

As for the old PBB files, I only used a few public domain resources in that format that really would not hurt my feelings to have to convert...

I would favor giving us the ability to at least read PBB files in 4.0 even if later on those same files need to be rebuilt so enhanced features can be incorporated. Let the once optional publisher be yet in the future as it is developed along the lines we have been promised. In the meantime we'd be able to read and search our PBB files.

Um, you all are making me nervous about PBB. I'm wondering if we're on the same page.

We can not read the old PBB files in Logos 4. That isn't happening and isn't being worked on. Those old PBB books were built from HTML, and we viewed them by literally embedding Internet Explorer into Libronix to allow presentation of the books.

This had many problems:

A) The books weren't in the native Logos format. They lacked some important functionality, and never integrated with notes, etc.

IE broke us over and over, and we are no longer willing to be dependent on it. (I believe many of you have supported us in that decision.)

Writing a "stop-gap" that reads the old PBB isn't going to work, because we'd have to either introduce a dependency on IE (nearly impossible, with our current platform, and technical suicide even if possible), OR we'd have to write something that parsed HTML into our internal formats, and that would be much harder than rewriting PBB from the ground up.

The new PBB will read Word documents with the same markup as we used for the old PBB. Books will need to be recompiled from Word. (Old PBB books were technically compiled from HTML, but most people built them in Word and exported them to HTML.) This should, for most people, be much easier than the old system, will involve no exporting, and will work on Mac and Windows.

If you built PBB books in HTML directly, you'll need to bring them into Word.

If you hate Word / prefer OpenOffice, etc. we don't yet have a solution other than getting your book into Word's .DOCX format.

The good news is, the new PBB generates "real" Logos format books, with complete functionality.

The first release of PBB -- in a beta -- is imminent. It will let you compile and use books. It will not yet have support for sharing the books with others, because this is more complicated in a world of synchronization. It's coming, but it's a step behind our first priority, which is books compiling (on Mac and Windows).

Just out of curiosity, for those who are anxiously awaiting PBB, what are you waiting for? The ability to create PBB books? Or the ability to read them? And if "read", which ones, from where?