Make Custom Reading Plans First Class Citizens!

I admit I haven't touched "custom reading plans" until today, despite it being one of my long standing requests. Why not? Well, to be honest, ALL of my "reading" (vs. "studying") is done on my iPad. Since the plans don't sync with mobile, why bother, right? Wink

I decided to play around with creating one at the prodding of a forum friend. If I am honest, I am a little underwhelmed. When a user creates a reading plan, it <should> be a two step process. The first step is creating the readings. The second step is setting up the plan.

Some thoughts:

Make these plans available on mobile!
Why can't users customize the timing of the readings (i.e. MWF | W only, etc.)?
Why can't users name the readings? In the screen shot below, it is kind of simple enough since I have basically split chapters into two readings... but what if I want to have 10 readings in a chapter? What if I want to skip around in the book?
Why can't the readings be dragged into a different order?
When a user is editing a reading, why doesn't the reading "selection" get highlighted in the text (so that the editor can see what the reading consists of)?

On a different note: It took me about 45 minutes to create the reading plan to begin with... and then the plan got deleted somehow and was unrecoverable. It was probably user error on my part (trying to learn how to use it), but when I "undeleted" the document from the Faithlife servers, the plan was completely blank. That shouldn't happen.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Dave Hooton

I admit I haven't touched "custom reading plans" until today,

Likewise.

I nearly gave up trying to create a session for Tomorrow and all my sessions have the identification '10' - because it is an ebook. I tried with a Logos edition book and quickly came to the same conclusions.

Creating a reading by selection (which isn't mentioned anywhere) is quite onerous. But the other methods based on references are very limited because you only get a single reference (e.g. page 14) without a way to specify a range e.g. Pg 14-17. I gave up on Type a Reference after trying a few of the well known methods for copying locations. But I should be able to specify a range.

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/697084#Comment_697084

Creating a reading by selection (which isn't mentioned anywhere) is quite onerous.

i'm glad they have it because reading plans by page numbers don't fit what I want to do. What <should> have been done is to create a special kind of marker or highlighting style (with a special status... It shouldn't get lumped in with other notes/highlights... which would help the user in creating (and later identifing) the readings.

Mike Binks

I decided to play around with creating one at the prodding of a forum friend. If I am honest, I am a little underwhelmed. When a user creates a reading plan, it <should> be a two step process. The first step is creating the readings. The second step is setting up the plan.

In other threads I have been mocking the implementation (beginning of 2015) for giving me readings based on heading breaks. This produced readings of as little as 30 words and some that took a couple of hours.

When I want a reading plan, I want it to be simple to set up and, if possible, stop the daily readings at a sensible point.

So,

I would like to start a book at Chapter 1 and finish before the Appendices at the end. (Does anybody actually 'read and index'?)

I would like the book to divide at break points in the text as often as possible but be over ridden (and readjust) if any reading is plus or minus 20% of the average daily length. Perhaps we should be able to set optional maximum and minimum word counts.

I am surprised this feature has not been a top priority for developers. Bob has acknowledged that many customers buy the product and then leave it it languishing rather than make additional purchases.

I think that reading plans would be one of the things that a new user would try quite early on and it would be one of the things that should give a new user a good experience and thus be a high priority for both maintenance and review.

(The other things that I think impact new users the most are Prioritisation and the over blown claims about the level of Tagging both of which fail to impress and must be a significant component in new customers quietly voting with their feet – in these cases by metaphorically walking away).

Doc B

If I am honest, I am a little underwhelmed.

Yes, I understand. I hate to complain about something that I, too, have been requesting for a long time. But I wish they'd continue to improve it. I'm glad it is customizable, and I use it. But it can be onerous.

I created a custom reading plan for Calvin's institutes for a Facebook group. It took me about four days to do that. (I used the selection method, and there are several threads in the forums about highlighting issues I encountered, etc.). Got it done, but it was a headache.

I'm now in the process of creating some other large reading plans (systematic theologies, etc.). I sure wish section titles from the table of contents could be dragged to the plan rather than having to highlight sections of text.

I also echo your call for being able to edit/drag readings, and to set reading patterns (odd days, etc.). And don't make the mistake of sharing a plan that you'll later need to edit, because you can't.

Eli Evans (Logos)

Thanks for the feedback. It's very important to us. UI issues in Reading Plans are definitely on our radar.

Make these plans available on mobile!

This is underway now and should ship very soon.

Why can't users customize the timing of the readings (i.e. MWF | W only, etc.)?

Custom reading plans support arbitrary dates for arbitrary readings, by definition. We did have some designs where you could set the preferred pattern for new readings, but it became even more cumbersome.

Why can't users name the readings?

We didn't anticipate that desire, but I can see why you'd want it. We'll take it into consideration.

Why can't the readings be dragged into a different order?

If you have a reading on Monday, on Thursday, and on Friday, and you drop the Friday reading between Monday and Thursday, should it be assigned to Tuesday or Wednesday? The answer is: Maybe either. To address this, the original design included editable dates, which would make this less of a problem. The current implementation represents a number of compromises to the design, and editable dates was something that we were very sad to lose.

It may not help, but we designed custom plans with syllabus-type required reading lists in mind, like those we are publishing in our Mobile Ed courses. It works passably well for that, though improvement is always possible. It does not work as well for building a plan to read an entire book from scratch. To facilitate that, we would definitely need to add a number of amenities.

For many years you could only make generated plans for (English!) Bibles. We've been slowly but steadily improving upon that over the years, and we'll continue to improve.

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/697279#Comment_697279

Thanks for your feedback, Mike.

In other threads I have been mocking the implementation (beginning of 2015) for giving me readings based on heading breaks. This produced readings of as little as 30 words and some that took a couple of hours.

We have imagined several heuristics that we think may produce better results, but this is in the earliest phases of discussion right now.

I would like to start a book at Chapter 1 and finish before the Appendices at the end. (Does anybody actually 'read and index'?)

Our resources don't label this content as "do not read" so the generator algorithm dutifully includes them. With 40K books and climbing, there is not one foolproof way to filter this content out automatically. In some books, you do indeed read the appendices, since they may contain essays and a discursus or two as well as technical charts, etc. In other books, the only appendices are the subject index and table of works cited, so no, you wouldn't. Some books have a bibliography in the middle, then more content, then another bibliography. We can't stop the reading at the first bibliography. Etc.

My preferred solution at this point is to give you UI access to pick the chapters you want to read from the table of contents. That will require quite a bit of code.

I think that reading plans would be one of the things that a new user would try quite early on and it would be one of the things that should give a new user a good experience and thus be a high priority for both maintenance and review.

Our usage data shows that new users do set up plans very frequently. Around 90% are "Read the Bible in a Year" plans, and the remaining 10% are divided among other plans for reading the Bible, other versified books (like Josephus), and non-versified books. Those last are are tiny, tiny fraction. I concede that it may be because the UI doesn't support some non-versified resources all that well. Or it may be that the vast bulk of users don't have this need in the first place. Either way, we intend to keep improving the feature.

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/697303#Comment_697303

And don't make the mistake of sharing a plan that you'll later need to edit, because you can't.

If you want to edit a plan after sharing it, you can duplicate the plan: 1) Click panel menu in the plan's upper-left; choose "Manage document sharing"; 2) click the Action button in the upper-right of the web page that appears; choose "Duplicate." 3) Go back to Logos and click the rotating arrows in the upper-right of the application to force a sync.

You should now have a doppelganger of the plan you want to edit. Then you can edit the duplicate, then end the collaboration on the original, and share the amended duplicate.

Why the song and dance? Because we made an architectural decision that an action on User A's computer would never under any circumstances allow work on User B's computer to be lost. Once you assign a reading plan to the group, then anyone in the group may have started it and checked off readings, which counts as putting "work" into the document.

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/697084#Comment_697084

But the other methods based on references are very limited because you only get a single reference (e.g. page 14) without a way to specify a range e.g. Pg 14-17. I gave up on Type a Reference after trying a few of the well known methods for copying locations. But I should be able to specify a range.

Agreed. I'm filing a bug report on that now.

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/697810#Comment_697810

But the other methods based on references are very limited because you only get a single reference (e.g. page 14) without a way to specify a range e.g. Pg 14-17. I gave up on Type a Reference after trying a few of the well known methods for copying locations. But I should be able to specify a range.

Agreed. I'm filing a bug report on that now.

Dave, it looks to me like the problem is that you can't type page numbers into that box at all. Ranges for other data types are supported (eg, type "Genesis 1:1-2:4"). The reason page number isn't supported in that box is that there's currently no way to specify which resource the page numbers should come from. Unlike generated plans, custom plans do not assume that they are only for one resource. So, not a bug, but a design flaw.

Again, thanks for the helpful feedback.

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/697812#Comment_697812

One more on page number ranges. You can do this as a workaround: Enter the range on the resource panel's location box, click the button or hit enter. Then the range will be available in the reading plan drop-down under "Choose an open resource". In the screenshot below, I added the "-200" to the resource and hit Enter before I went to choose it from the reading plan.

Mike Binks

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/697804#Comment_697804

Our resources don't label this content as "do not read" so the generator algorithm dutifully includes them. With 40K books and climbing, there is not one foolproof way to filter this content out automatically. In some books, you do indeed read the appendices, since they may contain essays and a discursus or two as well as technical charts, etc. In other books, the only appendices are the subject index and table of works cited, so no, you wouldn't. Some books have a bibliography in the middle, then more content, then another bibliography. We can't stop the reading at the first bibliography. Etc.

My preferred solution at this point is to give you UI access to pick the chapters you want to read from the table of contents. That will require quite a bit of code.

Actually Eli, I think that might work very well providing you could bulk select the chapters and individually deselect the undesirable.

However on your first point about the algorithm and the unpredictability of indices, charts, and bibliography in both location and title. I would accept that a perfect solution might be hard to accomplish - but would an example like my reading for this quarter not provide sufficient clues to make a good stab at it?

Perhaps the clue might be 'Abbreviations', (I'm just not going to enjoy 23rd March - I can feel it in my bones`), and 'Index'.

Perhaps along with the suggestion above these could be automatically rejected but with the option of re-adding them should the algorithm have misfired.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/697812#Comment_697812

But the other methods based on references are very limited because you only get a single reference (e.g. page 14) without a way to specify a range e.g. Pg 14-17. I gave up on Type a Reference after trying a few of the well known methods for copying locations. But I should be able to specify a range.

Agreed. I'm filing a bug report on that now.

Dave, it looks to me like the problem is that you can't type page numbers into that box at all. Ranges for other data types are supported (eg, type "Genesis 1:1-2:4"). The reason page number isn't supported in that box is that there's currently no way to specify which resource the page numbers should come from.

If Type a Reference accepted the output from Copy Location as (CTRL+ALT+C) e.g. logosres:bkc;ref=VolumePage.V_1,_pp_800-805 it would resolve that issue (I used your suggestion for getting a page range in the resource, but it only confirmed that resource + page ranges are easily specified).

Kevin A. Purcell

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/697802#Comment_697802

Thanks for the feedback. It's very important to us. UI issues in Reading Plans are definitely on our radar.

Make these plans available on mobile!

This is underway now and should ship very soon.

Bless you, bless you, bless you!!!

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/697802#Comment_697802

Custom reading plans support arbitrary dates for arbitrary readings, by definition.

I don't think that word means what you think it means... [:P]

arbitrary |ˈärbiˌtrerē| adjective: based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system: his mealtimes were entirely arbitrary.

By definition, reading plans are NOT arbitrary! By making a plan, you have eliminated any sense of arbitrariness. Otherwise, you don't have a "plan." [;)]

The user should be able to divide a resource into a number of "readings," and then have those readings set up into a plan of his or her own choosing. The ability for a user to plan reading schedules is invaluable.

We did have some designs where you could set the preferred pattern for new readings, but it became even more cumbersome.

Cumbersome in what way? To set up the plan?

We've been slowly but steadily improving upon that over the years, and we'll continue to improve.

Thank you. [:)]

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/698456#Comment_698456

Custom reading plans support arbitrary dates for arbitrary readings, by definition.

By definition, reading plans are NOT arbitrary!

Sorry, I meant "arbitrary" in the comp-sci jargon sense of "at the user's discretion, not the program's." I didn't mean to imply that creating a custom reading plan is purposeless or without pattern, just that the purpose/pattern are not pre-determined by the designer/programmer.

Wikipedia gets close:

[quote]

In mathematics, arbitrary normally means "any;" for instance, an arbitrary division of a set or an arbitrary permutation of a sequence. Its use implies generality.... A simple example would be "Given an arbitrary integer, multiplying it by two will result in an even number."

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrariness#Mathematics

So, arbitraryany dates for arbitraryany readings is the "definition" of a custom plan.

The user should be able to divide a resource into a number of "readings," and then have those readings set up into a plan of his or her own choosing

Thanks for clarifying; I think I understand now. You're describing a process where 1) you make a list of readings R and 2) you set up a pattern of session dates D to distribute those readings over and press "generate" to distribute R over D. If I understand that correctly, I agree the idea has merit and is worth exploration.

BUT (without thinking about it very deeply) my first instinct was to add that as a feature of the calculated reading plan, because this two-step process is basically what the calculated reading plan does now -- the new part being that you would like to manually segment the resource into readings rather than relying on the automatic segmentation routine built into the calculator.

That said, it might also have a place in the custom plan, as an operation after the fact: Recalculate this custom reading plan by forcing the existing reading sessions into a given date pattern.

We did have some designs where you could set the preferred pattern for new readings, but it became even more cumbersome.

Cumbersome in what way? To set up the plan?

Yes, cumbersome to set up the plan. Custom plans are designed to be flexible enough to allow (say) a prof to enter a syllabus of required readings from multiple resources over a span of reading sessions that might (say) include missed or moved classes due to holidays. So class sessions might be distributed over eleven Mondays, but the fourth Monday session is skipped for Memorial Day, and the fifth session is moved to Tuesday because the prof will be out of town for a symposium and the TA is only available on Tuesdays. Thus the basic workflow of building a custom plan is: choose a date, add readings to the session, add the session to the plan, repeat. That is a "cumbersome" workflow to begin with, and imposing a set pattern of days to add readings to interferes with it, making it "even more cumbersome." The interference partly comes by giving you one more thing to think about, and partly by working against the intentional flexibility.

That said, I know the data entry UI is clunky, and in addition to fixing some of the bugs pointed out in this thread (seriously, thank you all!), I hope to take another crack at the design soon.

We've been slowly but steadily improving upon that over the years, and we'll continue to improve.

Thank you.

You're welcome, and thank you!

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/698004#Comment_698004

If Type a Reference accepted the output from Copy Location as (CTRL+ALT+C) e.g. logosres:bkc;ref=VolumePage.V_1,_pp_800-805 it would resolve that issue

Yep, at least for some users. I think we can do better than that, but we could at least do that. I've written up a ticket for supporting the logosres syntax in our reference boxes generally.

Mike Binks

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/698699#Comment_698699

So Eli,

Let's take Wright's Christian Origins as an example.

I want to read the four books in the trilogy (trilogy as per Douglas Adams) over a year. First decision so I need to put four books into a Plan.

I don't want to read the index (there are many and various in the trilogy, (sticking with Adams) Second decision I need to be able to cull preferably by section heading but possibly by page number/range.

Because I am inefficient and always behind with everything I know that I won't be able to devote the time on Saturdays and Sundays; (well who wants to anything on Sunday?) Third decision - I need to specify which days I want to read on. Possibly with exceptions for days to cope with those kind enough to book their funerals in advance or maybe my holidays.

I don't want surprises - no inordinately long readings and no sillily short ones either. Fourth decision - stop at section break, stop at paragraph break, stop at sentence break. This is what I would like the program to do for me.

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/698755#Comment_698755

This is what I would like the program to do for me.

Understood. That's a very helpful example, thanks!

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/698755#Comment_698755

This is what I would like the program to do for me.

Understood. That's a very helpful example, thanks!

mike

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/698761#Comment_698761

Can you make reading plans with Vyrso books? (Vyrso has daily devotional books, and I got plenty I want to start with)

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/698826#Comment_698826

Can you make reading plans with Vyrso books?

Yep. (another advantage over Kindle books [:P])

Mark Prim

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/698829#Comment_698829

Can you make custom reading plans? I am trying to create a plan that does not include the cover page as a day of reading, along with the contents on another. When I open up a custom reading plan I can not figure out how to create one off of a Vyrso book.

Graham Criddle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/699011#Comment_699011

When I open up a custom reading plan I can not figure out how to create one off of a Vyrso book.

You basically need to step through the book, selecting portions you want to read and adding them one section at a time into a Reading Plan session.

I've created a video outlining how you can do this at http://screencast.com/t/tRKxBUBz

It does require some work but it is possible and you can end up with some very precise results.

mike

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/699035#Comment_699035

Some books from Vyrso are purely daily devotional, and they better than most Logos daily devotionals I've seen.

Can you show me how to make them appear in my choices? and how to make them appear in my Logos android app daily devotional homepage (Logos app mainpage)?

Btw Graham, thanks for the screen cast, but it seems the way you showed us is waaay too long to create a year plan (by the time I finished creating the plan.. I would finished reading the whole book. LOL). Is there no automatic way to make a book to be daily devotional when it already is?

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/699247#Comment_699247

Some books from Vyrso are purely daily devotional, and they better than most Logos daily devotionals I've seen.

Can you show me how to make them appear in my choices? and how to make them appear in my Logos android app daily devotional homepage (Logos app mainpage)?

Btw Graham, thanks for the screen cast, but it seems the way you showed us is waaay too long to create a year plan. Is there no automatic way to make a book to be daily devotional when it already is?

I would be glad to help, but I might need an assist. I know nothing of android. For clarification: When you ask about making the Vyrso devos "appear in my choices," you mean "how do I create a custom reading plan using a Vyrso resource"? As for mobile on android: I don't know the status of the new reading plans availablity on android. Currently they are only available on iOS in the beta builds (actually released today).

mike

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/699249#Comment_699249

I would be glad to help, but I might need an assist. I know nothing of android. For clarification: When you ask about making the Vyrso devos "appear in my choices," you mean "how do I create a custom reading plan using a Vyrso resource"?

Yes.

How to make this type of books to appear in my choices of daily reading in Logos 6 and Logos Android. And make them appear in Logos 6 homepage and Logos Android homepage.

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/699252#Comment_699252

This is actually pretty easy, as long as the resource was given a good TOC by the publisher. In fact, this is one area where Vyrso editions (in the past) were superior to Logos editions. Since there aren't other milestones to get in the way (like page numbers), you can use the TOC to assist in the creation of the reading plan.

1. Open the resource and examine the TOC. In this screen shot, notice the TOC has one listing for each day (365). Additionally, there are 9 other listings (including the cover, intro, etc.). To figure out the exact amount, I had to scroll to the very bottom of the TOC where there were some addition listings. The total number of listings was 374.

2. Create a new reading plan document. Notice there are clickable (hyperlink style) buttons which forms a sentence (Mad libs style [:)]). The first step is to select the resource. Then select the date the reading plan should begin... you should select a date in the past... enough days to cover the "junk" readings before the first real one. In this case 4 days prior to today. Third, you need to change the duration from "one year" to the number of readings. This should correspond to the number of listings in the TOC (in our example, 374). This is VERY important. As long as you select the right number of readings, it will create a single reading for each day... plus "junk" readings for things like the "cover."

3. Click "start." The plan is generated four days "behind," so I quickly "mark as read" the four junk readings and have a new plan which has daily readings for 365 days.

If the actual calendar date is important, you will need to adjust the date to correspond with the real calendar.

As long as there is a reading for "today," and as long as you have "daily readings" selected on your home page, the reading plan should appear on the home page on the left hand side:

Yasmin Stephen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/699035#Comment_699035

When I open up a custom reading plan I can not figure out how to create one off of a Vyrso book.

You basically need to step through the book, selecting portions you want to read and adding them one section at a time into a Reading Plan session.

I've created a video outlining how you can do this at http://screencast.com/t/tRKxBUBz

It does require some work but it is possible and you can end up with some very precise results.

Thank you for this very helpful video! I almost blew my puny brain trying to figure how to create a custom reading plan with a Vyrso resource (couldn't figure out how to activate "Choose an open resource"!!). It takes a little effort but it's wonderful when completed (I can break up my chapters just the way I want them ... such joy!). And best of all, custom plans now sync to the iOS app - happy, happy day! [:D]

Graham Criddle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/703053#Comment_703053

It takes a little effort but it's wonderful when completed (I can break up my chapters just the way I want them ... such joy!). And best of all, custom plans now sync to the iOS app - happy, happy day!

Very pleased to hear you have this working[:)]

Glad to help