Search syntax help please

Hello, if I open a new search panel and type

paradigm type:g

I get a list of auto-completion items among which appears

paradigm type:grammar

If I then execute the query, I get zero results. I tried a similar experiment with

paradigm type:dictionary

and again, received zero results. I then browsed the entire Logos 4 help file, and could find no help whatsoever. I believe that I could create a collection of grammars (or dictionaries, or whatever), but since the search syntax throws up that information, and I know the various resources are already organized by type (as evidenced by the Library browser) , shouldn't such a simple search work without having to create a 'Grammar' type?

Also, does anyone have information as to when/if Logos is going to give us a help file in the program? i.e. has Logos ever acknowledged that the help system (such as it is) is frightfully enemic?

Thanks,

Matt

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Chris Elford

Hello, if I open a new search panel and type

paradigm type:g

I get a list of auto-completion items among which appears

paradigm type:grammar

If I then execute the query, I get zero results. I tried a similar experiment with

paradigm type:dictionary

and again, received zero results. I then browsed the entire Logos 4 help file, and could find no help whatsoever. I believe that I could create a collection of grammars (or dictionaries, or whatever), but since the search syntax throws up that information, and I know the various resources are already organized by type (as evidenced by the Library browser) , shouldn't such a simple search work without having to create a 'Grammar' type?

Also, does anyone have information as to when/if Logos is going to give us a help file in the program? i.e. has Logos ever acknowledged that the help system (such as it is) is frightfully enemic?

Thanks,

Matt

Matt,

Look at the wiki - see the link below my signature. Dave Hooton has given a good post there on syntax for searches.

Help has been improving over the months. It is a work in progress.

Chris

Matt

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/80907#Comment_80907

Matt,

Look at the wiki - see the link below my signature. Dave Hooton has given a good post there on syntax for searches.

Help has been improving over the months. It is a work in progress.

Chris

Hi Chris, thanks for the pointer to the wiki page. I clicked on 'View All Pages' then examined every page that referenced the term 'Search.' The pages I looked at were:

A Strategy for Syntax Search

Of course, I skipped the many references to search that were prefixed with 'BUG:' I may have missed something, but there was nothing in any of those wiki articles that offered an answer to my question, and as I already stated the Logos 4 help is sorely lacking.

It would appear that the example I detailed in my original post is a bug. Can anyone confirm if they experience similar behavior on their system?

Thanks,

Matt

davidphillips

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/81181#Comment_81181

Matt,

It sounds like what you're wanting to do is search for "paradigm" within every book that has been tagged with "grammar" as it's type. Is that correct?

If that's so, then yes, you need to make a collection. If you have a question on how to do that, let us know. Creating a collection of "grammars" is very straightforward. searching for "paradigm type:grammar" searches for those words in your entire library.

Why then does "type:grammar" appear in the search box? I'm not sure. But making a collection should solve your problem.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/81195#Comment_81195

Why then does "type:grammar" appear in the search box? I'm not sure. But making a collection should solve your problem.

type:bible and type:dictionary are suggested if you enter "type:" because the 'word' appears in Logos4 Help when you search entire Library. But you have to search with angle brackets eg. <type:bible>. The result is also interesting because the Help file is not listed/counted as a resource!

Matt

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/81195#Comment_81195

It sounds like what you're wanting to do is search for "paradigm" within every book that has been tagged with "grammar" as it's type. Is that correct?

Hi David, yes! That's exactly what I want to do. Now, for my next question:

I know how to make a collection, but am I the only one who sees the fact that I would need to define a collection for a 'grammar' type, when within my Library Pane I can already sort by the Grammar type, as being a bug / impaired functionality? i.e. Logos 4 clearly has already labeled certain resources as Grammars, but when doing a search I cannot access that information and therefore must reinvent the wheel for something already in the product.

Thanks for your help,

Matt

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/81417#Comment_81417

Hi Dave,

If I get the gist of what you're saying, it appears that if I want to search for the word 'paradigm' within resources that are of type 'dictionary' that I would enter

paradigm <type:dictionary>

into the search pane? I tried that and still got zero results.

The result is also interesting because the Help file is not listed/counted as a resource!

That's probably because there's no help with the product. [;)] Yes, I know there's 'help', but I seem to be one of the few that are frustrated by the paucity of it. In any case, I appreciate your's and other's help.

Matt

davidphillips

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/81699#Comment_81699

I know how to make a collection, but am I the only one who sees the fact that I would need to define a collection for a 'grammar' type, when within my Library Pane I can already sort by the Grammar type, as being a bug / impaired functionality?

I see your point, and while that could be nice, I guess the way I look at it is that collections are they way that system is implemented. In otherwords, all that tagging exists so you can make dynamic collections to easily search your library. For me it's 6 of one, half-a-dozen of another. But I certainly wouldn't complain if we could do what you want [:)]

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/81703#Comment_81703

If I get the gist of what you're saying, it appears that if I want to search for the word 'paradigm' within resources that are of type 'dictionary' that I would enter

paradigm <type:dictionary>

Matt, sorry about the poor explanation. What I should have said was that it worked in very restricted circumstances but it shouldn't have worked at all!

The range for a Basic Search can only be set in Search ...... for. If you click on the current range and type mytag as below you can search on resources you tagged under the heading of My Tags in Library! The other one that works is rating.

Since I set mytags for specific collections in combination with other fields like rating, title, type it is not as convenient nor flexible, BUT you can use it!

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/81774#Comment_81774

Matt, I too have wished we could restrict a search to a given type without having to create a collection for it. Creating the collection seems like extra work we shouldn't have to do, since the info is already available to the program. This would be very useful functionality, especially if it's just a one-off search and not something we'll want to do lots of. I'd already made this request a while back but I can't find that post now. Can't even remember if it was an original post in the Suggestions forum or a response to someone else's thread.

Matt

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/81774#Comment_81774

The range for a Basic Search can only be set in Search ...... for. If you click on the current range and type mytag as below you can search on resources you tagged under the heading of My Tags in Library! The other one that works is rating.

Dave, thanks for your help.

Matt

Jonathan Burke

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/83171#Comment_83171

I just want to search for all works by a certain author. I discovered the hard way that author:[author name] doesn't work. Apparently 'author' isn't a searchable field name.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/94933#Comment_94933

I just want to search for all works by a certain author. I discovered the hard way that author:[author name] doesn't work. Apparently 'author' isn't a searchable field name.

Don't type it in the Search box but rather in the Find box in the Library, and you'll get what you want. And be sure not to leave a space between the colon after author and the author's name. Put the name in quotes if you're using first and last with a space between.

Jonathan Burke

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/94956#Comment_94956

Thanks, that works for monographs. Unfortunately it doesn't work for journal articles, and it doesn't work for chapters in multi-author monographs. This is frustrating when I want to search the Early Fathers for a statement or book by a particular writer, or when I want to search my journals and monographs for articles by a specific author. Is there a way to do this?

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/94993#Comment_94993

Thanks, that works for monographs. Unfortunately it doesn't work for journal articles, and it doesn't work for chapters in multi-author monographs. This is frustrating when I want to search the Early Fathers for a statement or book by a particular writer, or when I want to search my journals and monographs for articles by a specific author. Is there a way to do this?

There's no way to specifically limit results to things spoken or written by that author, but if you do a search for that author's names in quotes, it will find every place that name is mentioned, which will be a superset of all the articles and quotes by that author. E.g., it might also include biographical info about that person which you are not looking for.

I can't even think of a clever Boolean search that would narrow your results down to just quotes and articles. For example, you might search for something like:

"by John Climacus" OR "John Climacus said" OR "John Cliimacus wrote" OR ..... (add a few other such phrases)

But if I do a search on simply "John Climacus" in my entire library, I realize there are so many different ways that he is quoted. Sometimes just his name in parenthesis after a quote, or after a double-dash. Sometimes there are several other words between his name and the beginning of the quote ("John Climacus spoke, warning against 'sick souls who ry out a physician and receive help from him, and then abandon him out of preference for another before they are completely healed'." So it would be next to impossible to construct an appropriate search.

Unless Logos adds tagging in the future for quotes by a particular person, and authors of articles in journals and chapters in multi-author works, there would be no way to do this kind of searching.

Here is the current Search fields list: http://wiki.logos.com/Search_Fields_List. As you can see, author: is not one of the accepted ones at this time.

Jonathan Burke

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/95114#Comment_95114

Thanks Rosie. I did fool around with some Boolean syntax without any positive results. A search on the author's name in quotes does of course return a very noisy set of results. I also looked at the searchable field page and discovered that 'author' is not a searchable field.