Logos has begun the process of releasing the updated writings of Ellen White. They now have the timeline flag next to them, and table of contents.
The reason that you often see codes like {DA 20.1} in PowerPoints, blog posts etc is that people are too lazy to remove them. These codes have been an unfortunate part of the electronic files since the EGW Estate made a searchable CD-Rom of her writings back in the day (maybe due to some long-gone technical aspect of the MS-DOS search software). Originally (in the printed books) there are no paragraph numbers.
There is NO scholarly convention or style of reference that demands these paragraph numbers. No college or university, SDA or otherwise, request these paragraph numbers from their students or professors. Let us finally get rid of these codes once and for all. They mess up the text, and they also give the wrong impression that Ellen White's writings have a kind of "chapters and verses" like the Bible. Author, book-title and page-number is all that is needed in scholarly references of Ellen White's writings.
and they also give the wrong impression that Ellen White's writings have a kind of "chapters and verses" like the Bible.
Good reason to get rid of them!
To summarize what I think I am hearing--because scholars do not use EGW paragraph tags, therefore they are not valid and should be removed as "chapter and verse" notation lifts EGW's writings to the level of scripture.
May I humbly suggest the following points.
1. Milton and Josephus are a couple of examples where it is common to quote chapter and verse. Logos even includes the Josephus paragraph numbers. Other examples could be readily provided.
2. The official www.egwwritings.org maintains the paragraph tags which can be turned on or off.
3. Translators use the paragraph tags for ease of translation and sometimes publish the paragraph tags in the final text for ease of comparison.
4. Pastors and lay people use the paragraph tags as standard EGW notation. (30 years ago in Freshman Bible class, the teacher spent more than one day teaching and then reinforcing the EGW paragraph notation.)
5. Among the reasons why it is standard to reference paragraph numbers in non-scholarly works (even when quoting from a dead tree source) is convenience. Not everyone is a speed reader.
6. I was introduced to Logos (Libronix) 15 years ago by a lay Sabbath school teacher. The underlying implication that Logos is only for seminar students who, because they are scholars, do not use paragraph tags is unfortunate.
This is to confirm that the White Estate did not provide paragraph numbers with the official files they sent us. We simply worked with what they gave us--page numbers only. Here's the message I just received from the head of Content Production:
(10:57 AM) We used the PDFs as our authoritative source material. None of the paragraph numbers were present.
Wrapping this up: I agree that it would be great to have paragraph numbers to toggle in and out of, but the updated files sent to us by the White Estate did not make that possible. Thanks for all your input.
So I noticed that there is a prepub going on right now. It' here.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I already owned all these book.
Now I'll definitely pitch in if it means all the books will now be fully tagged, book covers added, etc, but I'm wondering, If I already own these books, do I need to buy this pre-pub to get the updates? When the prepub comes out, will I all of a sudden, have doubles of each book if I buy it? Is there any more details on this?
If you are signed in to Logos and the purchase button in gray, then you will receive the update free of charge. I have already received some of the updated material.
Ah, yes. It was grayed. Considering I make a living developing web applications, you would have thought I might have noticed [;)]
I am pleasantly surprised to see that 83 more EGW books were updated! Here's the list of what was updated yesterday. If you add this to the list the 48 resources I posted on the first page of this thread, you will have a complete list of updated books so far.
Actually I just realized I missed a batch that was updated on June 17, 2015 as well, which was this (below). If you combine these three lists then you should have the complete list.
