Making Prioritization easier to use
Prioritization of resources is a powerful tool, but as with other areas of Logos/Verbum it gets unwieldy as libraries and features grow. I think right no there are some problems:
1. Having all resource prioritizations in one list is hard to manage. Do I Have the same resource type spread throughout the list by mistake, so I get an unintended priority list?
2. It is unclear which resources might be used for which kind of features - could there be overlap because of the indexing/content of a resource, so it unexpectedly pops up? Is there some type:monograph that is indexed for versification, or lexicon use, etc., even if by mistake?
3. I bet I have resources in my prioritization list that I think might be useful, but in fact are never used.
I was trying to think of a way to use what exists in prioritization without some significant change, so what about this: Add some sort of UI indicator, like a drop down combo box link (like the "All Resources" in the Library bar at the top, and other examples). This drop down filters what shows in the prioritization list. For example, if I pick Encyclopedia, I see all resources that will be used for word look up prioritizations. If I pick Commentary, Bible, etc., same thing. I can pick 'All Resources' to see everything in my prioritization list. I can pick "Not used" to see resources that don't contain the indexes (indices) needed to be used in any prioritization (do I have some monographs that are unindexed in the list?).
I think both Advanced and normal prioritizations show together, I can't think of a reason to filter them in a separate drop link.
This would really help me tune up my Prioritization List!
Comments
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I agree with everything you've said, but with one important distinction.
When you think about the different 'types' of prioritising, don't think about resource types (bible, monograph, commentary, etc.). This about datatypes instead, because that's what prioritisation uses.
For example, you mentioned "if I pick Encyclopedia, I see all resources that will be used for word look up prioritizations". But in practice several other resources do 'word lookup'. That's because in this instance prioritisation is working on english headwords, rather than just on encyclopaedias.
What I would like Logos to do (and I know I'm not alone in this), is to separate the prioritisation list by datatype, so we prioritise English headwords separately from the church fathers datatype, which is separate again from the Bible datatype, and so on.
I envisage a tool that is separate from the library tool (a bit like 'Collections' is separate). First, you'd choose which datatype you wanted, and then Logos would only show you only those resources that have an index on that datatype. That would prevent us from prioritising things that don't matter, and make it much easier to see what's really important.
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Mark Barnes said:
I envisage a tool that is separate from the library tool (a bit like 'Collections' is separate). First, you'd choose which datatype you wanted, and then Logos would only show you only those resources that have an index on that datatype. That would prevent us from prioritising things that don't matter, and make it much easier to see what's really important.
Excellent suggestion!
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Mark Barnes said:
I envisage a tool that is separate from the library tool (a bit like 'Collections' is separate). First, you'd choose which datatype you wanted, and then Logos would only show you only those resources that have an index on that datatype. That would prevent us from prioritising things that don't matter, and make it much easier to see what's really important.
Two words: "Yes!"
-Donnie
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Mark Barnes said:
I envisage a tool that is separate from the library tool (a bit like 'Collections' is separate). First, you'd choose which datatype you wanted, and then Logos would only show you only those resources that have an index on that datatype. That would prevent us from prioritising things that don't matter, and make it much easier to see what's really important.
I don't fully understand this suggestion but it sounds good and I trust Mark, so I'll support it [A]
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Don Awalt said:
Prioritization of resources is a powerful tool, but as with other areas of Logos/Verbum it gets unwieldy as libraries and features grow.
I've always thought that for such an important part of setting up the Logos world, prioritization was poorly implemented.
Don Awalt said:I was trying to think of a way to use what exists in prioritization without some significant change,
Yes, I've done this as well. My thoughts were similar to what Mark said about a different interface than the Library itself. But in my dream, there were separate windows into which resources would be dragged. A resource wouldn't stay put if it was dragged into a window where it wouldn't work. Some sort of sorting, like both you and Mark suggested, would be important to help pick which ones went where.
I owned Logos for more than six years before I finally got the prioritization right. (Not to say it couldn't still be improved, but at least now it works in a way that I like and makes sense.) This shouldn't be so. Part of the problem is a lack of clear documentation (short videos will get you started, but these always assume the user understands the indexing system, and new users rarely do). The interface itself, as a Library function, is a second part of the problem, as has been said. I think one other factor contributes: the need for a good big-picture view of Logos' architecture, which I'm not sure ever happens unless you are one of the key designers...it is very easy to set Logos up where it is not working 'right' and yet not know it.
I'm still figuring that stuff out, eight years into it. I distinctly remember thinking the whole prioritization thing wasn't very important when I initially upgraded to L4. That was a big mistake and I didn't know it for several years. Again, that shouldn't have been so. I'm not without responsibility in this, but still, a better-implemented prioritization interface would make set-up for a new user much more likely to be successful.
Good suggestions, all.
Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.
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Doc B said:
I've always thought that for such an important part of setting up the Logos world, prioritization was poorly implemented.
I think that now.
What's interesting is that in L3 prioritisation worked in much the way most of us would want now. But it didn't work there for two reasons: (1) Because it was called "keylinking", and it wasn't all that clear what it meant, and (2) it was ahead of its time, most people only had a few hundred L3 resources, so didn't need the complexity. So L4 simplified the process, but probably did so at just the wrong time.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Mark Barnes said:
I agree with everything you've said, but with one important distinction.
When you think about the different 'types' of prioritising, don't think about resource types (bible, monograph, commentary, etc.). This about datatypes instead, because that's what prioritisation uses.
For example, you mentioned "if I pick Encyclopedia, I see all resources that will be used for word look up prioritizations". But in practice several other resources do 'word lookup'. That's because in this instance prioritisation is working on english headwords, rather than just on encyclopaedias.
What I would like Logos to do (and I know I'm not alone in this), is to separate the prioritisation list by datatype, so we prioritise English headwords separately from the church fathers datatype, which is separate again from the Bible datatype, and so on.
I envisage a tool that is separate from the library tool (a bit like 'Collections' is separate). First, you'd choose which datatype you wanted, and then Logos would only show you only those resources that have an index on that datatype. That would prevent us from prioritising things that don't matter, and make it much easier to see what's really important.
I think it needs to be done in a way that matches how users think about what they want to see come up as a resource. If it gets too much into data types and headwords etc., people will be confused. That was what I was attempting to show - when I "think" Encyclopedia, yet other resources types are coming to play, just show them - what happens behind the scenes is left to the experts. I don't want to be digging into the internal tagging to figure out why the resources I want to come up, don't. Sometimes I have to go to the trouble of explicitly bringing up a resource to see if it has an entry I am looking at, because I don't know if it's prioritized out, doesn't have the right tagging, or just doesn't have the entry. Please make it easy without having to know internals.
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