Logos 4 Philosophy
Comments
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Bob,
If I can give you a bit of encouragement that you're headed in the right direction with 4.0:
My wife is *not* a computer person. She's the kind of person who gets a new computer and then won't actually do anything with it until she actually needs to sit down and do some writing. She needs things to "just work" because she doesn't care to take the time to figure things out on her own - e.g. she uses two separate browers on her Mac because Safari & Adobe require some extra setting up for displaying or downloading PDF's that's normally instant in firefox or ie (e.g. see here).
Anyway...
I home left last night for a church meeting while she was doing some Greek studying in Luke & Ephesians 1. Normally her Greek consists of having our print copy of BDAG open on the flow with a dozen books scattered around her (while I sit at my computer using BDAG in Logos). She's never used Logos at all before and generally avoids using the computer unless she absolutely must. Well, something must have happened that absolutely required her to use the computer because when I arrived home a couple hours later, she had opened up Logos 4 on her own, found & ran the exegetical guide, opened up Steve Runge's Discourse GNT, BDAG, BDF, Wallace, and several other resources & was trudging through her Greek work right there. No problems, no challenges, no confusion about the interface. It just made sense for her.
Mike Aubrey
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Bohuslav Wojnar said:Bob Pritchett said:
You guys are freaking me out. Really. :-)
Hi Bob,
I almost wanted to say, that if getting you "freaked out" produced so much clarification and so much great information about the future plans with the V4, it paid to provoke you a little bit...
But seriously, thank you so much for you very clear explanation on the direction you want to go, on set date of release and the need to get there in time. I totally understand and agree, that if you set up the date for the Big Day-D, you need to do all possible to succeed. Even if some of our really specialized tools are still not in place. I think that was not our concern. Not certainly mine. What some of us might be worried about, was an impression from some of your words, that V4 should be somehow "lighter" version of "heavy-duty" V3, just to get more broad customer range. I am happy to see that that is not the case. L4 is definitely great step forward and if we see that all what was possible to do in V3 is (will be) possible in V4 with, sometimes different tools, sometimes in a surprisingly new way of approach, and sometimes with the improved, more visual tool, having basically the same role as in V3, ........ ............. ............ By your explanations I am totally satisfied and happy about all the new development. ................ ................ ...............Some things are also result of the first impression, what is misleading some times, and only later realization that what we got is better, even it looks much more simple. ......... ............. .............. Just keep up with it. You go the right direction. I trust your sense of direction and good experts you have with you in Logos.
The direction is right, and that is the most important. All the bugs and problems will be out of the way soon, so that is not any real concern. We know we are in Beta.
Let God bless you Bob, and your excellent team for all you do and let your Big day-D date works for you, so that Logos 4 has a big launch and many more users. Thank you again for being patient with us. I appreciate you for that very much.
Bob, I concur with Bohuslav. I promised Phil at the beginning of this Beta that I would be praying for him by name - and his family - as well as many others at Logos ... that includes you, Bob. I have done so and will do so! You must be very tired and exhausted since the Beta began and I'm pleased you are still "enthused"! *smile* What Logos has accomplished over the years has been a powerful force for God's Good in this troubled world and we need to use high technology that gets across His Holy Word and be part of God's Militancy again His Enemies.
Yours in Christ,
..... Mel
Philippians 4: 4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand..........
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Bohuslav Wojnar said:
I would not be surprised if we would see some new resources and updated series that already are in the Base Packages.
Bob P. has hinted twice on this forum about new content that will be included in the new base packages. One of the many reasons I'm so excited about being in this beta program :-)
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Philip Spitzer said:
Bob P. has hinted twice on this forum about new content that will be included in the new base packages. One of the many reasons I'm so excited about being in this beta program :-)
I did nothing of the sort
Bob Pavich [:D]
Robert Pavich
For help go to the Wiki: http://wiki.logos.com/Table_of_Contents__
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Robert Pavich said:
I did nothing of the sort
Bob Pavich
ah, there's one...I mean two in every crowd....
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Bob Pritchett said:
First of all, let me say again that we expect to have every key Bible study feature in 3.x in the 4.x platform -- some of them are just a little behind. And this isn't some vague promise -- we've literally got specifications drawn up for these features, with what we think are significant improvements. There is a 20 page spec for sentence diagramming, a dozen pages on the improved Vese List documents, and plans to do visual markup. Sermon file and PBB are both already specified. The only features we're planning to drop with no alternate solution are Remote Library Search (because you can do it on the web now), Graphical Query Editor (superceded by better search and syntax searching), confusing overhead (Library Maintenance, Account Management moving to the web), and, um, I can't remember. But nothing big.
The problem is that we were told originally that some features were not in the Beta (not really an issue) and would not be in the final version of 4.0. In addition, some basic bible search things were not working. Personally, I can wait for Sentence Diagraming, since as useful as I think it is as an exegetical tool, the old version was too clunky for my tastes. I either did it by hand, or used the syntax visualizations as good enough.
Bob Pritchett said:Bible Word Study Guide: Cooler visualizations, and smarter integration of syntax searching directly into the report. Example uses of the word in different grammatical constructs, in Greek/Hebrew and English. A new graphic that helps you see the word in relation to prepositions it is used with. (Some of this may not be visible, if you don't have the syntax resources yet.)
I had noticed some of this, and liked what I saw generally, but most of us were taught word studies by using a concordance and the concordance (or whatever you call in in this version of the report) is broken in the current beta. This left it difficult to check your work and gives the (false?) impression that one of the most basic things in bible software was not really a concern.
Bob Pritchett said:Exegetical Guide: Smarter, better use of the reverse interlinear. All the data shown in parallel in both languages. No more confusing choice of morphologies. (Remember how 3.0 had a morph scheme dropdown in addition to the text?) 4.0 integrates multiple morph schemes and shows you the consensus parsing of the word, using +- to show labels from schemes that disagree. This should make it easier to use, remove confusion, and give you access to multiple databases in one report, instead of requiring you to consult several.
I suppose the fact that I didn't notice the morphology issues is good news, but I frankly hadn't noticed this. As I have said earlier, I would like a bit of flexibility in how many lexica are automatically looked up in the word for word portion. For some of us both languages is a plus, but I would like the flexibility in display of original languages between actual text and transliteration. I really don't think there is a good universal default for this. If you are comfortable in their alphabet, transliterations are distracting, but if you aren't is is just wasted screen space, so please make this a setting we can set like in 3.0.
I don't suppose you could put all the morphologies as different layers on the source data instead of so many separate resources? Basically, can I have ONE copy of NA27 and one copy of BHS, and have the various morphologies and interlinears as layers that I can just turn on and off whenever I want? I would think that this data structure would be easier for the software to use as well.
Bob Pritchett said:Reverse interlinear: I know many of you want the full-screen view back, and we're looking into that. But the point was to make it easier to use, and more accessible to people who'd started in the surface text and then want to dig into the original languages. We even offer to run Bible Word Study on Greek (or Hebrew) words from the context menu in texts with reverse interlienars, without forcing you to switch to the rev int.
I like the way it is layered on the base resource and so can be used throughout the program. The problem is that the current interlinear information suffers from almost both too little information (context) as well as too much information (all the lines) for us people. Also, why no RI for NRSV OT?
Bob Pritchett said:I think these are all positive moves in the direction of Bible study, not library features. Where's the disconnect? Are they different features than you want? Are we not making them visible enough? Are they just still too broken/hard to discover in the beta? Did we make a mistake in not being clear up front about which things were missing and exactly when they'll be "put back"?
For me it is mostly the last one, with a bit of looking like eye candy was better than just the basic bible search information. My feeling was that if the basic stuff wasn't working, how can I trust the rest? It leaves me wondering where is the focus of the new software, especially when there have been so many hints about how much better the "next version" would be with global library searches and Library Management. I do not remember any public hints about upcoming advances in nuts and bolts exegesis, however.
That said, I must say that I have been extreamly impressed with how much you Logos people have been active on this forum every day - Weekends, Holidays, whatever.
Ken McGuire
The Gospel is not ... a "new law," on the contrary, ... a "new life." - William Julius Mann
L8 Anglican, Lutheran and Orthodox Silver, Reformed Starter, Academic Essentials
L7 Lutheran Gold, Anglican Bronze
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Fred Greco said:
Is it possible to get some descriptions of functions you'd like us to use, and how they would best work, without the need for videos? I mean, just maybe even bullet points about certain features, and ways to test them?
To this, as a tester, I would say a non ad-hoc approach would be best to uncover bugs. In my experience it is a lot more effective to test by attempting to use the program with no prior knowledge of the particular features and how they work (black-box). This way not only will it create scenarios that we may have not anticipated, but it will most likely broaden the types of bugs users will uncover. This is important because if we try to direct testers by saying "test these functions in these ways", it will really reduce the number and variety of testing the user will actually do. Seeing as there is so many beta testers, leaving the testing methodology up to the user (whether they have experience in testing or not) will generate the widest spectrum of test cases in my opinion. Even if you aren't familiar with how to test or what kinds of things to look for, the main thing to remember is that using it uncovers the most bugs, use the program as much as you can. I hope this helps. By the way, you make a good point about the iPhone.
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-->After reading this a while back I wrote a response, that I
let set a day and did not send, because I was so angered by your response. So
I'll keep my response short. You used other software as examples, I had a whole
list of such software that lost customers or went out of business or were
bought out and are basically the bottom of their category, e.g., Lotus 123,
Word Perfect. Microsoft got on this bandwagon with Office 2007, making it more
usable for newbie’s, they could just buy and start using it without much of a
learning curve (those that already had Microsoft Office had the learning curve).
However, they did not remove those things that many of their customers
appreciated, such as macro, hidden commands that still worked, etc. They came
up with the ribbon system, placing those things that they thought most newbie’s
would need. They made no provision for tweaking the ribbon, but third party
software made that available, after a time. MS Office did not reach its
projected sales, because most of their sales are from their client base,
upgrading to the newer products. Now, I have read, that they are now coming out
with their new program, and guess what? They have included more flexibility,
ability to rearrange the ribbon listings and to add or remove items. You will
also be able to add things to present ribbons, such as macros, etc.I have said all of that to say this, though I am not a
programmer, I like the ability to change a program to work like I want them to
work. I have over a 100 macros for MS Word, and a few for the rest of the MS
Office programs. Yes, I have a third party program that lets me add macros to
the ribbon and new ribbons. So I am fairly happy with MS Office, although, I
still think that Office XP was easier and faster for me. The problem with Logos
is that, most likely, there will not be third party software to put the
flexibility back into Logos 4 program. I would imagine that your greatest sales
will be with your base, and I know that you want to increase that base. One of
the marks of a higher in product in our day is that it is easy to use and
flexible for those who use the product now and again and those that use it all the
time, Adobe graphic programs is an example of this.I would like to see Logos much easier to use and more intuitive,
however I would hate to lose the presence flexibility that 3 has. Just an
example the Word Search Puzzle, there should be an option to do as you can in
3. It seems to me that the whole program is just like Word Search, here are your
choices if you do not like them or our layout that’s too bad don’t buy it. Is
not this your sentiment?0 -
George T. said:
Is
not this your sentiment?George, it would help to know whose post you are addressing.
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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Dave Hooton said:George T. said:
Is not this your sentiment?
George, it would help to know whose post you are addressing.
If you click on the word "replied" after the poster's name it will take you to the post to which he is replying. In this case he was apparently upset regarding Bob's original post in this thread.
george
gfsomselיְמֵי־שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה וְרָהְבָּם עָמָל וָאָוֶן
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George Somsel said:
If you click on the word "replied" after the poster's name it will take you to the post to which he is replying.
So it does!
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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George T. said:
I would imagine that your greatest sales
will be with your base, and I know that you want to increase that base.Actually, Logos upgrades the program for free. It's good to keep the customer base happy so they buy more books, but the only way to build is to make the program more accessible to a wider range of users; and in so far as this means more people having access to advance tools to study God's word this is a great thing... Can you imagine Microsoft or Adobe giving you free upgrades?! [^o)]
George T. said:It seems to me that the whole program is just like Word Search, here are your
choices if you do not like them or our layout that’s too bad don’t buy itIt's free and you can install it alongside Logos 3 to try it out... If you don't like it, keep using Logos 3... What's to get angry about?
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Jon Rumble said:
Actually, Logos upgrades the program for free. It's good to keep the customer base happy so they buy more books,
sorta, but not really, this upgrade will require quite a few resources to run right, so just like the upgrade to v 3 was free (but you had to pay for the new resources), this one will certainly cost money (not for the app, but for the resources).
Jacob Hantla
Pastor/Elder, Grace Bible Church
gbcaz.org0 -
Jacob Hantla said:Jon Rumble said:
Actually, Logos upgrades the program for free. It's good to keep the customer base happy so they buy more books,
sorta, but not really, this upgrade will require quite a few resources to run right, so just like the upgrade to v 3 was free (but you had to pay for the new resources), this one will certainly cost money (not for the app, but for the resources).
In V3 it actually worked so that you needed to buy only new resources (or the new editions of the given resources), not NEW VERSIONS of the same previous resources you already owned. Like I had and old Baker Bytes CD with the Evangelical Commentary and some other stuff and Logos3 copied the things into the system and than offered resource update and I got a new version of the same book which works correctly with the Logos3. Excellent. I think it might work the same way with the V4 and old resources.
Bohuslav
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George T. said:
I had a whole
list of such software that lost customers or went out of business or were
bought out and are basically the bottom of their category, e.g., Lotus 123,
Word Perfect.I'm sorry to get you upset; it's not my intention.
First, i'd like to point out that Lotus 123 and WordPerfect are largely dead (yes, I know, Dale!) because they didn't throw things away and do something fresh. When the world moved away from DOS, Microsoft exploited the new UI and paradigms of Windows, which were unfamiliar to people who used slash menus or function keys, and (after a while) found success. I believe it was the legacy user base, and the need to keep things just as everyone understood, that doomed these and many other apps.
The fact that Dale Durnell and some others still use WordPerfect makes your point about people's attachments to their established workflow. The fact that no one who started using a word processor in the last 5 (10?) years uses WordPerfect makes my point. (Simplification, I know, but relatively true. :-) )
The fact that my fifteen year-old son doesn't use WordPerfect or Microsoft Word -- he uses Google docs, by his choice -- makes the point again. (I can't imagine why anyone would want their documents ONLY in the cloud. And it has no mail-merge. Or macros. :-) )
You've got 100 Word macros -- but do you know anyone under 25 who does? They've got web mashups instead.
This isn't our first time through this process. We threw away our entire 1.x code base to ship the Logos Library System, in 1995. Then we threw that away to ship the Libronix DLS in 2001. Now we're onto our fourth platform. At every change we had users who were furious, and to this day we have users on both the 1.x and LLS platforms who refuse to upgrade.
The good news is that our changes prepared us for the market that existed, not the one that had existed, and that always-new base of customers is the revenue fuel that feeds the company engine and allows us to support your books, so that they have been readable for 15+ years on each new platform. And we continue to support the old platforms as best we can. Our competitors who have chosen to stick with old code bases, continually tweaking and adding on, have seen sales fall dramatically, and new customers turned off by the accumulated baggage of an always growing, never streamlined, user interface.
I hope this isn't coming across too harshly, and I'm not trying to make anyone angry. I hope that even after you read that, you'll be happy to read this:
A) We aren't disabling the Libronix DLS. It continues to run, and it is scriptable, extendable, and externally drivable in JavaScript. Users have done this, and still can. We're intentionally not taking it away, or forcing you to choose the old or the new. You can install and run both.
The new app is built on .NET, and is even more programmable than the old one. At the moment we haven't chosen to invest the time and energy in documenting and supporting that (particularly since so few people took advantage of it in 3.x, though we invested a lot in supporting it there), but there's nothing stopping people from doing almost anything. Moreover, our move to sharing data via the cloud, and our unannounced (till now) plans to open up web API's, means you'll be able to do even more flexible and custom things in the future.This whole problem isn't new -- it's called "The Innovator's Dilemma" in the business-book world -- and we aren't the first people to face it. I'm not saying that we're handling it perfectly, or could even know what the perfect balance is. But that's why we're here, having this discussion, and getting your very valuable feedback.
-- Bob
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Bob Pritchett said:
This whole problem isn't new -- it's called "The Innovator's Dilemma" in the business-book world -- and we aren't the first people to face it. I'm not saying that we're handling it perfectly, or could even know what the perfect balance is. But that's why we're here, having this discussion, and getting your very valuable feedback.
Thank you Bob. I am with you in that process and I am BIG fan of the new Logos4. The potential of the program is IMHO just incredible. Thank you for being bold enough to go the more challenging way. God bless you.
Bohuslav
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Bob,
thank you for giving us "non-developers" a glimpse into your world. It helps to put things in perspective.
God bless and thanks for the hard work of you and your team.
Robert Pavich
For help go to the Wiki: http://wiki.logos.com/Table_of_Contents__
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Bob Pritchett said:
(I can't imagine why anyone would want their documents ONLY in the cloud.
Precisely my point in another thread.
"Not I", said the cat. "Not I", said the dog.
george
gfsomselיְמֵי־שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה וְרָהְבָּם עָמָל וָאָוֶן
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George...
respectfully,
"Precisely my point in another thread..."
That was what you took away from this very long and detailed post of Bobs? [:^)]
Robert Pavich
For help go to the Wiki: http://wiki.logos.com/Table_of_Contents__
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Robert Pavich said:
George...
respectfully,
"Precisely my point in another thread..."
That was what you took away from this very long and detailed post of Bobs?
Of course not ! It was what I chose to comment regarding in order to link it to the other thread regarding cloud computing.
george
gfsomselיְמֵי־שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה וְרָהְבָּם עָמָל וָאָוֶן
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Bob,
I for one greatly appreciate your dialogue in this forum and explaining some of what has driven you and the LOGOS team in the direction you are going. I will admit that my initial reaction to v4 was not to like it, much of this is human nature's inheritant adversion to change. I have seen it over and over again working for the software company I have worked for during my last 18 years. It never fails whether it is just a version release or the creation of a new platform the reactions and concerns are very much the same.
But, I can say the more I use and dig into v4 the more I like the flexibility and how doing many thigs are easier then v3. For those things I am still working on understanding, I know it is just a learning curve and that once I have it understood I'm pretty sure I'll look back as to wondering why I found it so challenging. The idea is to just keep an open mind.
Thanks again Bob. This doesn't mean I'll stop bringin up issues [:O].
In Christ,
Ken
Lenovo Yoga 7 15ITL5 Touch Screen; 11th Gen Intel i7 2.8Ghz; 12Gb RAM; 500Gb SDD;WIN 11
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Kenneth Shawver said:
I have seen it over and over again working for the software company I have worked for during my last 18 years. It never fails whether it is just a version release or the creation of a new platform the reactions and concerns are very much the same.
That's interesting.
Robert Pavich
For help go to the Wiki: http://wiki.logos.com/Table_of_Contents__
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Kenneth Shawver said:
Bob,
I for one greatly appreciate your dialogue in this forum and explaining some of what has driven you and the LOGOS team in the direction you are going. I will admit that my initial reaction to v4 was not to like it, much of this is human nature's inheritant adversion to change. I have seen it over and over again working for the software company I have worked for during my last 18 years. It never fails whether it is just a version release or the creation of a new platform the reactions and concerns are very much the same.
But, I can say the more I use and dig into v4 the more I like the flexibility and how doing many thigs are easier then v3. For those things I am still working on understanding, I know it is just a learning curve and that once I have it understood I'm pretty sure I'll look back as to wondering why I found it so challenging. The idea is to just keep an open mind.
Thanks again Bob. This doesn't mean I'll stop bringin up issues
.Well said Kenneth. Thanks.
Bohuslav
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Bob, you said: A) We aren't disabling the Libronix DLS. It continues to run, and it is
scriptable, extendable, and externally drivable in JavaScript. Users
have done this, and still can. We're intentionally not taking it away,
or forcing you to choose the old or the new. You can install and run
both.This is really on true if you create new modules that will work on the v. 3 system. Will you now commit, since you said the above, to doing just that?
Dr. Kevin Purcell, Director of Missions
Brushy Mountain Baptist Association0 -
Yes, I have asked the same question last week. It would really help to know.
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Bob Pritchett Originating post, sorry for the confusion.
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I would not expect new modules to be created for Libronix v.3, but I realy would like to know if Logos will support future versions of Internet Explorer that come out. It's IE's changes that seem to break Libronix more than anything else.
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I won't commit to it permanently, and some books have features that will require 4.0, but I believe we'll be offering most new resources in both formats for some time. It will also have to do with what the adoption rate for 4.0 is.
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Bob Pritchett said:
we'll be offering most new resources in both formats for some time.
Funny...the above was the only part of your message I see :-)
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