Confused with Home Page Topic Layout

Damian McGrath
Damian McGrath Member Posts: 3,050 ✭✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum

There appear to be two different layouts for topics trigger from the home page - one for ideas and a different one for people. 

How do we override the layout for people?

Also, I don't understand how the resources on the right hand side are chosen. 

Most of them seem to come from resources with an index for "bibliographic item". But, most of the resources that I want to consult do not have this index so there seems no way to prioritize them: eg Who's Who in Christian History.

Further, I don't know which resources have such an index so as to know which to prioritize. 

But, the very first item that is opened does not have this index: Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. When I search for Martin Luther, the second also does not have this index... Catholic Dictionary.

Comments

  • Graham Criddle
    Graham Criddle MVP Posts: 33,282

    There appear to be two different layouts for topics trigger from the home page - one for ideas and a different one for people. 

    I don't see this - can you clarify what differences you are seeing?

    In particular, are you speaking about biblical people or non-biblical people?

    Also, I don't understand how the resources on the right hand side are chosen. 

    Can you post a screenshot giving an example of what you are seeing?

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 55,400

    I got two different layouts ... I think I used St. Francis / Baptism of the Spirit ... with the new way of handling Factbook I could not tell if Baptism of the Spirit was a Preaching Theme or a Topic or ... so with precision disappearing, the ability to track this sort of thing down is also disappearing. But Sean has already told me somewhere in the forums that most users don't care about precision ... [:(] ... okay I've oversimplified the issue to the point of inaccuracy [;)] but ...

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Graham Criddle
    Graham Criddle MVP Posts: 33,282

    MJ. Smith said:

    I got two different layouts ... I think I used St. Francis / Baptism of the Spirit

    These give me the layouts below

    And they seem to be functionally / structurally / organisationally (not sure which is the right term) equivalent.

    They both bring up a Topic Guide on the left. "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" bring up an associated Sermon Starter Guide in the same pane - but there isn't a matching one for St Francis.

    The "Baptism of the Spirit" layout has a Bible open to the first reference in "Related verses" but since there are no related verses for St Francis that pane isn't used in that layout. And that means that the dictionary entry fills the entire right side of the layout.

    So they seem to be as equivalent as the underlying data makes possible

  • Andrew Batishko
    Andrew Batishko Member, Community Manager, Logos Employee Posts: 5,566

    They are the same layout. You can easily determine this by replacing the Topic home page layout with a custom layout and seeing that the new layout affects both.

    Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer

  • Sean Boisen
    Sean Boisen Member, Logos Employee Posts: 1,452

    ...

    Also, I don't understand how the resources on the right hand side are chosen. 

    Most of them seem to come from resources with an index for "bibliographic item". But, most of the resources that I want to consult do not have this index so there seems no way to prioritize them: eg Who's Who in Christian History.

    Further, I don't know which resources have such an index so as to know which to prioritize. 

    But, the very first item that is opened does not have this index: Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. When I search for Martin Luther, the second also does not have this index... Catholic Dictionary.

    The Indexes section of the About panel for a resource lists the information that the Indexer uses to produce fast search results. However, many resources have other relationships with various datasets, so that they appear in Guides and Tools. For people from Christian history (different from biblical people), this information is in the Notable People Dataset. We haven't published the dataset documentation for this yet (it's coming), but this dataset includes attributes like the dates they lived, their roles, and quotations: it also connects them to works in Logos (both in your library and others that available for purchase).

    We have a separate dataset with conceptual information, primarily to coordinate information with resources like Bible dictionaries. Since historical figures like Martin Luther are both people and subjects (or "topics"), our goal is to merge their information together in Factbook. (You can determine their "primary" type by the icon: either a person icon, or a speech bubble for concepts). However, some of that information isn't yet properly merged: so we currently have separate entries for both Martin Luther the individual, and Martin Luther the topic. We're working to consolidate those so all the relevant information is on one Factbook page.

    We have various links to biographical resources for Martin Luther the topic, and you can prioritize them to put your preferred resources higher in the list. They're not yet associated with Martin Luther the person because we haven't correctly merged these records yet: that's a bug, and we're working on fixing it. Once they're correctly merged, there will only be one Martin Luther in the dropdown list, and all relevant information will be on that page.

  • Damian McGrath
    Damian McGrath Member Posts: 3,050 ✭✭✭

    The "Baptism of the Spirit" layout has a Bible open to the first reference in "Related verses" but since there are no related verses for St Francis that pane isn't used in that layout. And that means that the dictionary entry fills the entire right side of the layout.

    So they seem to be as equivalent as the underlying data makes possible

    Thanks Graham. I understand why they look different now - is there a preaching theme, are there related verses. Some words also trigger a bible word search. This all makes sense.

  • Graham Criddle
    Graham Criddle MVP Posts: 33,282

    Thanks Graham. I understand why they look different now - is there a preaching theme, are there related verses. Some words also trigger a bible word search. This all makes sense.

    Pleased to help Damian

  • Damian McGrath
    Damian McGrath Member Posts: 3,050 ✭✭✭

    For people from Christian history (different from biblical people), this information is in the Notable People Dataset. We haven't published the dataset documentation for this yet (it's coming), but this dataset includes attributes like the dates they lived, their roles, and quotations: it also connects them to works in Logos (both in your library and others that available for purchase).

    Aha! I did not know that this one existed. I look forward to reading the documentation.

    I assume that the documentation will include a bibliography.

    Mind you, I can't seem to access this data. My drop down lists don't show the people icons.

  • Damian McGrath
    Damian McGrath Member Posts: 3,050 ✭✭✭

    Sean,

    I still don't really understand how the links on the right side of historic figures are triggered. I just did a zwingli topic layout and get, the Ocford Dictionary of the Christian Church, followed by vol 50 of the Churchman, vol 93 of Bibliotecha Sacra, issue 81 of Christian History Magazine (really strange - why an article from an issue of John Newton), and finally CHM issue 4 on Zwingli.