Problems with Collections as Parallel Resources

I've noticed a few problems with Collections as Parallel Resources:

1. Sometimes not all resources are present in the drop-down list when clicking the "parallel resource list" button. For example, I have "Topical Bible" Collection including New Naves Topical Bible, Nelson's Topical Bible, New Topical Textbook, and Dictionary of Bible Themes. All are type:monograph, and indexed to the key english word. BUT for some reason, Dictionary of Bible Themes is not included in the drop-down list, even though it is part of the collection. Interestingly enough, if I open Dictionary of Bible Themes, I can "arrow" to the other three resources, but once in any of the other resources I can't arrow back to the Dict of Bible Themes, since the it is not visible in the drop down list.

2. When I make a collection of "type:monograph" resources, and click the option to "Show in Parallel Resources", it doesn't work. After I make the collection, when I open one of the resources in the Collection, there is no "Parallel Resource List" button to display the drop-down list. For example, I made Collection of my "Church History" monographs, so I can easily open my favorite parallel resources, but it doesn't work. I think this is because the resources are indexed by "page number" rather than verse or some other data type, BUT there should be no reason why we can't specify these Collections as Parallel Resources too. True, you can't "arrow through" the resources, but you can easily select the similar resources and open them. This saves going to the library and searching each time, and is a valid and helpful way to use collections. It would be nice to be able to set ANY Collection (even those including resources of different types) as a parallel resource set.

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Mark Smith

BUT for some reason, Dictionary of Bible Themes is not included in the drop-down list, even though it is part of the collection.

Logos 4 checks the reference in the reference box on the resource pane against the sources in your collections and only shows you ones that have the same entry. It doesn't show members of your collection in which it cannot find the same entry. So if you have 'marriage' in the reference box it will only show other parallel resources with an article headed by 'Marriage.'

I think this is because the resources are indexed by "page number" rather than verse or some other data type,

Correct. This is a limitation in parallel resource associations.

Wyn Laidig

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/115009#Comment_115009

Logos 4 checks the reference in the reference box on the resource pane against the sources in your collections and only shows you ones that have the same entry. It doesn't show members of your collection in which it cannot find the same entry. So if you have 'marriage' in the reference box it will only show other parallel resources with an article headed by 'Marriage.'

This is not the problem in my example. All of the resources have the same headword. I can start from Dict of Bible Themes and arrow to the same word in the all the other resources. But I cannot arrow back to Dict of Bible Themes once I leave it. That is because Dict of Bible Themes is not shown as a parallel resource in the other resources. Furthermore when I open Dict of Bible Themes and click on the Show Parallel Resource button, it does not show itself! It shows the the other resources but doesn't list itself.

Wyn Laidig

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/115009#Comment_115009

I think this is because the resources are indexed by "page number" rather than verse or some other data type,

Correct. This is a limitation in parallel resource associations.

Mark - I don't think this needs to be or should be a limitation. There shouldn't be any reason we can't have the option of listing ANY collection to be shown as a parallel resource set. This would be very helpful and should be easy to implement programmatically.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/115061#Comment_115061

This would be very helpful and should be easy to implement programmatically.

While the programming may be easy, the appropriate tagging takes time. As long as resources have indexing data types that are incompatible, some resources collections will not comprise parallel resources.

Mark Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/115058#Comment_115058

This is not the problem in my example.

I see what you mean. I notice with these topical resources that very few seem to come up as parallel after creating a collection. For instance, MacArthur's, What Does the Bible Say About, as well as the one you mentioned, do not function as parallel resources.

I think this needs some input from Logos. I checked it in the 4.0b release and it isn't working there either. Not sure how to get Logos' attention on this, but it isn't confined to the beta.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/115205#Comment_115205

I think this needs some input from Logos. I checked it in the 4.0b release and it isn't working there either. Not sure how to get Logos' attention on this, but it isn't confined to the beta.

I discovered some other issues so I created a bug report on the wiki to cover this thread.

I confirmed in 4.0b/4.0c that:

Dictionary of Bible Themes is not listed in any PRS.
What Does the Bible Say About is also not listed in any PRS!

Both resources can display a PRS eg. for topic "growth".

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/115232#Comment_115232

I discovered some other issues

In 4.0b open Vine's with the topic "Save"

Of the resources in "All Parallel" PRS my "Bible Topics" collection has Eerdmans but it is not listed in the PRS.

EDIT: same behaviour in 4.0c

So I click on Eerdmans (EBD) in the PRS but notice the topic and "current resource"!

EDIT: In 4.0c EBD states "no Parallel Resources" and displays the page number!

(4.0b) If I now click on Vine's it displays the front cover!

There are some variations on this theme:-

(4.0b) start with "Save, Saving" in Vine's and go to New Strong's (it may also give you "No Parallel Resources"). If you select "Salvation, Save" in NASB Topical Index you get "No Parallel Resources".
(4.0c) "Save, Saving" in Vine's displays "No Parallel Resources" when it should assume one of the topics.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/115061#Comment_115061

Obviously there's an issue with the Dictionary of Bible Themes. This is probably a metadata issue that can be fixed very easily by Logos once someone reads this thread.

I don't think this needs to be or
should be a limitation. There shouldn't be any reason we can't have the
option of listing ANY collection to be shown as a parallel resource
set. This would be very helpful and should be easy to implement
programmatically.

But more generally, fundamentally parallel resource sets are resources which can be used in parallel. They are different from collections. If there is no machine recognisable link between the resources, they cannot be considered 'parallel', they can only be considered 'similar'.

If you allowed switching to resources that were 'similar' but didn't contain a machine recognisable link between the resources, it would mess up the main use people have for this feature. For example, I have a collection of 'Intermediate commentaries' which has about 473 commentaries in it. When I click that link I'm normally presented with a manageable list of about 20 of those commentaries because those are the ones that link to the existing bible reference. If your suggestion was implemented I would have all 473 listed because you wouldn't require a link to the current data type. That's obviously unusable.

I'm not arguing your feature isn't a good suggestion, only that it's something different from parallel resource sets, and (I believe) would need to be implemented separately.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/115238#Comment_115238

I don't think this needs to be or
should be a limitation. There shouldn't be any reason we can't have the
option of listing ANY collection to be shown as a parallel resource
set. This would be very helpful and should be easy to implement
programmatically.

...

I'm not arguing your feature isn't a good suggestion, only that it's something different from parallel resource sets, and (I believe) would need to be implemented separately.

We already have the + tab which provides a choice of "Similar resources" and I definitely would not want any more collections to be displayed against a resource, as indeed it is a different feature to Parallel Resource sets.

Melissa Snyder

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/115235#Comment_115235

I'll report these issues. I'm not sure if part of the problem is due to the Vine's still being in lbxlls format. Regarding the page number in EBD, if you scroll down just below the heading in the EBD, it changes to page number. It should continue the headword reference, as well as provide the page number option. I'll report this, too.

Thanks,
Melissa

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/115394#Comment_115394

Regarding the page number in EBD, if you scroll down just below the heading in the EBD, it changes to page number. It should continue the headword reference, as well as provide the page number option. I'll report this, too.

This is a common problem in many resources. I reported it earlier, but it got missed.

Todd Phillips

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/115462#Comment_115462

Regarding the page number in EBD, if you scroll down just below the heading in the EBD, it changes to page number. It should continue the headword reference, as well as provide the page number option. I'll report this, too.

This is a common problem in many resources. I reported it earlier, but it got missed.

As did I here: http://community.logos.com/forums/p/12449/96863.aspx#96863 but it didn't get recognized as a problem.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/115394#Comment_115394

Regarding the page number in EBD, if you scroll down just below the heading in the EBD, it changes to page number. It should continue the headword reference, as well as provide the page number option.

It displays the page # and the headword is not available even after scrolling a short distance (I can get both to display eventually).