Personal Books
I want to start using personal books but there is so much to learn about how to format them and I have no idea of what I am doing or where to get help. This is one tool that I find unusable atm, Suggestions?
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Here is the wiki on personal books: https://wiki.logos.com/Personal_Books
A simple personal book is easy... you just need a .docx file. Your best bet is to work through the wiki and come back with specific questions.
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https://wiki.logos.com/Personal_Books
Is where the "rules" are.
Where to start? Just make a simple docx file [normal output of Microsoft Word]. Your last lesson study notes would be a good start.
Read the Wiki to learn how to input a book. Use those notes as your source. As the title use DUMMY.
[[Then in the future when you are testing something use the same title => DUMMY - It will get overwritten by your latest test]]
Then open the resource DUMMY. And see your lesson study notes.
Note that getting rid of a Personal book is difficult. So I recommend using DUMMY for all your "test" runs.
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Thank you so much for all the help.
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Hi Rafe:
An additional suggestion: browse the wiki for personal book files that others have contributed. The link is: https://wiki.logos.com/User_Contributed_Personal_Books
You'll find Bibles (which need specific tagging to be useful in Bible Search, Text Comparison, Copy Bible Verses, etc.), commentaries, maybe some dictionaries, church history, plain old books, I've even thrown a couple of Hadiths (plural is probably something else) out there.
What you will find runs the gamut from elaborately-formatted and well-tagged to quickies. They all have their place, depending on various needs. Not only.will you see how things are tagged, you'll get some nice resources.
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Thanks!!0
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Some of the documents are way over my head. I find it frustrating that Logos can't make it any easier. A shame. I will not use PB.0
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PB's may not be for you. Personally, I am amazed at how much you get with little or no work converting a Docx document. If you want to do really complex tagging like Logos books have, then you have to do what Logos has to do to make our books so valuable. I have no idea what you are trying to do, but you might be passing up something quite valuable.
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If you are willing to upload one of the books you are trying to import (and you either own the rights or the book is in the Public Domain), why don't you do that? We might be able to help or at least point you in the right way.
Compared to other Bible programs I have tried, import of books in Logos is actually quite easy. As was said, you can import any docx file and it will be searchable. Depending on the way they were done, most Bible references are recognized automatically. If heading styles were used in Word, you also get a working table of contents. I don't know if there would be a way for Logos to simplify the tagging needed for other things to work. The problem is that every book, for a example every Bible commentary is different.
PDFs, especially scanned books, are more of a problem, but that is due to the file format, not the Logos personal book tool.
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Bernhard said:
PDFs, especially scanned books, are more of a problem, but that is due to the file format, not the Logos personal book tool.
PDFs do not become PB unless they are first converted to DOCX format files. And to do that the PDF needs [or so I was told] a text layer. PDFs that are just pictures of a text document do not convert unless you have some real good OCR software. [[Optical Character Recognition where the picture of text gets converted into editable text]]
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Rafe Andersen said:
Some of the documents are way over my head. I find it frustrating that Logos can't make it any easier. A shame. I will not use PB.
Yes, PB can be complex. I have inputted parts of a Bible that I only found as a PDF. I took a Bible that someone else had made into a DOCX file. I striped all the Bible text and replaced it with the Bible text from the Bible I wanted. Lots of work yes, but, for the sections that I have added [used in a personal study], it appears just as all the other Bibles in Logos. [The rest of the text just state ‘Text not added’]
I had an earlier Bible software program with texts that Logos has not [yet] released. The ones that I made DOCX files from do not have the cross-references that Logos adds but I can use Logos to search them. Using some of the items listed on the Wiki I could have added the cross-references.
Why do the resources from Logos cost? Read over the list of things that you could add to a PB. That is what Faithlife adds. That is what raises the price over a free PDF.
PB can be just a simple DOCX file, such as your notes on this week's Bible study, or as complex as Faithlife makes them.
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Hi, all... I hope it's appropriate to resurrect this old post because I have the same question with a slight variation.
I'm new to Personal Book and new (from a power user perspective) to Logos (though I've used it for a while now).
I want to create a Personal Book and coming from an IT background I get the general idea of tags and fields but I'm not finding any specific definitions of milestones and datatypes. I've been reading the Personal Books wiki and I can mainly follow it but it starts on step 1 and I think I just need a step 0. Mainly, what are datatypes and milestones used for (specifically)? For example, from the wiki:
Milestones
The syntax for milestones is [[@datatype:reference]]. For example:
- [[@Headword:Word(s)]] It uses the language from the Word document, else use
I get the idea that this creating a link or hyperlink of some kind but what is a "Headword"? When would I use it? Is there a place that is defined? I was looking at one user-contributed PB and every page had a milestone (correct?): [[@Page:1]]. Gulp! I have to tell it where to break every page?
I hope you're seeing my question because I think the first reply will be "read the wiki and look at examples" but I've done that. I'm just trying to find where these various datatypes and milestones are defined and in what cases would I use them? What is the minimal and what are the "best practice" milestones to include?
Thank you!
Andy
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Welcome to the forums. Headwords are the word entries' "head word" in dictionaries, lexicons and encyclopedias. You'll rarely use them in other contexts.
Andy Jewell said:every page had a milestone (correct?): [[@Page:1]]. Gulp! I have to tell it where to break every page?
No, there had to be a very special need to control page breaks that led someone to do that. I can't think of an example that would need it.
Andy Jewell said:What is the minimal and what are the "best practice" milestones to include?
Many books have none. If you want it to scroll parallel to another resource or for a search to recognize it as another version of a text it knows, you'll want to use milestones. The most common use - Bible references in Bibles and commentaries.
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."
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Great, thank you, that really helps (and alleviates some concerns!).
I will give it a shot and see what other questions pop up. I appreciate your welcome and support!
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Andy Jewell said:
What is the minimal and what are the "best practice" milestones to include?
I am in the process of formatting a book of sermons. In this particular case, I am adding page number tags as well as Bible reference tags that the PB tool doesn’t pick up. It will pick up Rom. 3:21, for example, but this particular preacher is notorious for saying, “If we go to Ephesians chapter 2, the 10th verse.” My experience is that these verse references have to be manually tagged.
I use headline styles for the chapters so that it will generate the table of contents.
That’s it for this particular resource.
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Thank you for that example! What benefit is the page milestone in this case? I can see how you'd have to manually code the Bible verse reference but I'm not sure why the page.
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Correct me if I'm wrong here, but would it be useful to match page numbers to that of a physical book in the case of tracking down quotes used in footnotes? If that's not the case, what was the purpose of the page numbers being implemented in PB?MJ. Smith said:No, there had to be a very special need to control page breaks that led someone to do that. I can't think of an example that would need it.
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Andy Jewell said:
Thank you for that example! What benefit is the page milestone in this case? I can see how you'd have to manually code the Bible verse reference but I'm not sure why the page.
For example: I imported a book that I wrote and which had been published before there was a Logos edition, and I wanted to have the page numbers to cite easily. You might have the same thing if you wanted to import a public domain book and have the page numbers to cite it or look up citations. I used find and replace with the galleys PDF to add in the page number milestones.
Using Logos as a pastor, seminary professor, and Tyndale author
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Ah, ok, gotcha. Similar to the point Frank was making, i.e., the case of a physical book for which you want to maintain "reference compatibility", so to speak. Thank you!
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