My initial thoughts of V4

I am excited to have gotten V4 to install and it seems not need to reorganize my library evey time I restart my computer. (I didn't really do anything differently, it just started working.)

After playing with it yesterday I was really impressed. I am sure I will continue to discover improvements over V3 and am excited to see how V4 can further my study. At the same time I want to mention some concerns that I had as I was using it. Perhaps there are ways to do some of these things (and I would be glad to know), but even if there are they may not be intuitive to a new user, such as myself and it may be good to make them more understandable.

Searching

First the good to give an understanding of how searches are working on my computer to judge the speed of slower searches.

> Super fast on "search whole library" - I searched my whole library for "evolution" and it took around half a second before it had enough results displayed for me to look through while it loaded more. Wow!

Concerns:

> Slower when searching by tag - I did the same search for evolution only searching by tag "science" that I had put two books in just to play with tags. It took around 2 seconds. Not a problem, but it seemed strange that it would take 4 times as long to search two books as thousands.

> Slower when searching by collection - like with tags, it took longer to search a small collection for "evolution" than the whole library.

> Bible Search never ending - I searched "All Bible" "All Passages" for "God" (I know it should have quite a few hits). After 5 minutes of searching I left the room and quit timing.

> Bible Search slow to display - I did a search of the ESV, New Testament for Jesus and God. It says the search took .47 sec. but it took apx. 1.5 minutes to display results. This was not a large search and seems it should display faster. It would be nice to have Bible Speed Search back from V3.

>Basically, it seems like searching the whole library is fast, but other searches, especially Bible searches are much slower

> Choice of what to search somewhat random - When going to do a search I wanted to customize what I searched. When I went to choose a collection or tag it was a bit random. The top of the choices had around 6 books I never use. Then was a choice for "Tag:Science" or "Collection: Science". It seems that the Tags and Collections should be very easily accessible. Perhaps in a sub-folder at the top of the selection window for choosing what to search.

Opening a Bible and Window management

When starting a study from the home page I typed in a verse and it opened the passage guide, several Bibles and a commentary (if I remember correctly). None of the Bibles were ones I use so I closed them all (which then made the commentary window fill the empty space), set my Bible preferences (ESV, NIV, ...) and wanted to open a Bible again to see if it would open my prefered Bible. I couldn't figure out how to open a Bible. In V3, there was a link in the passage guide that would open the Bible. That link is no longer available. I finally opened a Bible via my Library and it put it in the same half page window as the commentary. I then went to "Layouts" (or something like that, I don't have V4 on this computer and can't look), to choose the window arrangement I wanted, but the Bible was still in the wrong place. I had to drag it from the commentary window below into the Bible window above. Then I went to open another Bible via my Library and it again put it in the commentary window and needed dragged. I eventually found that hitting the "+" button in the Bible window allowed me to put another Bible there.

Suggestions from the above (again, this may all be available, but it needs to be more accessible to a new user):

1. Put a link to the Bible on the passage guide - The passage guide is supposed to organize the resources for studying a passage of scripture. The Bible is the most important resources that is needed to study the passage and yet there is no link to open a Bible.

2. Have default locations for certain types of resources - Bibles upper right, commentaries lower right, etc (preferably customizable)

Passage Guide Continued

Close items on Passage Guide by default - When the passage guide runs, it is running all the reports by default. This takes a very long time on my EeePC for info I don't really want or need. It would be nice if all the sections were closed by default, or I could set a default for each section on whether it should be opened or closed. I know I can delete it from the passage Guide, but for many I would still like them available, but closed by default.

Topics a bit strange - This is just a one time problem, not so much with the program, but I will mention it since it caught my attention. I ran the passage guide on Genesis 1. It had "Pharisees" as the largest, most important topic with other topics which seem more applicable to Gen. 1 being small and less important.

Home Page

Remove items from the top of the Home page - Things like "Preferred Bible" and "Lectionary" appear at the top of the Home Page. There needs to be an easy way to remove them. It seems "customize" should allow this, but it only allows rearranging them. I believe I saw a thread about how to remove them and I will look, but the point is it needs to be more userfriendly to remove them. In playing around I created a customer reading plan and it to is there (empty).

Collections & Tags

What's the difference - First, I am curious what the practical difference is. You can search a Collection. You can search a Tag. It seems like the functionality could be combined and remove one of them so they don't both need to be set up. (Putting several thousand books into collections is daunting enough, to not want to have to do it again with tags.)

Choice of Tags - It would be nice if there was a drop down list when applying tags. I created a tag for "Science" to group a few resources. If I accidently started tagging with "Sciences" instead it would be a different tag and would search differently. As I use more tags it will be easy to forget my exact wording and have minor variations. A drop down list of my current tags would be nice.

Putting things into collections confusing - I wanted to create a collection "Science". I opened the Collections box and saw a list of books and "plus these resources", "minus these resources. I started a default collection with "Science" and dragged extra books into the "Minus" area. I figured the rest of the books would stay and typed "evolution" to add more books. Most of my original books were gone. I then started dragging my books into the "Plus" area to keep them in the collection. My questions/comments are these:

1. Does every book need to be dragged into the "Plus" area to be included in the collection? If so, there needs to be the ability to drag more than one at a time (I tried, but it won't allow it)

2. Is there a way to do layers of collections (or tags). For example, could I create a collection "Theology", then sub collections "Systematic Theologies", "God", "Bible", "Holy Spirit", etc.? If I search "Theology" it automatically searches all the sub collections as well.

3. What is the point of "Minus these resources"? If I don't drag them into "Plus these resources" isn't that the same as having them in "Minus these resources", is "Minus" just a way to remove items that are already in the collection? (In that case I see no need to store them in the "minus" section. Just remove them from "Plus".

Resource Size

It seems that V4 will keep our libraries updated with all resources. This will be nice on my desktop, but on my little netbook I would really like (even "need") to be able to be selective with what is installed. It has a 30G SSD and V4 is already using up most of the memory. If I am forced to have all my book files in the future I will either have to stop buying books or stop using Libronix on the netbook (which again, my decrease my purchases). When it is allowed I will store the books on a Thumb drive, but still, space is an issue.

These are some of my thoughts as I start using V4. I believe the program probably has ways to handle most of these functions, but they are not easy to understand for a new user. For me the most important ones are the ability to open a Bible from the passage Guide, having set locations where resources open so I don't have to readjust the layout each time and ease of collections management.

I am very excited about the program (as my wife can attest), these are just some ways I see room for improvement, especially for new users.

Rob

Computer

EePC 900 30G SSD and 1G Ram.

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Performance

Comments

Damian McGrath

> Slower when searching by tag - I did the same search for evolution only searching by tag "science" that I had put two books in just to play with tags. It took around 2 seconds. Not a problem, but it seemed strange that it would take 4 times as long to search two books as thousands.

> Slower when searching by collection - like with tags, it took longer to search a small collection for "evolution" than the whole library.

Bob has described the reasons for this elsewhere. Here, you are actually searching your whole library (the one big index) and then removing from the results all those that do not belong to the subset which you desire to search....

. Put a link to the Bible on the passage guide - The passage guide is supposed to organize the resources for studying a passage of scripture. The Bible is the most important resources that is needed to study the passage and yet there is no link to open a Bible.

This is very much needed. I quite often run a passage guide without having the bible open. You can save a layout with passage guide and bible but this will then overwrite any currently open books. There needs to be a section for bibles in the passage guide (the very first section)

Remove items from the top of the Home page - Things like "Preferred Bible" and "Lectionary" appear at the top of the Home Page. There needs to be an easy way to remove them. It seems "customize" should allow this, but it only allows rearranging them. I believe I saw a thread about how to remove them and I will look, but the point is it needs to be more userfriendly to remove them. In playing around I created a customer reading plan and it to is there (empty).

Apparently this much desired feature is not going to be made available. All we can do is shove them to the right so that they fall off the screen. Bob has promised more items to go in these slots that will apparently wow us all such that we will stop asking to be able to remove things.....

Putting things into collections confusing

I think almost everyone was confused by the whole Plus and minus thing.

You can use operators such as title:science AND title:evolution.

It seems that V4 will keep our libraries updated with all resources. This will be nice on my desktop, but on my little netbook I would really like (even "need") to be able to be selective with what is installed. It has a 30G SSD and V4 is already using up most of the memory. If I am forced to have all my book files in the future I will either have to stop buying books or stop using Libronix on the netbook (which again, my decrease my purchases). When it is allowed I will store the books on a Thumb drive, but still, space is an issue.

This also concerns me greatly. My netbook has a partitioned hard drive. I really want the ability not just to "hide" the resources but to delete them and not have them magically reappear.

Dave Hooton

> Bible Search never ending - I searched "All Bible" "All Passages" for "God" (I know it should have quite a few hits). After 5 minutes of searching I left the room and quit timing.

"All Passages" is generally OK. I searched a collection of 26 English bibles and it took TOO LONG.

Please look at this Logos!!

Dave Hooton

It seems that V4 will keep our libraries updated with all resources. This will be nice on my desktop, but on my little netbook I would really like (even "need") to be able to be selective with what is installed. It has a 30G SSD and V4 is already using up most of the memory. If I am forced to have all my book files in the future I will either have to stop buying books or stop using Libronix on the netbook (which again, my decrease my purchases). When it is allowed I will store the books on a Thumb drive, but still, space is an issue.

This also concerns me greatly. My netbook has a partitioned hard drive. I really want the ability not just to "hide" the resources but to delete them and not have them magically reappear.

Something I hadn't considered in my requests to Bob was smaller libraries for specific installations. The concept of "Hiding" envisages a single library for all installations and it should delete resources that are hidden as a logical consequence. But "cloud" resource management will automatically download resources that are "missing" because you arbitrarily/accidentally deleted them. Bob's position is quite clear:

I am listening, and I do get that you want to manage your files,
control disk space usage, identify missing resources, lookup the names
of resources by ID when they're reported licensed but not present, etc.
But the price of these power user features is an insanely expensive
amount of technical support.
Example: Many 3.x power users generate a report of their licenses
and files to see if they're missing any books. Then they try to get
from the FTP server or a disk. And when they can't find a resource,
they call or email. But some of the licenses in the system don't have
books -- they're for internal features or even for books that don't yet
exist, which we thought might be added (as a free bonus) to collections
retroactively. These calls/emails/etc. take a lot of time, and it's
hard to track down the answers. To which some users have suggested we
build a web site where you can lookup a license ID and get its
metadata. But that's even more code, more to explain, etc.

We spend roughly $300,000 per year supporting resource management
calls and emails. (Aside from all the other issues!) And most of those
users don't want to worry about it, or even to get more control; they
tell us they just want it to work.

So in this particular case (and some others) we are going to go with
the majority, and with the stats. We'll try to accomodate your requests
as best we can -- allowing hiding of resources in a "cloud-compatible"
way, for example -- but we just can't (or won't) support everything..

Netbooks came along after the L4 philosophy had been put in place and we know that is a concern of Bob's ....but the best I can suggest is that you hide resources so your library fits the Netbook (or other device with limited storage).

How does begging suit you .....

Dave Hooton

How does begging suit you .....

On second thoughts we need to know how the "cloud" will manage "insufficient disk space:-

1. during automatic downloads, and

2. during Index building

Case 1. might envisage an ongoing "downloading updates" status in the L4 icon but it should not invalidate the current installation

Case 2. also should not invalidate the current installation if a valid Index currently exists. The software should manage a situation in which more resources exist than are indexed, but current beta's simply continue with Indexing!

If a fresh installation is being attempted then you won't get a working L4 ...

But we need to see 1. and 2. being handled better than the current Beta's.

davidphillips

1. Does every book need to be dragged into the "Plus" area to be included in the collection? If so, there needs to be the ability to drag more than one at a time (I tried, but it won't allow it)

No. Collections are great, but do take a little getting used to There are two general ways to create a collection. The first is the "3.0 replication." To do this, open My Library and drag it into a pane in the main window of V4 (unfloat the window). Put My Library next to another pane where you are starting a new collection. Then find the books in My Library and drag them from My Library into the "Plus" area. This is an easy way to create smaller collections.

It's important to note, whenever you are done creating a collection you should close the collection window. Any changes you make to a collection will remain changes to that collection! It doesn't ask you to save your changes, it just does. This also means that whenever you want to start a new collection, click new! Currently "Collections" opens to an existing collection, and if you start typing, you'll start changing [:S]

2. Is there a way to do layers of collections (or tags). For example, could I create a collection "Theology", then sub collections "Systematic Theologies", "God", "Bible", "Holy Spirit", etc.? If I search "Theology" it automatically searches all the sub collections as well.

You can create subcollections by creating separate collections. See the second thread I've linked to below.

3. What is the point of "Minus these resources"? If I don't drag them into "Plus these resources" isn't that the same as having them in "Minus these resources", is "Minus" just a way to remove items that are already in the collection? (In that case I see no need to store them in the "minus" section. Just remove them from "Plus".

No. Again, an item doesn't need to be in "plus" these resources. you start a collection, every book that is listed on the screen is in your collection plus any books in the "plus" area and minus any in the "minus" area. So this brings us to the other way to create a collection. One of the cool things about 4.0 is the high level of tagging for books (and the fact that you can customize tagging for books!). So if you have your collection screen open, you'll notice that there is a "view" icon. Clicking that will list different "fields" for the books. You can right click in the field area and select which fields you want displayed (see the pictures below). Now, you can sort your library according to those fields. So perhaps you want Bibles. To add Bibles, you'd use the format type:bible. Or perhaps you want every book that doesn't include the word Lexicon. You'd use the format -title:lexicon (using the "-" sign simply indicates you don't want the following). You can also use the AND ANDNOT and OR operators to filter titles. In otherwords, you can create collections very quickly once you get the hang of it. There's been a long thread discussing this earlier, and it would be easier to look through that than have me repeat it all [:)]

Here are a few helpful threads to read on collections:

http://community.logos.com/forums/t/919.aspx?PageIndex=1

http://community.logos.com/forums/p/769/6693.aspx#6693

http://community.logos.com/forums/t/818.aspx?PageIndex=1

http://community.logos.com/forums/t/935.aspx?PageIndex=1

Robert

Thank you for the help and suggestions. I learned a lot and continue to explore.

Even if some of these features work well, it may be good to add some user-friendlyness/direction. Many people will give up on something without reading the Help files, even if the help files give a good explanation.

Robert

I love that V4 will download any missing resources, but also need to consider disk space. (I also understand Logos position on dealing with every individual about missing books.)

Would it be possible for us to have a place to mark books to not be downloaded (similar to hiding). The books could still be listed and unmarked (so people wouldn't have to contact Logos), but it would allow better library management.

Juanita

I love that V4 will download any missing resources, but also need to consider disk space. (I also understand Logos position on dealing with every individual about missing books.)

Would it be possible for us to have a place to mark books to not be downloaded (similar to hiding). The books could still be listed and unmarked (so people wouldn't have to contact Logos), but it would allow better library management.

Kind of like me "hiding" updates to Windows that I don't want to download for a good reason, and know are there. I'm wondering if this kind of control of disk space would also apply to upgrades of v. 4 which contain things like Sentence Diagramming, that I don't want on my system, but it is part of my package?

Rich DeRuiter

> Bible Search never ending - I searched "All Bible" "All Passages" for "God" (I know it should have quite a few hits). After 5 minutes of searching I left the room and quit timing.

Rob, it could be that some of your issue has to do with the limitations of your system.

I just did the above search and it took 5.5 seconds for 40 (English Bibles) [I get number this count by typing this in the Library search box: type:bible lang:english]. Displaying the text was almost immediate after the 5.5 seconds.

With the small drive and only 1GB RAM, you're trying to put a whole lot of data thru a small pipe. To use an analogy, you can have a pump (program) that can put out 1000 gal/min, but if you're using a garden hose (small amount of RAM, HD/SSD space), you're not going to get nearly that many gallons/minute, because your water pressure (system bus speed) does not change just because your volume changes (this is all about physics, and actually a bit more subtle than this - can you tell I"m a volunteer firefighter?).

What you're probably telling the Logos staff, and the rest of us, is that L4 doesn't work well on a net book - even though it meets most of the minimum system requirements (you don't have a P4, or equivalent processor in there - or am I wrong).This could be for a number of esoteric reasons, among which is over-all system bus speed (based on a combination of the bus speed of the motherboard, RAM, HD/SSD, video).

L4 is much more processor, HD and RAM intensive program than anything they've put out before. It seems to me to be a high-end program that works best with a high-end system.And let's face it, we've been asking for more power for a long time. Now we've got it, but it's unreasonable to expect the performance of a D9 Caterpillar from a Cooper Mini.

In addition to minimum spec's, I think Logos should publish 'preferred' system spec's; as in: "Logos version 4 is designed to run a system that meets or exceeds these specifications..." I suppose they will.

[Dell Studio XPS 435MT; Vista 64bit Home Premium (SP2); 6GB DDR3 RAM; 465GB free HD space on C:\; CPU: Intel i7-920 2.67GHz (8MB L3 cache); Video ATI Radeon HD 4850 (512MB)]

Robert

I just did the above search and it took 5.5 seconds for 40 (English Bibles) [I get number this count by typing this in the Library search box: type:bible lang:english]. Displaying the text was almost immediate after the 5.5 seconds.

Hi Rich (or someone else that may know how to do this since I am not sure if Rich is still looking at this thread),

Thank you for the reply and info on your search time. I just tried the same search type:bible lang:english and realized I don't know how to add the term "God"

I tried "type:bible lang:english God" and "God type:bible lang:english" (without the quotes), but it gave no hits. Can you give me the exact search phrase to copy to the search box?

Thank you,

Rob

Robert

1. Put a link to the Bible on the passage guide - The passage guide is supposed to organize the resources for studying a passage of scripture. The Bible is the most important resources that is needed to study the passage and yet there is no link to open a Bible.

There is already a section which gives the verse reference and allows adding a "title" or "Description". The reference could just be turned into a hyper link to open the Bible or have some other link on that bar to open the preferred Bible to the reference.

Robert Pavich

Rob,

I believe that the syntax is: [type:bible lang:english] God

The type and language needs to be in brackets.

I just did it and got a million hits in 3.4 seconds...but many were in "bible type" which doesn't necessarily mean "In a bible itself."

IF what you're looking for is the word "God" in your English bibles; I'd do it differently.

I'd make a collection of your English bibles, and then just type God as a basic search.

That will limit your results to the English language and just bible results.

That search yielded 74,000 results in 1.04 seconds in bibles only

NOTE: the words in brackets didn't change my whole library search results one iota! With our without the bible type and language I got the same number of hits!

davidphillips

Rob,

I also think that what Rich was saying wasn't that he searched his Bibles with that Syntax (though I think Bob is correct about how you would enter that syntax, using the [ ]'s, and even more correct about making a collection). Rather, what Rich was saying was he came to the conclusion that he was searching 40 english bibles by typing "type:bible lang:english" into my library. My system doesn't give results as quickly as Bob's or Rich's either, but it didn't take 5.5 minutes. Searching for "God" in "All passages" "All Bibles" returned 129,575 results in 34.25 seconds.

Rich DeRuiter

I tried "type:bible lang:english God" and "God type:bible lang:english" (without the quotes), but it gave no hits. Can you give me the exact search phrase to copy to the search box?

Sorry Rob, I should have been more clear. To get the number of English language Bibles in my L4 library I put the following in the Library Search dialog: "type:bible Lang:english."

To search for "God" in my Bibles I used the regular Search dialog and chose a Bible Search and searched "all passages" in "all Bibles" (I didn't restrict the search to English Bibles). I ran this search from the search dialog, without any parameters.

These were two separate searches, run from two different L4 modules.

Hope this is clear this time.

EDIT: It looks like some others jumped in as I was typing to clarify the same point.

Robert

Thank you guys. Sorry, I'm a bit slow on the Logos search operators and didn't quite catch it the first time. this time I understand.

I just did a basic search for

[type:bible lang:english] God

and received 1,623,800 hits in 32.38 seconds. A very reasonable time.

When I do the exact same search in the bible search, "Search Bible in All Bibles" I get a seemingly never ending search (I'm still waiting several minutes later... just shut down the search with no results). I understand that searching part of the library is slower than searching the whole, but it seems I should be able to search a Bible quickly. Perhaps they could be indexed separately since they have a separate search feature with the Bible search. this would speed up Bible searches since they wouldn't need to touch the larger index.

Note: I tried just searching "God" in the Bible search and received the same never ending search.

Action Point:

Perhaps Bibles could be indexed separately to speed up the Bible search feature since it wouldn't have to refer to the larger index at all.

Simon’s Brother

Resource Size

It seems that V4 will keep our libraries updated with all resources. This will be nice on my desktop, but on my little netbook I would really like (even "need") to be able to be selective with what is installed. It has a 30G SSD and V4 is already using up most of the memory. If I am forced to have all my book files in the future I will either have to stop buying books or stop using Libronix on the netbook (which again, my decrease my purchases). When it is allowed I will store the books on a Thumb drive, but still, space is an issue.

An excellent observation Rob and another reason why there actually needs to be user intervention in the resource management process. Even if the system where coded to handle the different amounts of available space, it could not actually make the determination of which resouces the user would want maintained on the smaller drive.

Simon’s Brother

Collections & Tags

What's the difference - First, I am curious what the practical difference is. You can search a Collection. You can search a Tag. It seems like the functionality could be combined and remove one of them so they don't both need to be set up. (Putting several thousand books into collections is daunting enough, to not want to have to do it again with tags.)

An excellent question Rob. I have to admit I am not as big a fan of user tagging as others but it does have its place, so it is good to have it all the same. One instance I found it useful was in creating a collection of study bible notes. There is not a simple collection query that you can use to drag all these resources in at once, due to differences in naming conventions and even in the type given to these resources, some are setup as monographs, others bible commentary and still othes bible notes so I use the tag: Study Bible Notes. I tagged everything I wanted to be in this collection.. Next to setup the collection it was as simple as giving it a name and usng the collection query: mytag:"Study Bible Notes".... now the beauty of this setup is that say next week I find a set of study bible notes I missed, or the ESV study bilbe notes are released next month, all I need to do is add the tag "Study Bible Notes" to this resource and it will be automatically included in the collection. You can add the tag straight from my library without evening needign to touch the colleciton and it will automatically become part of the collection.

Simon’s Brother

Collections & Tags

What's the difference - First, I am curious what the practical difference is. You can search a Collection. You can search a Tag. It seems like the functionality could be combined and remove one of them so they don't both need to be set up. (Putting several thousand books into collections is daunting enough, to not want to have to do it again with tags.)

Juanita

Resource Size

It seems that V4 will keep our libraries updated with all resources. This will be nice on my desktop, but on my little netbook I would really like (even "need") to be able to be selective with what is installed. It has a 30G SSD and V4 is already using up most of the memory. If I am forced to have all my book files in the future I will either have to stop buying books or stop using Libronix on the netbook (which again, my decrease my purchases). When it is allowed I will store the books on a Thumb drive, but still, space is an issue.

An excellent observation Rob and another reason why there actually needs to be user intervention in the resource management process. Even if the system where coded to handle the different amounts of available space, it could not actually make the determination of which resouces the user would want maintained on the smaller drive.

Please, tell me this is not so: "V4 will keep our libraries updated with all resources" and "if I am forced to have all my book files in the future". I am trying not to react to the idea of forced to have all my book files...and keep our libraries updated with all resources. Back to user control again and is there a clear statement by Logos. My husband says it smacks of Big Brother. And I keep defending why I use Logos. I can understand the idea of the book files I choose to have on my system and the book files I choose not to have on my system. But isn't that choice mine? And don't we all purchase collections or packages of book that are bundled and we realize that are resources we will not use? Can Logos please clarify. The reason I want to be even more selective of the books I leave on my hard drive is to reduce the time that it takes to index and that is another statement of user control. I feel controls are being taken away from me and I am not clear about which ones.

Simon’s Brother

Joan there is to be a yet implemented hide feature which allows you to hide a resource and it won't get downloaded from what I understand, but it seems to be an all or notihing approach, which Logos seems to be big on at the moment. It does not seem to cater for the situaion in which you might want a file on one system but not another and this is the point Rob was raising... the hide feature will allow you to remove it from all systems a different scenario.. hope that's all clear as mud now...this is a beta so its expected everything is not going to be there straight up but the waters are very murky as to what the final resource management system is going to look like and what user control there will be and whether or not that control will be all in or configurable per machine.

Damian McGrath

Joan there is to be a yet implemented hide feature which allows you to hide a resource and it won't get downloaded from what I understand, but it seems to be an all or notihing approach, which Logos seems to be big on at the moment.

Andrew,

It's not at all clear to me that the hide function does anything more than simply hide it from the library and searches. Some clarity on this would be good.

There definitely appears to be no way to keep a complete library on one computer and a smaller travelling library on another.

See: http://community.logos.com/forums/p/1154/9782.aspx#9782

Juanita

but it seems to be an all or notihing approach, which Logos seems to be big on at the moment. It does not seem to cater for the situaion in which you might want a file on one system but not another and this is the point Rob was raising... the hide feature will allow you to remove it from all systems a different scenario.. hope that's all clear as mud now...this is a beta so its expected everything is not going to be there straight up but the waters are very murky as to what the final resource management system is going to look like and what user control there will be and whether or not that control will be all in or configurable per machine.

Andrew, thanks for that. I am a classic minimalist-the less, the better, the simpler. So, in my case, I would want to pare down my library to just the books I use or think I might; same on both computers. The lack of clarity on this and other issues may be tolerable or even necessary at this date-only beta 3-hopefully, for new users sake, there will be clarity and help for them with the concepts of indexing, synching, updating, so they know what each is and how they operate. There is a level of commitment to the way Logos works that seems to come with the more resources you have, the longer you have used their software, the more interaction with Bob and others, and, thus, the more you value the software and you either can't or wouldn't, albeit you may at times feel like it, just walk away from it. New users won't have that commitment, IMHO. Thanks. I hope I have no more diatribes.[:D]