Most Important Logos 8 Bugs and Improvements for Academic/Seminary Users
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Thanks for the clarification ... I think we are in general agreement.
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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I think that can be better work to improve the mobile app as users would find it helpful to be able to access the mobile app with more features on the goal. For example, workflows and improve searching can be made as enhancements to the mobile app so as to beef up the mobile app.
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Michael S. said:
Works Cited.
What good is it if when I copy and paste from a resource, the works citation is not correctly formatted? It even lets you pick the format (Turabian, Chicago, etc..), why if it is not correctly formatted?
An absolute must - currently very inconsistent.
Shalom
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Kevin A Lewis said:
An absolute must - currently very inconsistent.
Shalom
I may be going off topic, but strictly speaking in some formats citing from an electronic source such as Logos has its own load of baggage. If FL cleans up the citation module, it may need to provide "paper citation" and "electronic citation" variants.
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Lee said:
it may need to provide "paper citation" and "electronic citation" variants.
I believe that just because a book has been digitized does not mean the citation changes (dependent upon the format of citation like MLA, Turabian, etc.). If I cite a page from the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, it does not matter if it is the paper copy or the digital copy- the citation should be the same.
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The bibliography tool is broken as well in the sense that when it is produced it makes multiple errors and cites works in an irregular and inconsistent manner.
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Michael S. said:
What good is it if when I copy and paste from a resource, the works citation is not correctly formatted? It even lets you pick the format (Turabian, Chicago, etc..), why if it is not correctly formatted?
On that note, when we're selecting which style to use, please don't just show Chicago, MLA, or whatever. Show us which edition of Chicago style or whatever style it is that the program is giving us as an option. Right now, that's only the case for SBL (because I personally asked on the forums that SBL 1 be kept as an option when SBL 2 came out).
It would be generally helpful, I think, for both the most recent edition of a citation style and at least the edition previous to it to be available in Logos/Verbum--some professors/institutions want the latest edition of whatever citation style the day it comes out; others don't switch for years. (A bit of Googling will show you that, for example, although the latest edition of Chicago is 17th, even the 15th edition is still used by plenty of for-students post-secondary citation guides and tools.)
Some kind of documented integration of desktop Logos/Verbum with Zotero, and potentially other free academic citation software, would be good, too.
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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In some styles, such as Chicago, it does matter, in theory. However, for Chicago, at least, one could ignore the fact that one consulted a particular work, such as the A(Y)BD, in Logos/Verbum rather than as a hard copy because all of the other citation information for any particular entry is identical. For other works, mostly ones that have been in the FL system for a long time, ignoring that is impossible because they lack page numbers or are otherwise meaningfully different from the paper edition.Michael S. said:
I believe that just because a book has been digitized does not mean the citation changes (dependent upon the format of citation like MLA, Turabian, etc.). If I cite a page from the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, it does not matter if it is the paper copy or the digital copy- the citation should be the same.Lee said:it may need to provide "paper citation" and "electronic citation" variants.
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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Doc B said:
I'd like a text comparison tool which would function with the addition of any manuscript, including original language fragments, codices, medieval texts, modern versions, etc.
I have said before and will say it again, whichever Bible software first implement a reliable way of doing this will (1) make a major contribution to the history of biblical studies and (2) attract many academics who will want to use this. This would be a big time game changer. If FL does not want to do it or does not care for the idea, then perhaps another competitor will do it first and FL (and us logos users) will really be sorry if that happens.
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Francis said:Doc B said:
I'd like a text comparison tool which would function with the addition of any manuscript, including original language fragments, codices, medieval texts, modern versions, etc.
I have said before and will say it again, whichever Bible software first implement a reliable way of doing this will (1) make a major contribution to the history of biblical studies and (2) attract many academics who will want to use this. This would be a big time game changer. If FL does not want to do it or does not care for the idea, then perhaps another competitor will do it first and FL (and us logos users) will really be sorry if that happens.
I'm a long way from being an expert in this area but it looks as though - assuming we have the specific resources in our libraries - that the Text Comparison tool does this
What am I missing?
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Graham Criddle said:
What am I missing?
First, it only works with a single common reference, not any two texts. Thus, one cannot compare parallel passages in synopses or find/analyse differences/similarities in wording in other passages. I could not, for instance, compare the Greek text of Josephus' Antiquities where it covers biblical events with the passages in the LXX that speak of the same.
Second, the tool only flags unidentical text. It does not have the ability to compare shared terminology such as variants of the same lemmas. As such it does not provide the ability to detect intertextuality in longer portions of text. Detecting possible relationships between ancient texts is a very important domain of scholarly inquiry.
Third, it is a limitation to work from a base text. For instance, if working with the Synoptic Gospels, one would want to have all relationships reflected (double-tradition, triple-tradition, special M, special L, etc.). Just as in colour-coded editions of the Synoptics, one would want the differences to use different visuals to highlight relationships between more than two texts.
The current tool is simply not built for scholarly work on manuscript/primary sources comparisons.
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Thanks Francis
Appreciated, Graham
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Graham Criddle said:
What am I missing?
In addition to what Francis said, it will only translate if the resource has an interlinear, and it will only work with tagged items (so it can't be easily used with the tool that looks at ancient manuscripts, for example). Some kind of OCR would fix this, but as I hinted, is asking a lot, especially if it is to work with Greek and Hebrew, and those miniscule texts that test the patience of museum curators.
But I agree with Francis' assertion this kind of feature would be a game-changer in the bible software industry.
Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.
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Francis said:
The current tool is simply not built for scholarly work on manuscript/primary sources comparisons.
I have reason to be interested in manuscript processors outside NT, OT manuscripts and, from the academic software I have seen shared, think that you are requesting what must be treated as separate tools. I believe that Faithlife is far more likely to make progress in this area, if we can break the functions that we want down and describe them more precisely. I feel strongly about this because the development of the Concordance stopped short of providing the features that were most useful in the academic software I suggested as a solid model.
- The first tool should work with any "versified" text i.e. the texts contain markers that say what portions of the texts are parallel. [this is basically what we have]
- A second tool that works with "any texts" may have the system suggest initial "markers" for what portions of the texts are parallel, but the user must be able to manually add/correct such markers including some of the more complex rearranging, editing, and expanding of the text. Only after such markers are determined can the texts be run through the "1 software".
- In order to identify variants of the same lemmas, one must first have the lemmas coded. "lemma" is a notoriously slippery element - so this must the lemma of a particular dictionary (or linguistic theory) for a particular language. While stemming routines are improving, this still requires manual adjustments and the building of exception tables, variant form tables etc.
- In many cases, in addition to 3 one must also adjust for different time periods and/or dialects think Coverdale Bible to NAMBRE or British/American editions of a modern translation. ...
- Comparison of unlike texts (LXX-Antiquities) is still a manual effort after "2 software" is accomplished ... some of the similarity/differences software might provide useful starting data - I've seen this used primarily in history and popular literature applications.
- Potential intertextuality is basically a giant fuzzy search - think a modified version of standard plagiarism software with the associated strengths and weakness
- To "not work from a base text" is perhaps better expressed as "reinteratively use different base texts" ,,, the is quite easily done for "1 software" but in referring to theory of Gospel development you are going a step further and asking for text/theory specific features ... of which there is no end of ...
You get the drift. A book Denise recommended A New Approach to Textual Criticism: An Introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (Resources for Biblical Study 80) Resources for Biblical Study Tommy Wasserman, Peter J. Gurry in an odd way overlaps with what you are requesting.
Or another way of putting it, you are asking for a comparative text analysis package far ahead of any I have seen from the major research institution sites.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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Two items were particular annoyances for me. First, in the mobile app, entering Greek or Hebrew text into the user input fields of workbooks never seemed to work correctly. I ended up having to type my answers into a word processor, then copy and paste them into the workbook - this was a major time sink. Second, while I appreciated being able to select the citation format, one annoyance was that when I quoted a resource and copied the text into Word, I couldn't control whether it gave me a full footnote appropriate for the first reference, or an abbreviated footnote appropriate for subsequent references. It would have been really, really helpful if there had been a smart way to indicate whether I wanted a full footnote, an abbreviated footnote, or a bibliography entry.
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Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
During the next six months, we plan to make some improvements to Logos 8 for academic and seminary users with an emphasis on original language study.
I'm really happy to hear this! Here's my list:
- Search
- Create a full search builder that makes it easy for non-power users to construct accurate, complex searches
- Simplify the search syntax (most useful for the command-line approach)
- Also, auto-complete search syntax elements
- Also, highlight syntax errors
- Hebrew
- Independent affix highlighting
- Vowel pattern searching
- Fix BBHG (involves the addressing the bigger Unicode encoding problem)
- Notes
- Hebrew (RTL) support (switch text direction and alignment based on keyboard selection).
- Note categories/content type.
- Content Styles
- Put auto citations at bottom of note with an intervening line (this should be a style).
- increment footnote number (currently each one stays at “1”)
- Ability to link to another specific document like a canvas
- Keystroke to navigate to the tag field
- Speed (important to mitigate the disparity with a competing software often used and promoted by profs!)
- Provide setting to delay sync during startup. Most college/seminary students will be operating primarily on a single laptop machine. Starting up as if offline will drastically reduce startup time. Sync can happen later, once everything has settled down.
- Optimize the context menu and Info panel for poor network conditions and other speed bottlenecks.
- Misc
- Hebrew support in Canvas (there are many other threads asking for this as well)
- Allow individual instances of a Bible to display a filter (consider the case of propositional outlines).
- Allow different RI lines to be displayed in the OT vs NT.
- Make RI font size independent of resource font
- Allow Concordance on Series/Collections
- Bugs
- Inaccurate/Incomplete Morph Charts [link1, link2, link3, link4]
- UI bugs in the Syntax search window [scroll issue, checkbox scaling, alignment]
- Cantillation search bugs [Text Segment Lemma, Visual Word Lang, AND/OR Logic]
- RI options inconsistent [RI menu design]
- New Note button doesn’t see text in Courses Tool [will link here later]
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Reuben Helmuth said:
- Search
- Create a full search builder that makes it easy for non-power users to construct accurate, complex searches
- Simplify the search syntax (most useful for the command-line approach)
- Also, auto-complete search syntax elements
- Also, highlight syntax errors
- Hebrew
- Independent affix highlighting
- Vowel pattern searching
- Fix BBHG (involves the addressing the bigger Unicode encoding problem) although I'm more interested that the upcoming new edition has the formatting finesses
- Bugs
- Inaccurate/Incomplete Morph Charts [will link here later]
- UI bugs in the Syntax search window [will link here later]
- Cantillation search bugs [Text Segment Lemma, Visual Word Lang, AND/OR Logic]
[Y] [Y] [Y]
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I was reminded today that one of the biggest improvements I think you could make to reverse interlinear support is to tag all the different versions with sense data, and to add tagging to the Textus Receptus.
It would be very powerful to be able to search and find out which translations followed which manuscripts and made similar interpretations.
Rick Brannan agrees: https://community.logos.com/forums/p/163312/966213.aspx#966213
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Adam Olean said:
Phil, I'm grateful that you and Faithlife will be working on improvements in these areas. Here are a few ideas:
And here are several more (sometimes echoing other requests in this thread):
Hebrew, Fonts, and Formatting
- Add a toggle feature for displaying Hebrew vowel-pointing and diacritics.
- Add paragraph layout/formatting to editions of the Hebrew-Aramaic Scriptures/OT, especially those that include such a layout in their print and/or electronic editions (e.g., BHS, BHQ, BHW, etc.).
- Reduce excessive/disproportionate Hebrew-Aramaic font sizes in resources. This formatting issue is particularly bad in some resources. I'm not sure that BHQ is the worst offender and I realize that it will vary depending on one's setup (e.g., monitor, display settings, and fonts), but the default setting is HUGE compared to LHB, for instance. With my current setup, I currently have BHQ set to the smallest font setting and leave LHB at the default (or third setting/notch). (BHQ has other significant formatting and editorial issues, as I mentioned previously.)
- Finer font-size gradients (desktop, mobile, and web). Because individual users, user setups, and resource-layouts are not identical, it's necessary to offer users the tools for achieving the most comfortable and readable settings. A large and rich digital library like Logos should, and usually does, offer some of the best font and page display settings. When it comes to font sizes, however, I currently find that some of the most basic, free programs allow me to select readily from a much wider and fuller range of font sizes and to find the best one with ease.
Other Features
- Add Text Comparison functionality for other ancient texts, transcriptions, editions, and translations (e.g., ANE, Second Temple, Roman, Greek, Hellenistic, Mishnaic, Rabbinic, Patristic, etc.). I realize that this would be easiest to implement where there's already a shared reference system (e.g., chapter and versification). Tagging additional texts would be worthwhile for important background texts. It could potentially be extended to other key sources and works throughout history. (Compare this request with the above discussion between Francis and MJ. Smith.)
Resources
- Acquisitions
- Cambridge Greek Lexicon (forthcoming, 2019)
- Early Rabbinic (or Mishnaic) Hebrew and Aramaic sources (i.e., in their original languages).
- Hebrew New Testament by Franz Delitzsch. This significant and useful translation is in the public domain. Seems like a no-brainer!
- Updates
- Emanuel Tov's The Parallel Aligned Hebrew-Aramaic and Greek Texts of the Jewish Scripture. I recall that the Logos edition is outdated.
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Adam Olean said:
Hebrew New Testament by Franz Delitzsch. This significant and useful translation is in the public domain. Seems like a no-brainer!
[Y][Y][Y]
This translation is so much better!
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Adam Olean said:
- Hebrew Audio Bible.
- (Restored) Koine Greek Pronunciation Audio Bible (and Church Fathers, "LXX", Josephus's Jewish Wars, etc.). A couple scholars who are capable of this would be Randall Buth and Benjamin Kantor from the Biblical Language Center. Benjamin Kantor is producing Koine Greek audio and video resources at an impressive rate on KoineGreek.com.
[Y]
Gold package, and original language material and ancient text material, SIL and UBS books, discourse Hebrew OT and Greek NT. PC with Windows 11
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One thing that has always irritated me when using Logos is that in most programs when I double click a word that word becomes selected, but in Logos it brings up a dictionary entry, even for English words. I rarely want to see the definition of an English word, but double clicking on a word is part of my habituaI process when Icopy and paste, which I do from Logos frequently.
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The ability to have multiple sets of resource linking in the mobile version would be helpful.
Integrated citation manager (like an import of Zotero) so that all non-logos sources could be stored in a database and annotated by the user from within the program (basically a souped up version of Nota Bene).
The ability for users to create custom citation schemes or to override citation output on specific resources.
The ability to track annotations of non Logos PDFs and ePubs (not importing material, but allowing for ebook management and annotations similar to Calibre).
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Adam Olean said:
- Reduce excessive/disproportionate Hebrew-Aramaic font sizes in resources. This formatting issue is particularly bad in some resources. I'm not sure that BHQ is the worst offender and I realize that it will vary depending on one's setup (e.g., monitor, display settings, and fonts), but the default setting is HUGE compared to LHB, for instance. With my current setup, I currently have BHQ set to the smallest font setting and leave LHB at the default (or third setting/notch). (BHQ has other significant formatting and editorial issues, as I mentioned previously.)
- Finer font-size gradients (desktop, mobile, and web). Because individual users, user setups, and resource-layouts are not identical, it's necessary to offer users the tools for achieving the most comfortable and readable settings. A large and rich digital library like Logos should, and usually does, offer some of the best font and page display settings. When it comes to font sizes, however, I currently find that some of the most basic, free programs allow me to select readily from a much wider and fuller range of font sizes and to find the best one with ease.
Font sizes of Greek and Hebrew resources is definitely something that could be improved upon. I would suggest the following two changes along the lines of what Adam mentioned:
1. Unify the size of Hebrew and Greek fonts across resources, especially Bibles. As mentioned, some are much larger than others for no apparent reason.
2. In the settings, allow us to adjust the default size (or scaling) for each font. I would like to be able set my Hebrew and Greek font to 120% size by default, while my English font stays at 100%, for example.
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Line-spacing in mixed Hebrew/English is very distracting.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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I would like to see different layouts as tabs at the top of the work space. It would be very helpful to be able to change layouts like clicking on tabs in a web browser. For example in a browser one can go to different pages by clicking on tabs, in Logos it would be helpful while studying to have tabs that changed to different layout.
not sure if this was super relavent to the thread? But hope it will be considered!
Thank you,
JD
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JD Wilhite said:
I would like to see different layouts as tabs at the top of the work space. It would be very helpful to be able to change layouts like clicking on tabs in a web browser.
Welcome to the forums. I suspect that this could be very helpful for some professors using Logos in the classroom.
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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Mark Barnes said:
I was reminded today that one of the biggest improvements I think you could make to reverse interlinear support is to tag all the different versions with sense data, and to add tagging to the Textus Receptus.
I know we've done some work in this area (LN & sense tagging of TR variant units) but I'm not sure of how or when it will be released. I'll check, though.
Rick Brannan
Data Wrangler, Faithlife
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Rick Brannan (Faithlife) said:
I know we've done some work in this area (LN & sense tagging of TR variant units) but I'm not sure of how or when it will be released. I'll check, though.
That's good news!
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Instead of a footnote saying "Ibid" which makes it very difficult to locate the original source, could they all refer to the full resource? Given the size/type/colour of the preceding footnotes, it can make for a difficult hunt for the first resource note. This is especially true in that using Logos we are skipping between many resources and not reading each one from the beginning.
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