My Problem with Factbook

I recently started using Factbook. I had tried before and gave up. But now again, I run into what I call "Problems with Factbook"....

1. Look up an item in Factbook and you will get a listing of what I call "the world view" of that item. Factbook will through everything about that item at you and list it out for you. Then you, as I have to, will have to "wade through all the weeds" to maybe find out about the item you want and most likely in the process to "unhide" some of the grouped data points it brings up by clicking on the "More" or "greater than sign (>)" to see and hunt some more. This causes me, in my mind anyway, to think of Factbook as being a "make work" function... that I go to when I want to stop studying and start digging to find more information. In that regard, I see it as a hindrance to my study and thus stop using it completely. Maybe it was never meant to be a function to go to to get quick information?

In all that Factbook becomes an avenue of "a starting point in research" because of having to do more research when I "think" Factbook should cull some of that out already.

Maybe a kind of solution would be that when I do single click on a word to go to Factbook, that I get a drop down of choices about the word and be able to chose from the choice about the direction I wish to go. And some how this "drop down menu" would be based upon the user created tags I created in Factbook.

2. Tags I create for Factbook are lost in all the "world view" that Factbook throws at me. I would love to see in the Factbook choices an item such as " Tags by me only" whereby when checked, Factbook would only show or deal with tags I have created for Factbook. To me, that would cut down on the "weeds" that Factbook brings up when I search for something.

I know others will have some more/better ideas. I would love to see them.

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Comments

Graham Criddle

1. Look up an item in Factbook and you will get a listing of what I call "the world view" of that item. Factbook will through everything about that item at you and list it out for you.

I'm not sure I follow - below is a screenshot of the last thing I happened to be looking at in Factbook

There are a range of sections and I can choose the one I am interested in to see what it says. I find this useful - in what way does it "make work" or am I missing your point?

2. Tags I create for Factbook are lost in all the "world view" that Factbook throws at me. I would love to see in the Factbook choices an item such as " Tags by me only" whereby when checked, Factbook would only show or deal with tags I have created for Factbook. To me, that would cut down on the "weeds" that Factbook brings up when I search for something.

Again I don't understand this.

When we apply a Factbook tag we are linking a word in a book to a Factbook article - so it is simply a way of adding additional tagging to what is provided out of the box by Logos. I don't see how it "cuts down on the weeds" - please clarify.

xnman

After reading what I posted, I understand your confusion... suffice it for me to say...I do think that if I click on a word in my bible that if it was to have a drop down menu for Factbook of some hierarchy choices that I think it would help.

Mark Barnes (Logos)

I know others will have some more/better ideas. I would love to see them.

We're thinking a lot about Factbook at the moment, so I'd love to see them too. Lots of our thinking tracks quite closely to yours, xnman, which is encouraging.

Morgan

It sounds like your issue may not be with the Factbook, but the context menu? When you right click on your bible you get that pop-up menu with a large amount of data that you have to hunt through and then decide what to do with it (search it, open in Factbook, etc.)

Maybe you'd like to use the Information tool with Other References added which then has it's own settings for things you can hide or reveal.

Graham Criddle

It sounds like your issue may not be with the Factbook, but the context menu? When you right click on your bible you get that pop-up menu with a large amount of data that you have to hunt through and then decide what to do with it (search it, open in Factbook, etc.)

I was thinking about the context menu in relation to this as lots of options on the left of that menu provide the ability to go to different Factbook articles

xnman - is this the sort of thing you are talking about, the ability to tap into different parts of the Factbook depending on what you are interested in?

Or were you thinking about something else?

(Let's leave aside whether the user experience of right-click, choose the option and select Factbook is ideal - I'm more trying to understand the data options you are interested in)

xnman

Understand, I just started using Factbook about a week or so ago. I only got into Factbook because I found out from Graham that I can create my own tags in it. That, I am excited about. But in all that, I am a "low experienced user" of Factbook and as such have not been through all that it can do.

And I am still hoping others will chime in to give their thoughts about Factbook also.

But... I look at Logos Search and Factbook as two different functions, wrong or right. To some extent, Search should give me everything it can find on the item searched for (under the hierarchy I choose) which I hope can be narrows a bit. Factbook, at least in my mind should be more precise in what it returns to me.

For example.... in 1Tim 2:1, there is a word "bishop". In my ideology or mindset, as I read the bible, in my understanding, a bishop, elder, a pastor, an overseer, a shepherd are all the same function in the church, the qualities or qualifications of which are given in 1 Timothy 2:1-7 and Titus 1:1-4 which apply to all those men.

So when I click on one of those words listed above in the N.T. then Factbook should maybe come up with where each of those words are in the bible, maybe meaning of how each word is used. That would make Factbook more of a precise search than it is now.

I thought, wrong or right, that maybe when I click on the word "bishop" to maybe have a drop down menu show whereby I could choose: 1. Meaning of the word 2. Where all it is used in the bible. 3. Where it is used in my library. 4. My personal tags for the words listed above.

In my mind, after I build my tags for the above, then Factbook would definitely be something I could click on a word and get more precise information about that word within the confines of how I use the bible in my ideolog.

One of the problems with Search and Factbook is that it's trying to be a "do all" for all the different ideologies that use it. That's why we get pages and pages of "stuff" when we use functions like Search or Factbook. I think one way of narrowing the "pages" down is the creation of personal tags... which I was excited to find out about in Factbook. With tags, it appears to me at least, that I can now "personalize" what Factbook gives back to me when I click on one of the words I have tagged. Especially if there is some sort of drop down menu when I click on a word.

I know, I know... it's a start of a dream. But remember, I live a lot in "my own dream world"!!! [8-|]

MJ. Smith

But... I look at Logos Search and Factbook as two different functions, wrong or right. To some extent, Search should give me everything it can find on the item searched for (under the hierarchy I choose) which I hope can be narrows a bit. Factbook, at least in my mind should be more precise in what it returns to me.

I agree that these are two separate functions. However, I think of Search as being able to be narrowed down to laser precision while Factbook is the generic Almanac view.

As I see it, the intent of Factbook tags is for the user to be able to include in the results books that have not been tagged by Logos i.e. primarily for upgrading readers' editions. Therefore, I'm having a bit of a problem seeing what you are trying to get in your personalization of Factbook. There are a number of personalizations of Factbook that I do support, but my problems with Factbook are more in the incomplete nature of many of the entry making it unpredictable whether or not going to Factbook is worth the effort.

I'm starting to wonder if many of your issues with Logos could be solved but simply being able to restrict the resources used i.e. setting a limit of 5 lexicons per language, 10 commentaries per Bible book, etc. where your priorities determining which lectionaries and which commentaries are used ... that should avoid the overwhelming volume of results as well as allow one to deliberately bias the results to one's own theology.

Graham Criddle

This is a really helpful response - I'll try and offer some perspectives.

But... I look at Logos Search and Factbook as two different functions, wrong or right. To some extent, Search should give me everything it can find on the item searched for (under the hierarchy I choose) which I hope can be narrows a bit. Factbook, at least in my mind should be more precise in what it returns to me.

In my mind, after I build my tags for the above, then Factbook would definitely be something I could click on a word and get more precise information about that word within the confines of how I use the bible in my ideolog.

At the moment what you are describing isn't how the software is designed to work - which might be contributing to some of the disappointment I think you are having with it.

Search is intended to find every occurence of a search term - and this can be constrained in various ways - whereas Factbook is designed to provide general information about a particular item and cannot be modified by us as users.

Adding Factbook tags does not provide a way to modify the information the Factbook returns - rather it provides a way of linking existing Factbook entries to words you come across in books.

You seem to be looking for some sort of mechanism to customise information returned from Logos tools - and this is currently done in Guides as opposed to the Factbook Tool.

For example.... in 1Tim 2:1, there is a word "bishop". In my ideology or mindset, as I read the bible, in my understanding, a bishop, elder, a pastor, an overseer, a shepherd are all the same function in the church, the qualities or qualifications of which are given in 1 Timothy 2:1-7 and Titus 1:1-4 which apply to all those men.

So when I click on one of those words listed above in the N.T. then Factbook should maybe come up with where each of those words are in the bible, maybe meaning of how each word is used. That would make Factbook more of a precise search than it is now.

I thought, wrong or right, that maybe when I click on the word "bishop" to maybe have a drop down menu show whereby I could choose: 1. Meaning of the word 2. Where all it is used in the bible. 3. Where it is used in my library. 4. My personal tags for the words listed above.

This is an interesting example

I'm using the word in 1 Tim 3:2 (as it has more tags than in 1 Tim 3:1) and you can see it has two Factbook tags - and I show the entry associated with the second one in the right. In the translated as section you can see all the Greek terms that have been tagged with that Factbook tag and where they appear in the biblical text.

Alternatively you could run a search on the term from the right-click context menu to find every occurrence

And you could customize this search if you wish - choosing to search in a set of Bibles of your choice or within a particular range - such as the Pauline Epistles.

Alternatively you could use a different option in the context menu and just search for places where the same "sense" (another Logos tag) is present

We can't control this type of tagging associated with the words in the text but we can choose how we make use of them.

Alternatively you might come across a Factbook article that you think is helpful in understanding the term - such as Christian elder - which hasn't been added as a Factbook tag to the word. But you see it has a useful link to the Bible Sense Lexicon which shows where words with this meaning are present. You could add this as a Factbook Tag to the word to make it easily accessible to you

And this goes back, I think, to the idea you raised above

With tags, it appears to me at least, that I can now "personalize" what Factbook gives back to me when I click on one of the words I have tagged. Especially if there is some sort of drop down menu when I click on a word.

If the word has multiple Factbook tags supplied by Logos you can click it to open another panel listing those terms allowing you to choose which Factbook article you want

We can't do that with tags that have supplied by users but they can be selected from the context menu which allows the required article to be accessed

And as an alternative to all of the above have you thought about using one of the Guides - such as a Topic Guide - which might provide a good starting point for exploring particular themes. You can customize these Guides so they only show the sections you are interested in

Please note I am not suggesting that all of this is perfect - as Mark noted above this is an area Logos is looking at closely - but I wanted to try and explain a bit more how things work out at the moment in order to provide some options. And maybe to help explore how things could be improved.