My Biggest Annoyance with the Atlas

Donovan R. Palmer

There's a lot that we have said about the Atlas, which I won't post about again. My biggest annoyance is it could be more user friendly in helping me find a location.

In my work flow this morning, I was reading 2 Chron 16:1, and I decided to open Factbook to refresh my memory about the context of Ramah. Factbook very conveniently pulls up some dictionary articles which I scan. So far so good. Then in media, I click an image of the first map.

I squint and search for Ramah, thinking it is north near Tyer, but I don't see it. Maybe I am wrong. So I click command F (Mac) and to see if it pops up. It does, but I need to zoom in on it. Wait, the Find box is blocking the zoom controls.

So I close the box to get to the zoom controls, but the marker on the map disappears. I mentally hold in my mind where it is and, I click zoom and I can see the location on first click. However, in some cases, I have started to do this and I have had to do the find again to reorient the marker so that I can continue to zoom down.

Does anyone else experience this behaviour? Is there a better workaround? I consistently have to use Command-F to find my location of interest in the Atlas. The Find box also blocks the zoom controls. Would it be possible that when I click media that the software could automatically highlight the location and set the appropriate zoom level for me to continue my studies?

I really hope with the new subscription model we might see some badly needed TLC given to the Atlas. I sometimes still use Accordance's Atlas because it is so much more refined, efficient, intuitive and capable than this.

For example, in 2 Chronicles 16:3, it says they 'carried away the stones of Ramah and its timber, which Baasha had been building, and with them he built Geba and Mizpah.' I tried to figure out the distance between Ramah and these locations, but finally gave up because of the friction. Want activate an overlay to a modern map? I could go on.

Frank Sauer

I right clicked Ramah - opened Factbook - clicked on the map which opened Atlas and I was able to see Ramah fine.

Non-subscriber, Logos 10 FFS, Logos 37.2 on Windows 11

Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell

Same here, no issues, although, I had to scroll in a bit to see it.

Logos Pro, 37.2 on Windows as well.

Donovan R. Palmer

Thank you @Frank Sauer and @Carmen Gauvin-O'Donnell That's helpful to know that the zooming is machine (and possibly resolution or OS) specific! 🕷️

DMB

Donovan, I was not so lucky as you (or the others). First, I opened Factbook for Ramah (instead of 2Chr etc). I selected the one near Asher (instead of the one blocking Jerusalem, but that's ok). A series of maps appeared. Good. I selected the best one and popped it to full-window, Then I did the 'Find' on the map window. At that point, it then opened a Bible Dictionary in another window, and found Ramah.

As it turns out, my Verbum is set to no-web. I'm not sure why the app doesn't want to let me know. But that's ok … it's Faithlife. And I'm not going to re-start Verbum (required on the Mac) just to not see Ramah.

Donovan R. Palmer

This is where an archaeological data set would be cool. Is there anything relevant to my drilling around on these three locations that would aid my enquiry? Of course, I can go manually digging for them, but if it could be integrated into the Factbook and Atlas, that could be cool.

Dave Hooton

@Donovan Palmer

In my work flow this morning, I was reading

2 Chron 16:1

, and I decided to open Factbook to refresh my memory about the context of Ramah. Factbook very conveniently pulls up some dictionary articles which I scan. So far so good. Then in media, I click an image of the first map.

Right click Ramah and select the Place (Ramah of Benjamin) in the Context menu. Select Atlas on the other side and Atlas opens centered on that place.

Donovan R. Palmer

@Dave Hooton

That is a good work around for this bug. It appears in my set up if I go to Atlas in that method, it pulls up the location and orients the screen properly, as opposed to going through Factbook. It is more mouse clicks, but it works! Plus, I can go to Factbook from the Atlas as well.

Gold star. ⭐️ Thanks!