User tagging of topics kept simple

Francis

I've been trying to find a good solution to my tagging needs for quite a while. I struck up and picked up interesting discussions along the way. The following is an attempt to share one approach without the clutter of full-fledged discussions that can be confusing.

What I wanted was simply being able to select some text anywhere (Bible, books), tag it with one or several topics and then be able to find what I tagged with these topics easily. Though some seem to disagree, I find that labels lacked the immediacy I was looking for (though they are more powerful for other purposes). Tags are way simpler and fast: type, press enter, that's it (steps 2 an 3 below).

So just sharing where I landed that actually works for those looking for a simpler tagging solution. Tagging is strictly just steps 2 and 3. 1 is preparatory, 4 is finding tagged texts.

1. First time only: create a dedicated notebook. Your tags will be hosted in notes. Having a dedicated notebook can be useful to prevent accidental deletion of a note that looks empty because you only used it to tag and did not put any content in the body of the note. Another option would be to add something like "Tag" at the top of the otherwise empty note body to remind yourself that it is a tag entry.
2. Select the text you want to tag and add a note to that notebook. You don't need an icon and a highlight if all you want is finding the place where the tagged text starts. Personally I find it more useful to select all the relevant text unless it is a full chapter or a full section. In the latter case, I can just add something like "full chapter" to the body of the note or another description of the range (e.g., pp. 221-223) or use an anchor if possible and convenient for that text. For my part I find a sideline style an elegant way to mark the relevant section without adding clutter that visually distracts from reading. You can design that in the highlighting tool, choosing the color and thickness you like. Later, when you retrieve a tagged text, you can use the Notes menu of the resource to toggle on or off the tag notebook highlight to easily see what selection of text you have tagged. The easiest way to tag a selection of text is from the context menu. Select the text in the resource, open the context menu, use "Selected text" on the left side of the context menu, and then find your Notebook under Notes in the right side of the context menu. It's fast and easy.
3. Add tags in the field at the bottom of the empty note. Just type and press enter for each tag you want. You can add as many as you find useful. You will want to use "mytag:nameoftag" in the Docs search window to find your tagged content. Experiment with tag formatting to find what works and what does not. My initial impulse was to create tag like index titles (e.g., "Jesus, obedience"). There is a case to be made for using "Jesus" as one tag and "Obedience" as a second tag instead. This means that if you want to use the filter bar in the Notes tool, you will be able to find that note under one word or the other. Plus you don't have to decide whether it should be "Jesus, obedience" or "Obedience, Jesus" and end up with possibly both in your tag list.
4. As needed: find your tagged content from Doc search. Just use mytag:tagname (no space after mytag:). You can use operators such as mytag:(Jesus AND obedience). The text you created the tag note from is automatically anchored in the Notes tool. Click on any entry you want to see, then on the anchor to be taken to that text. Toggle on the Notes highlight in the resource if you want.
   

Why I prefer it to…

• Community tags: I don't want to be constrained by others' tagging choices and it's too chaotic.
• Factbook tags: I don't want to be constrained by Logos' idea of how to structure topics.
• Labels: I don't want to fiddle with the label dialog and have to fill out several fields each time.

Rick Ausdahl

Looks like a nice system, Francis. Thanks for sharing it.

Francis

Some screenshots to illustrate what I described above.

Step 2:

Step 3: the right notebook was already selected, so one can choose a style if wanted and just type in the tags at the bottom (click enter to validate each tag).

Search in Docs: from left to right, the search itself, clicking on a result to open the note, clicking on the anchor of the note to open the tagged text in its resource, activating the show notes and highlights to display the style I applied to identify the text tagged.

Beloved Amodeo

@Francis and @Rick Ausdahl I'm impressed with the simplicity and how it just all works. Thanks for sharing!

1Cor10 31

Tags are super simple, I agree.

I am like you - don't use labels, though it was because my brain couldn't figure it out.

I use tags a lot, but always use an icon. This doesn't involve any effort because whatever you did with the previous Note will automatically be carried over. So if you use an Icon with a particular color to make a Note, then going forward all the Notes will have the same Icon with the same Color. Having an Icon helps me visually know that I have made a Note when I am reading a resource.

My default Notebook is "NO TOPICS", so all my Notes automatically go into this unless I decide a Tag deserves into one of the topic-specific Notebooks. The advantage of having Topic-specific notebooks is that it allows me organize the order of Notes within the Notebook.

Overall, Tags is a tool that I widely use every day.