Please Share a Resource Association or Workspace

Chris Ease

I have tried setting up different workspaces for different things and I have learned some things from trial and error as well as videos and Morris Proctor's tips.  I would like to ask or encourage Logos users to share their favorite Logos workspace and how they chose the association to go along with the workspace.

For Example:

 I like to have a commentary open with a bible linked to the "a" chain as well as TSK open in the "a" chain.  At the same time, I have another bible open that is selected as a target and linked to a "b" chain with a commentary open in the "b" chain.  The commentaries I am using are duplicate in that I am using Bible believers commentary.  I also use the visual filters, set at 50%, for summarization on the commentaries (highlighted yellow).  My 6th window open is keylink summary and it has no chain, but the target is enabled so I can right click on any of the other and get immediate feedback, whether its English, Greek, or Hebrew.

So, for me, the point is I have a bible linked to a commentary thats linked to treasury of scriptural knowledge.  When I want to cross reference using TSK, I pick a scripture from there, enabling the second bible to jump to that location as well as the second commentary.  The keylink summary is just the "ace kicker" for dictionary or lexical purposes.

As far as resource association, I typically put most bibles together, most study bibles together, etc....

Thanks

Dave Hooton

Hi Chris

Resource Associations work independently of workspaces (WS), so the only entities that are unique to a WS are resources, links, reports and (custom) toolbars. The latter add character to a WS as you can have a toolbar to open certain resources or run specific reports and searches. Save the workspace when you have setup your custom toolbars.

Jim Dean

Hi, Chris:

I was planning on laying this all out in a neat organized way with examples and so forth, but I just don't have enough time available now to do it justice.  So, please forgive the stream-of-consciousness explanation that follows.

The construction and use of RA's is one of the very powerful, but also very muddy areas of Libronix ... it has been for a long time ... and the USER is responsible to manage it.  I had a long discussion w/Bob about this while on the cruise to Alaska - some time ago - and still the problems remain.

Nutshell is:  you need to make sure that there are NO OVERLAPS in Parallel Resource Associations.  That is, if resource A is in PRA X, then resource A should not be in any other PRA Y.  Similarly, for Serial RA's ... it's a baaaad idea to try to include resource A in more than one SRA.

Sometimes it might seem to work to break these rules ... but if you exercise the app hard enough, you will discover cases where Libronix just plain gets confused about where it's at ... and you end up in never-never land with some resource popping up that YOU did not put in your list. 

It all has to do with "mapping" and "pointers" (thus speaketh the old-fogey programmer).  And afaik, there is no safe way around it EXCEPT to follow the rules I listed above.

Note:  this means that you may (read "probably") have to uninstall some other SRA's or PRA's that came with Libronix (or from Morris).  You need to either NOT USE RA's at all (no fun!), or you need to build your own world.

I'm assuming in this discussion that you are setting up PRA's for the purpose of using the right and left arrow-keys to hop to comparable resources within a given pane.  If you're doing that, and you happen to "hit" a resource in the current PRA that is ALSO in some other PRA ... then Libronix tosses the dice and decides where IT wants to go, with the next arrowkey hit.  And murphy dictates it's more often than not where you DIDN'T want to go.  And, once you get off in that other PRA (maybe one that you did not even build!), then there's no arrow-key method of getting back - you just have to manually open the correct resource using Library or Go or whatever.

Re Serial RA's - I've used this tool a LOT, to build "composite whole-Bible commentaries" from disparate partial collections.  I've created 31 total commentary "sets" that are all unique, so far.  Simpler SRA's can be used to link OT and NT lexicons, etc.  Again, the RULE is that you must make sure that NO resource is in more than one SRA.  It is OK ... very useful, in fact, for a resource to be in one SRA and one PRA..

There's another gotcha in the SRA realm.  This has to do with the internal mapping of pointers from bible chap/vs boundaries into the reference books themselves.  Some (most) ref books handle this lickety-split ... even if you have a couple dozen tabs open in one pane and all linked together (I do this a lot).  HOWEVER, there are a few resources which move like turtles stuck in molasses, for some reason, if they are made a part of an SRA such as I described earlier.  If you create a tab with a composite-SRA-commentary that happens to include one or more of these lazy-turtle resources in it, and LINK that tab to others that normally are nice and snappy, then the entire group moves like the turtle.

My only solution to this has been to create a workspace for the turtles that is separate from the one for the rabbits.  I have one workspace with 25 "fast" full-bible commentaries (some of them SRA's) all pre-opened and linked in tabs (plus some other stuff).  Works like a charm.  Then I have a separate workspace with 6 "slow" full-bible commentaries (most are SRA's) which are tabbed and pre-opened.  Even though the fast space has 4x more resources linked that it has to manage, it takes only about 1/4 of the time to change from one bible verse-location to another in the fast compared to the slow space.  THEY BOTH WORK ... they "get there" every time ... but the user's experience is much different.  Finally, I have 5 more NT-only commentaries (some SRA) in a third workspace.  These workspaces also include panes with lexical aids, etc.

Unfortunately, I still don't know how to attach the files to a posting so that you can try them out, or even attach a snapshot.  Hopefully someone will clue me in ... if not, then later when I have more time I'll set up a video and some downloadable files on screencast.com and provide a link.

However, for now, I trust that I've given you something to think about.

FWIW, btw, in my discussions with BobP, I *did* offer some practical solutions to this problem, and even followed it up with a detailed doc describing them.  But, nada.  Ah, well.  Nutshell of the solution - Libronix needs to be accountable for ITS OWN housekeeping.  That is, when the user is building an RA, Libronix needs to provide them tools to check for crossovers that might occur.

Maybe ver 4 will solve this.  Even if it never gets solved, I still do LOVE the whole SRA/PRA capability, warts and all.

If you'd like the files, email me:  hvacsage@yahoo.com