Quo Vadimus 4.4?
Now that we have reached the RC stage for 4.3, perhaps Logos would entertain suggestions about some priorities for the next stage in the development process. I realize that this is not a democracy, and I am equally sure that the good developers at Logos already have a roadmap in place for Logos 4.4. Nevertheless it might be helpful for them to hear what the users feel are priorities going forward.
In any case, here is what I would like to see as priorities after the release of 4.3.
(1) CLEAN-UP — There needs to be an effort to tidy up things that are just ‘not quite right’. For example, often when I click in a box text-entry box (as in the search window, for example), the program looses its focus and the text that I type does not get entered into the text field. There are a number of niggling little things like this that are not big, but they are a nuisance and there needs to be a conscious effort to get them taken care of.
(2) PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION — This is still a significant problem in two areas that I experience regularly: (1) scrolling text often leads to prolonged ‘beach ball watching’ even in resources that are not linked to other windows or that have special highlighting; and (2) the length of time that it takes to display search results, especially with 2 or more resources involved. For example, this morning I did a morph search for a particular lexeme in Hebrew (using BHS WMH 4.2) to check how it was translated in the LXX. The search itself was quick enough, finding 1,135 results in 1,040 verses in 3.26 seconds, but the display of the results (in two columns with BHS in one and the LXX in the other) took 12 seconds to show up. That is just too long. Also, the text, when it finally showed up, was so small that the Hebrew was almost unreadable and the Greek was only slightly better. Which leads to my next point ...
(3) FONT SCALING — The results of searches (see above) and the pop-down list of terms when entering Greek with ‘g:’ or Hebrew with ‘h:’ (and a few other places) are painfully small. This is a known issue that has been around a long time. Now is the time to get it fixed. And don’t say that the answer is to use the screen zooming feature built into the Mac OS. Yes, it works (though the text becomes blurry as it zooms in), but that feature makes the whole screen zoomed-in and creates other problems having to work around the user interface. It is not an acceptable long-term solution. Users need to be able to set the font size for these things to a setting that is comfortable for them to use on a regular and on-going way.
(4) NOTES — This is not a high priority for me since I do not use them, but for many users this is an important feature that remains broken. This really needs to be fixed/improved before going on to things like fixing the handouts feature. For myself, I would have placed this as a priority ahead of the introduction of Personal Books feature (though I am glad to have the latter).
Please do not take this as a criticism; I am well-pleased with the progress overall and remain very enthusiastic about recommending Logos to other faculty, to my students, and to other pastors. But as someone who wants to see Logos be a great product on the Mac, I recognize that there a few things that need to be taken care of before the product can move from the category of a 'very good' program to the category of an 'excellent' program.
Well, as I said at the outset, I realize that this is not a democracy, but these are some things that I would like to nominate as priorities to be taken care of after the release of 4.3 before any new features are added. I would like to hear from other users about things that they would like to see.
Congratulations on reaching the RC stage for 4.3, and thanks for all your hard work and great support of your users.
–– DLA
Comments
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I would like to second your comments on the notes feature. I am one who does use this feature (or at least use to when it worked well-L3). I have ceased to rely on it and only use it at this point to check to see if it works any better (which it doesn't-RC1 excluded since I haven't checked yet).
Frankly I am chomping at the bit to buy more resources but am extremely hesitant until this feature begins to work comparable to the way it worked in L3. This is not criticism but it has been a long wait for this feature which is yet somewhere in the future (4.4?).
Beyond that the program is working reasonably on my little white MacBook.
Bob
Bob Deacon
Ipad Air 2 (ios 9.7 (0014)
Windows 11 inside edition
Samsung S23
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Can I suggest you make a radical step.. which will enhance your life
Forget Notes and go PB, let me explain why..
ALL the key issues with notes complained about since the inception are overcome with PB
1) using [[@Bible:your_ref]] milestone means that the long stanting issue of notes not staying in sync with Bible passages is over..
2) Color text
3) Tables
4) ImagesLet me explain why you should forget notes and switch to PB, you could create a new PB each month if you were a verbose note taker, the benefit of doing this would be your notes could be annoted. or highlighted..
Never Deprive Anyone of Hope.. It Might Be ALL They Have
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Not opposed to it just don't know where to begin I suppose.
Bob
Bob Deacon
Ipad Air 2 (ios 9.7 (0014)
Windows 11 inside edition
Samsung S23
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start here, then if we can help please ask: http://wiki.logos.com/Personal_Books
Never Deprive Anyone of Hope.. It Might Be ALL They Have
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David, I strongly share your sentiments. Various bugs (that should be dead simple to fix) have been languishing for 7 months. For example, try editing a Formatting Style and changing the color of the text. Save the visual style then edit it again... notice the color-well is black and your custom color is forgotten... etc etc etc. The focus issues (which I've posted about here and here and especially here) all still exist. Try pressing Cmd+[ or Cmd+] to move to "next pane"... if you have any floating windows (with multiple panes) the results are completely undefined.
As David requested, please will Logos take this seriously and "polish" (although I don't consider fixing focus bugs 'polishing') Logos for Mac...?
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Dominic:
Regarding:
DominicM said:Can I suggest you make a radical step.. which will enhance your life
Forget Notes and go PB, let me explain why..
As I said before, I am not a Notes user, but if I were I could not adopt this option since PBB only works with MS Word, which I don't use because it does not work with the Unicode-based Hebrew of Logos. So for anyone working in the OT in Hebrew, using PBB is problematic at best. My own workaround is to take my notes in another word processor that does support Unicode Hebrew (in my case Nisus Writer Pro). However, since PBB does not support anything except Word, that eliminates it as a possibility for me when it comes to integrating notes with Logos.
Another shortcoming of this approach would seem to be that a major attraction of Notes is that it is integrated within Logos so that you do not have to switch back and forth between programs to use it to take notes. Even using Word and PBB requires extra steps to get the documents into Logos, which (again) undermines the purpose of having an integrated note-taking ability.
For those reasons I still think that fixing Notes is a better long-term solution ... but to each his own. If Word and PBB work for you, then I am glad for you.
–– DLA
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Looking at LibreOffice 3.4 release notes => http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/3.4 noticed SIL International involvement:
"The graphite smart font rendering support, has been completely rewritten
to use a new faster graphite engine and is now more stable and at least
10 times faster. No changes are needed to existing fonts or documents.
(Keith Stribley, Martin Hosken, SIL International)"LibreOffice may be an option for Hebrew PBB creation since LibreOffice can save as Word docx format.
Noticed NeoOffice => http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/features.php feature:
"NeoOffice now uses Apple's CoreText
text layout and rendering functions. In contrast, OpenOffice.org and
LibreOffice use Apple's obsolete ATSUI functions. The CoreText functions
are up to twice as fast as the ATSUI functions and the CoreText
functions provide improved text layout and rendering for many Windows
OpenType fonts."Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_word_processors#Export_or_Save_capabilities noticed TextEdit (included with Mac OS X) can save as docx:
When cursor is in a paragraph with writing direction Right to Left, ruler changes direction for tab stops.
Personally need to install Hebrew fonts so can change after copy and paste from Logos 4 Mac.
Keep Smiling [:)]
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David Adams said:
Now that we have reached the RC stage for 4.3, perhaps Logos would entertain suggestions about some priorities for the next stage in the development process. I realize that this is not a democracy, and I am equally sure that the good developers at Logos already have a roadmap in place for Logos 4.4. Nevertheless it might be helpful for them to hear what the users feel are priorities going forward.
Your feedback is very much appreciated. Currently, the best way to provide broad suggestions regarding our priorities is through http://logos.uservoice.com/. We don't promise that we'll always attend to issues in order of popularity, but we do pay attention to the list when planning new releases.
David Mitchell
Development Lead
Faithlife0 -
David Mitchell said:David Adams said:
Now that we have reached the RC stage for 4.3, perhaps Logos would entertain suggestions about some priorities for the next stage in the development process. I realize that this is not a democracy, and I am equally sure that the good developers at Logos already have a roadmap in place for Logos 4.4. Nevertheless it might be helpful for them to hear what the users feel are priorities going forward.
Your feedback is very much appreciated. Currently, the best way to provide broad suggestions regarding our priorities is through http://logos.uservoice.com/. We don't promise that we'll always attend to issues in order of popularity, but we do pay attention to the list when planning new releases.
Posted Logos 4 Mac Consensus for Improvement Priorities thread for discussion; planning follow-up Logos User Voice suggestion soon.
Keep Smiling [:)]
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David Adams said:
(3) FONT SCALING — The results of searches (see above) and the pop-down list of terms when entering Greek with ‘g:’ or Hebrew with ‘h:’ (and a few other places) are painfully small. This is a known issue that has been around a long time. Now is the time to get it fixed. And don’t say that the answer is to use the screen zooming feature built into the Mac OS. Yes, it works (though the text becomes blurry as it zooms in), but that feature makes the whole screen zoomed-in and creates other problems having to work around the user interface. It is not an acceptable long-term solution. Users need to be able to set the font size for these things to a setting that is comfortable for them to use on a regular and on-going way.
Apologies: should have created User Voice suggestion => Logos 4 Mac Program Scaling and Font Sliders weeks ago. [:$]
Thread => http://community.logos.com/forums/p/24100/286506.aspx#286506 has summary of User Voice suggestion voting after 7 weeks.
Thanks for 4.3 priority discussion; likewise Thankful for Logos 4.3 progress on Mac, looking forward to more improvements.
Keep Smiling [:)]
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