Updating PBs

Since we don't have a dedicated PB forum, I am posting in the General Forum.

When updating PBs when one has a number of them, it is easy to click on "edit" in the wrong PB. I would suggest that one should first click on the title of the PB which would bring up a page specifically for that PB so that all of one's actions would be directed toward the intended PB.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Dave Hooton

Since we don't have a dedicated PB forum, I am posting in the General Forum.

There is a Suggestions forum, or Uservoice...

George Somsel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392268#Comment_392268

Since we don't have a dedicated PB forum, I am posting in the General Forum.

There is a Suggestions forum, or Uservoice...

Picky, picky, picky [:D]

NetworkGeek

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392271#Comment_392271

PBs really need a lot of work IMHO - we got a version 1.0 about a year ago, which is very nice to have, but there has been no work since. I suffer from:

1. We still have not realized the ability to sync changes between computers - everything has to be rebuilt on each computer.

2. Logos is no help to determine which personal books may be out of sync between computers.

3. The Personal book tool is impractical if you have to rebuild multiple personal books. I have 176 now; to go through the list, trying to click the right Edit button and Build, while the list is flipping around as Builds are complete, is almost comical

4. There are no easy ways to filter/group/sort personal books in the tool if you are trying to for example find all your books in a series to work on them. You have to go to the Library to see the names, then manually find them one by one.

5. There is no easy way to rebuild all the documents you have, or many.

6. If multiple builds are going on, you can't see the status of all at once as they are interspersed throughout the lisst. You have to wait for things to finish and scroll around to see what worked and what failed.

7. The tool could use much better ability to inform users of errors and what to do with them. The logs indicate a problem, but it's hard to find where, and what the errors actually imply.

8. It also seems some of the errors could actually be corrected by the Build tool with user help; for example, all the complaints about Fonts that don't exist; those are beyond the control of the User, who did not put that notation on the font in the doc file (or at least not knowingly). Couldn't there be a "Purge any unused fonts from document (Y/N)?" setting? I bet there could be other things that could clean up the files too, so you don't have to be a Word guru to clean up the documents.

9. How about expanding the tool to help make the resource better? "Automatic Pagination? (Y/N); "Create footnotes/endnotes?". This second one could easily be done, several of us have something that works pretty well within a macro in Word, but it would be more robust in code. Find the superscripted numbers in sequence, locate the text associated with that same number. Turn the number into a Footnote or Endnote, and associate the text with that footnote. Move to next superscripted number. That would be a killer!

10. I do not believe Personal Books can be used as a reading plan on mobile devices

There is most assuredly more that others could add, that's just what I remember off the top of my head; and some are more important than others obviously, but this tool could be so much nicer and generate such higher quality personal books with some work (assuming Logos wants Personal Books to be higher quality that is).

BTW, I will NOT be adding these to UserVoice. I think it's actually a bit of an insult to look to users to plead for updates to a feature in UserVoice that couldn't possibly be considered a complete implementation by anyone. Which of the 6, or 8, or 10 major features needed in the tool will get voted high enough to be implemented? Let's not kid ourselves, we have a bare-bones build tool, which is very nice, but nothing else.

My .02

NB.Mick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392388#Comment_392388

Just for the record: I herewith strongly support all of your points.

tom

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392388#Comment_392388

PBs really need a lot of work IMHO - we got a version 1.0 about a year ago, which is very nice to have, but there has been no work since. I suffer from:

1. We still have not realized the ability to sync changes between computers - everything has to be rebuilt on each computer.

2. Logos is no help to determine which personal books may be out of sync between computers.

3. The Personal book tool is impractical if you have to rebuild multiple personal books. I have 176 now; to go through the list, trying to click the right Edit button and Build, while the list is flipping around as Builds are complete, is almost comical

4. There are no easy ways to filter/group/sort personal books in the tool if you are trying to for example find all your books in a series to work on them. You have to go to the Library to see the names, then manually find them one by one.

5. There is no easy way to rebuild all the documents you have, or many.

6. If multiple builds are going on, you can't see the status of all at once as they are interspersed throughout the lisst. You have to wait for things to finish and scroll around to see what worked and what failed.

7. The tool could use much better ability to inform users of errors and what to do with them. The logs indicate a problem, but it's hard to find where, and what the errors actually imply.

8. It also seems some of the errors could actually be corrected by the Build tool with user help; for example, all the complaints about Fonts that don't exist; those are beyond the control of the User, who did not put that notation on the font in the doc file (or at least not knowingly). Couldn't there be a "Purge any unused fonts from document (Y/N)?" setting? I bet there could be other things that could clean up the files too, so you don't have to be a Word guru to clean up the documents.

9. How about expanding the tool to help make the resource better? "Automatic Pagination? (Y/N); "Create footnotes/endnotes?". This second one could easily be done, several of us have something that works pretty well within a macro in Word, but it would be more robust in code. Find the superscripted numbers in sequence, locate the text associated with that same number. Turn the number into a Footnote or Endnote, and associate the text with that footnote. Move to next superscripted number. That would be a killer!

10. I do not believe Personal Books can be used as a reading plan on mobile devices

There is most assuredly more that others could add, that's just what I remember off the top of my head; and some are more important than others obviously, but this tool could be so much nicer and generate such higher quality personal books with some work (assuming Logos wants Personal Books to be higher quality that is).

BTW, I will NOT be adding these to UserVoice. I think it's actually a bit of an insult to look to users to plead for updates to a feature in UserVoice that couldn't possibly be considered a complete implementation by anyone. Which of the 6, or 8, or 10 major features needed in the tool will get voted high enough to be implemented? Let's not kid ourselves, we have a bare-bones build tool, which is very nice, but nothing else.

My .02

[Y]

Richard Wardman

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392388#Comment_392388

Hear, hear.

steve clark

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392400#Comment_392400

another wish:

That Document links (Notes, PL, etc) could be allowed to use Drag N Drop. When you have Document links in your PB, you cannot dragNdrop them. While links to resources can be dragged and dropped into any panel we want.

Jack Caviness

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392388#Comment_392388

BTW, I will NOT be adding these to UserVoice.

Seems like a waste of time anyway.

I agree with everything you said. [Y]

fgh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392388#Comment_392388

4. There are no easy ways to filter/group/sort personal books in the tool if you are trying to for example find all your books in a series to work on them. You have to go to the Library to see the names, then manually find them one by one.

It seems to me that several of your issues could have been avoided if they'd built the PB tool by using the basic UI code from Library/Collections, instead of creating something new and much worse. The sorting and filtering would already have been in place. The metadata fields could have been to the right, just like the info panel in Library, and you could have clicked/shift-clicked/command-clicked to select and rebuild multiple books at the same time, just the same way you now tag multiple books at the same time. Smooth, consistent, and lots of reused code. Logos likes reused code, don't they?

"Create footnotes/endnotes?". This second one could easily be done, several of us have something that works pretty well within a macro in Word, but it would be more robust in code. Find the superscripted numbers in sequence, locate the text associated with that same number. Turn the number into a Footnote or Endnote, and associate the text with that footnote. Move to next superscripted number. That would be a killer!

They already have the code, pretty much. They're using it on Vyrso books. Can't be that much different to implement it for PB's?

Paul Golder

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392388#Comment_392388

4. There are no easy ways to filter/group/sort personal books

Agreed for PB's, also for Notes, and especially our resource library.

tom

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392472#Comment_392472

It seems to me that several of your issues could have been avoided if they'd built the PB tool by using the basic UI code from Library/Collections, instead of creating something new and much worse. The sorting and filtering would already have been in place. The metadata fields could have been to the right, just like the info panel in Library, and you could have clicked/shift-clicked/command-clicked to select and rebuild multiple books at the same time, just the same way you now tag multiple books at the same time. Smooth, consistent, and lots of reused code. Logos likes reused code, don't they?

I have not looked at L4 code, and I DO NOT want to look at L4 code because it appears to me that they do not reuse any code that they have written. I have said time and time again that they could have built a better L4 by simply reusing the code that they wrote.

Jerry Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392388#Comment_392388

PBs really need a lot of work IMHO

PBs have amazing potential! I write/research and regularly provide study information to our teaching team. PBs are a great way since all the links to their Logos resources are ready to go . . . I'd love to see not only sync capacity with my systems, but to those designated Logos users!

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392388#Comment_392388

My .02

I agree with .09 of your .02 as I don't know about point .10[:)]

Ken McGuire

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392388#Comment_392388

Lest this turn into a rant, I want to start with the Good.

Logos has provided a tool for all users that lets them fairly easily import the files from the most common Word Processor format into Logos Bible Software with Logos automatically recognizing Bible References and creating links so that the personal book can be found by the system. This should be incredibly useful to the casual user.

Back in the Beta for 4.0 days we were promised that the new Personal Books would be fully featured Logos books, and so some of us have tried to make books that have as many of the features we have grown to expect from Logos books. The current tool has some significant limitations, however.

1) There needs to be a way to distribute the COMPILED file to maintain resource ID's to facilitate linking. Of course, if this is done, there should be a standard license connected with this and a clear way to designate your books as private vs. public... Related is making them available to mobile users like normal Logos books.

2) In general the official documentation on Personal Book Syntax is weak. In effect we are PROGRAMMING for the Logos Platform and it is not obvious what are the reserved words, objects, methods, etc. for this system from the official documentation. There are tantalizing hints in the help files about syntax about the possibilities, but it is not an adequate reference. Some hackers (in the old and good sense of the term) have provided info on the forums and in the wiki, which has helped, but has its own issues. In general the design of Logos 4 was to try to hide as much of what happens "behind the curtain" as possible. This makes it hard for us to insert things there..

3) Linking within and between Personal Books is weak.

a) The offset part of the address from <ctrl> <alt> <c> is ignored.

b) While Headwords do work (if on a separate line, I believe) and Page references do work, VolumePage does not. I know that for some documents (Like the LWF document of Justification we are slowly talking through on Faithlife or the Irenaeus I just released) I would have LOVED to have access to a generic Paragraph number reference option.

c) In addition, every different user who complies a personal book gets a different resource ID for it... - see #1

4) While it is wonderful that we can make personal books into targets for officially supported datatypes, we need a way to turn this off. For example, in the Schmucker Popular Theology I just released, after tagging the Latin Augsburg Confession, it leaves all the text after the last line as being part of the Augsburg Confession.

5) Adding the compiler warnings and errors report was a good start, but still it would be nice if the compiler would tell me if I didn't match a [[ ]] or if the target of a >> is garbage.

6) I am admittedly not the biggest fan of Microsoft Word, but using it as a programming editor is not ideal, except for convenience for casual users. My biggest problem is that Word's biggest advantage is WYSIWYG, but this is not the case for complied books, as I have found to my frustration in table of contents and the like. In addition, it (of course) does not recognize the Logos commands we are inserting into the document.

7) Syncing of metadata for Personal Books doesn't always work. My main machine had a hard drive failure, and while I was able to save all my source files and compiled files from backups, much of the metadata has come across to the renewed machine as garbage. Going through this has made it quite obvious how clunky the present Personal Book page is.

8) I do little of this, but it has been frustrating with the little Hebrew I have done at trying to predict how it would display in compiled form.

SDG

Ken McGuire

Milford Charles Murray

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/411809#Comment_411809

Thank you, Kenneth! *smile* I truly appreciate you and your sharing with others on these forums. Peace! and Always Joy!

Mike Childs

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392388#Comment_392388

Agree! I wish that Personal Books were more of a priority with Logos. It is # 1 on my wish list for Logos. I wish we could sync them and I wish we could read them in the iPad app.

Understandably, Logos is more interested in book sales that produce profit, as opposed to helping us make our own. But there are many public domain books that Logos will never publish because their appeal is to a very small group. We really need some work on this.

If I have to use other software to read these public domain books, then I might as well buy my other books from the cheapest source (such as Kindle, etc.) rather than trying to keep everything under Logos. (I am speaking primarily of non-reference books.) Any non-reference book that I would read from cover to cover, I read on the iPad. The lack of progress on personal books certainly has pushed me to doing that more often.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/411843#Comment_411843

I wish that Personal Books were more of a priority with Logos.

I think it's probably another one of those "not very many people use this feature so we're not going to pour lots of resources into making it better" things. Logos should make it a goal to get more users using the feature by making it the most awesome it could possibly be, using suggestions from the people who do use it, and then marketing the benefits of it.

Ken McGuire

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/411986#Comment_411986

I wish that Personal Books were more of a priority with Logos.

I think it's probably another one of those "not very many people use this feature so we're not going to pour lots of resources into making it better" things. Logos should make it a goal to get more users using the feature by making it the most awesome it could possibly be, using suggestions from the people who do use it, and then marketing the benefits of it.

I almost wonder if there need to be two different tools. One even easier to use and one for power users to play with.

BillS

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/392388#Comment_392388

PBs really need a lot of work IMHO - we got a version 1.0 about a year ago, which is very nice to have, but there has been no work since. I suffer from:

1. We still have not realized the ability to sync changes between computers - everything has to be rebuilt on each computer.

2. Logos is no help to determine which personal books may be out of sync between computers.

3. The Personal book tool is impractical if you have to rebuild multiple personal books. I have 176 now; to go through the list, trying to click the right Edit button and Build, while the list is flipping around as Builds are complete, is almost comical

4. There are no easy ways to filter/group/sort personal books in the tool if you are trying to for example find all your books in a series to work on them. You have to go to the Library to see the names, then manually find them one by one.

5. There is no easy way to rebuild all the documents you have, or many.

6. If multiple builds are going on, you can't see the status of all at once as they are interspersed throughout the lisst. You have to wait for things to finish and scroll around to see what worked and what failed.

7. The tool could use much better ability to inform users of errors and what to do with them. The logs indicate a problem, but it's hard to find where, and what the errors actually imply.

8. It also seems some of the errors could actually be corrected by the Build tool with user help; for example, all the complaints about Fonts that don't exist; those are beyond the control of the User, who did not put that notation on the font in the doc file (or at least not knowingly). Couldn't there be a "Purge any unused fonts from document (Y/N)?" setting? I bet there could be other things that could clean up the files too, so you don't have to be a Word guru to clean up the documents.

9. How about expanding the tool to help make the resource better? "Automatic Pagination? (Y/N); "Create footnotes/endnotes?". This second one could easily be done, several of us have something that works pretty well within a macro in Word, but it would be more robust in code. Find the superscripted numbers in sequence, locate the text associated with that same number. Turn the number into a Footnote or Endnote, and associate the text with that footnote. Move to next superscripted number. That would be a killer!

10. I do not believe Personal Books can be used as a reading plan on mobile devices

Back in the Beta for 4.0 days we were promised that the new Personal Books would be fully featured Logos books, and so some of us have tried to make books that have as many of the features we have grown to expect from Logos books. The current tool has some significant limitations, however.

1) There needs to be a way to distribute the COMPILED file to maintain resource ID's to facilitate linking. Of course, if this is done, there should be a standard license connected with this and a clear way to designate your books as private vs. public... Related is making them available to mobile users like normal Logos books.

2) In general the official documentation on Personal Book Syntax is weak. In effect we are PROGRAMMING for the Logos Platform and it is not obvious what are the reserved words, objects, methods, etc. for this system from the official documentation. There are tantalizing hints in the help files about syntax about the possibilities, but it is not an adequate reference. Some hackers (in the old and good sense of the term) have provided info on the forums and in the wiki, which has helped, but has its own issues. In general the design of Logos 4 was to try to hide as much of what happens "behind the curtain" as possible. This makes it hard for us to insert things there..

3) Linking within and between Personal Books is weak.

a) The offset part of the address from <ctrl> <alt> <c> is ignored.

b) While Headwords do work (if on a separate line, I believe) and Page references do work, VolumePage does not. I know that for some documents (Like the LWF document of Justification we are slowly talking through on Faithlife or the Irenaeus I just released) I would have LOVED to have access to a generic Paragraph number reference option.

c) In addition, every different user who complies a personal book gets a different resource ID for it... - see #1

4) While it is wonderful that we can make personal books into targets for officially supported datatypes, we need a way to turn this off. For example, in the Schmucker Popular Theology I just released, after tagging the Latin Augsburg Confession, it leaves all the text after the last line as being part of the Augsburg Confession.

5) Adding the compiler warnings and errors report was a good start, but still it would be nice if the compiler would tell me if I didn't match a [[ ]] or if the target of a >> is garbage.

6) I am admittedly not the biggest fan of Microsoft Word, but using it as a programming editor is not ideal, except for convenience for casual users. My biggest problem is that Word's biggest advantage is WYSIWYG, but this is not the case for complied books, as I have found to my frustration in table of contents and the like. In addition, it (of course) does not recognize the Logos commands we are inserting into the document.

7) Syncing of metadata for Personal Books doesn't always work. My main machine had a hard drive failure, and while I was able to save all my source files and compiled files from backups, much of the metadata has come across to the renewed machine as garbage. Going through this has made it quite obvious how clunky the present Personal Book page is.

8) I do little of this, but it has been frustrating with the little Hebrew I have done at trying to predict how it would display in compiled form.

[Y] +1

Bohuslav Wojnar

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/411986#Comment_411986

I agree 100% with all of what have been said here and suggested. PBB is the top priority for me also.

BillS

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/411986#Comment_411986

Logos should make it a goal to get more users using the feature by making it the most awesome it could possibly be, using suggestions from the people who do use it, and then marketing the benefits of it.

[Y] +1