BUG, or "When did this change?" PG Commentaries now shows section name.
Comments
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Mark Barnes said:
Are you saying that instead, the LCV.lbslcv file matches LCV ids to individual resources and headwords (so there's no LCV tagging within the encyclopedia resource, but instead a lookup table in the LCV resource)?
So that when you're doing the Collections section, the query (in pseudo-SQL) is something like: SELECT SectionTitle, ResourceName FROM HeadwordIndex WHERE Headword IN (SELECT DISTINCT Headword FROM lcv WHERE lcvid='Resurrection'). In other words, to generate the Collections section you're going get a list of all the headwords used in dictionaries for that LCV topic, then return all the articles that match (or partially match?) those headwords?
There's actually both. The LCV resource (LCV.lbslcv) contains a "lookup table" that points to articles in the various resources. An individual encyclopedia resource also contains LCV tagging.
Think of this as a form of denormalization. There are certain usages where it's much more convenient to retrieve the tagging directly from the encyclopedia resource and others where it's more convenient to retrieve it from the LCV resource. Update releases of all the encyclopedias (etc) might lag a bit behind update releases to the LCV, so in the Definition section where we only want hand selected data we use the LCV resource rather than tagging in the encyclopedia to ensure we get optimal results. For the Collection section, because we want more than just the hand selected data, it's acceptable if the encyclopedia (or whatever) doesn't yet contain the tagging because we can do a headword match in order to bring back results. So, in the Collection section we directly search the encyclopedias (etc) for LCV tags or matching headwords if LCV tagging isn't found.
So, in pseudo-code:
for each resource
results = search resource for lcvtag='resurrection'
if no resultsresults = search resource for headword = 'Resurrection' or any alternate terms for Resurrection
Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer
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Thanks for the info, Andrew. That really helps.
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Mark Barnes said:Dave Hooton said:
So please rethink the need for a Collections section and allow all my prioritised resources, including Concordances, to be in Definitions
Please don't do that. The concordances have too many entries to be relevant, and they're not Definitions. If the Collections section will support Concordances, then those who want them can create a collection for them.
Mark, this is a matter of choice. By not allowing Concordances my choices are being restricted arbitrarily. This would be analogous to not allowing Bible Notes in the Commentaries section of PG (you don't have to include concordances in your collection).
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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Dave Hooton said:
Mark, this is a matter of choice. By not allowing Concordances my choices are being restricted arbitrarily. This would be analogous to not allowing Bible Notes in the Commentaries section of PG (you don't have to include concordances in your collection).
I don't agree. By definition, the definitions section is for, well, definitions. Concordances don't supply that, so they're not relevant. It sounds to me as though you're trying to use a section for something it's not intended for when there's a custom section (Collections) that you can use instead.
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Andrew Batishko (Logos) said:
The definition section now (for you guys apparently in the next beta) uses the same mechanism as the Topics section in Basic Search to retrieve a list of resources, and then filters that list to only show results from Dictionaries, Lexicons, and Encyclopedias, since those give the best results that match the idea of a "definition".
Andrew, I object to the restriction of resources deemed suitable for Definitions that are included in my collections. The type tagging of Concordances and Encyclopedias is about as subjective as the tagging of bible Commentaries and bible Notes, but I'm not restricted to Commentaries in the Commentaries section of PG based on the supposition that Commentaries provide the best articles. It has always been the maxim that "Logos’ use of these types is primarily functional rather than descriptive. The Commentary type is broadly defined to include many different kinds of resources that are indexed by Bible verse, while the Bible Notes type is used exclusively for the notes from a Bible (usually study Bible notes)." Therefore I have to actively exclude Commentaries that don't deserve that tag (IMHO) whilst also including Notes in my collections.
So I should be allowed to make the same distinction for Concordances, which are bible based as opposed to dictionaries and lexicons**.
** type:dictionary now only include resources like Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster's dictionaries and Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology whereas it originally included concordances, encylopedias and lexicons. I'm pretty sure that type:lexicon and type:dictionary are not LCV resources whereas some concordances are!
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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Mark Barnes said:
I don't agree.
Which means you don't allow choice as a governing distinction (I'm not forcing you to include concordances, no more than you would include certain encyclopedias).
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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I do not use the TG because I use the lectionary and PG. IMHO, Collections in the PG need to be sorted by my priority list.Andrew Batishko (Logos) said:I'm sorry. I meant to say Topic Guide > Collections list their results in priority order. Too many guides and sections!
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Mark, I disagree. Just because it is a basic search for bible~ref does not imply that it should not be sorted by my priority. I am more interested in reading something if the reference is in one of my references that I have also prioritized than not.Mark Barnes said:Passage Guide > Collections doesn't (and shouldn't IMO) list its results in priority order (Because it's a basic search for <Bible ~ Ref>)
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tom said:
Mark, I disagree. Just because it is a basic search for bible~ref does not imply that it should not be sorted by my priority. I am more interested in reading something if the reference is in one of my references that I have also prioritized than not.
If that's the case, then you're prioritizing things you shouldn't be, and using prioritization in a way that it's not been designed for. I suspect that in reality, it's only partially true, and therefore it's not something that can be taken into consideration.
Prioritization is designed to prioritize the order in which look-ups happen. So it's for commentaries (looking up a Bible reference), dictionaries (looking up a headword), lexicons (looking up a lemma), and even for specific things like the church fathers (looking up a reference). Consequently you shouldn't be prioritising the vast majority of your resource (i.e. most monographs) because you can't look things up in them. Resources where the only index is a page index shouldn't be prioritised under Logos' current design. That's most of your resources.
So if you're performing a search, and prioritisation is being taken into account, that means almost all of your monographs are going to end up being relegated to the bottom of your search list, even though they might be much more relevant to most queries than your Bibles, lexicons, copies of the church fathers and daily devotionals that you have prioritised. That's no good to anyone.
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Mark Barnes said:
That's most of your resources.
This is clearly not true for me! I stay away from most of Logos' monographs like the plague because I feel most of them are full of junk theology, and I want them to be at the bottom of the list. The monographs that I have prioritised (like JBL), I want to come to the top.
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tom said:Mark Barnes said:
That's most of your resources.
This is clearly not true for me! I stay away from most of Logos' monographs like the plague because I feel most of them are full of junk theology, and I want them to be at the bottom of the list.
It's certainly most of most users' resources. There's no easy way of calculating how many resources you have that ought not be prioritised, but type:monograph, type:journal, type:magazine, type:manual will give a rough estimate. For me that's 60.48%, which I'd expect to be lower than most users (as like you, I tend to avoid monographs). What's your percentage, out of interest?
tom said:The monographs that I have prioritised (like JBL), I want to come to the top.
Which demonstrates my point - you're not using prioritisation in the way that it's been designed. JBL is a journal, not a monograph, by the way, but regardless of that, there is absolutely no point at all in prioritising JBL. It will have absolutely no effect on anything that Logos does. That's because prioritisation change the order in which things are looked up, it does not (and will not) change the order in which things are searched.
Prioritising monographs or journals (unless they're indexed by headword or some other reference), never has any effect at all.
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Dave Hooton said:Andrew Batishko (Logos) said:
The definition section now (for you guys apparently in the next beta) uses the same mechanism as the Topics section in Basic Search to retrieve a list of resources, and then filters that list to only show results from Dictionaries, Lexicons, and Encyclopedias, since those give the best results that match the idea of a "definition".
Andrew, I object to the restriction of resources deemed suitable for Definitions that are included in my collections.
Dave, I'll pass your feedback on to our designer.
Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer
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My percentage is 47.7% (I did exclude my pb's from this percentage).Mark Barnes said:hat's your percentage, out of interest?
????? When I am searching, I am looking something up. When I am looking something up, I am searching.Mark Barnes said:prioritisation change the order in which things are looked up, it does not (and will not) change the order in which things are searched.
When I am searching my Bibles, my prioritized Bibles are listed first.
When I am searching my commentaries, my prioritized commentaries are listed first.
When I am looking something in the lexicons, my prioritized lexicons are listed first.
When I search my journals/monographs, my prioritized journals/monographs should be listed first in my collections. Right now, they are listed by some random sequence (based on how often the word appears in the journal/monograph.)
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Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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tom said:
When I am searching, I am looking something up. When I am looking something up, I am searching.
No, you're not, and that's the fundamental point. Searching and "looking up" are two different functions in Logos. We use both functions in different circumstances, depending on the resources we're looking in and the information we're looking for.
If you search a commentary for Matthew 22:41, you'll get a list of all the times that verse in mentioned in the commentary. If you look up Matthew 22:41 you'll be taken to the one place in the commentary where that verse is discussed. It's the difference between looking up the verse in a Scripture Index in the back of the book, to turning to the comments on that verse.
tom said:When I am searching my Bibles, my prioritized Bibles are listed first.
This is true in Grid, Verses and Aligned View in Bible Search. It's not true in Analysis Search. That's a special tweak of Bible Search, and makes sense as obviously all Bibles contains basically the same information in a different format, and all use the same reference type. But that's the exception, not the rule.
tom said:When I am searching my commentaries, my prioritized commentaries are listed first.
No they don't. Try it. Do a search of a collection of commentaries. You won't ever get your prioritized commentaries first. On the other hand, if you do a look up of commentaries (through Power Lookup, for example, or through the Commentaries Section of the Passage Guide), then you'll get the prioritized.
tom said:When I am looking something in the lexicons, my prioritized lexicons are listed first.
If you're looking up something, then yes they'll be prioritized. That's my point. But if you're searching, they won't be. Try it. Search your lectionaries.
tom said:Right now, they are listed by some random sequence (based on how often the word appears in the journal/monograph.)
If it's based on how often the word appears it's not random. In a ranked search, they're listed by the frequency of the word in the article. I agree that that's not very intelligent, and that other factors ought to be taken into consideration as well (perhaps including prioritisation, but also rating, frequency of word use across the whole resource). But just prioritisation? Not if you're using prioritisation properly.
The only other exception is the Topic Section of a basic search. In that section results are in prioritised order, whilst in the Results section they're not. But if you look closely you'll see that the Topic section begins with the heading "Look it up" - although it appears in the search panel, it's actually performing a look-up, which is why the resources are in prioritisation order.
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tom said:
My percentage is 47.7% (I did exclude my pb's from this percentage).Mark Barnes said:hat's your percentage, out of interest?
I don't avoid these types but I have nearly 41.8% (all monographs).
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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Mark Barnes said:
No, you're not, and that's the fundamental point. Searching and "looking up" are two different functions in Logos. We use both functions in different circumstances, depending on the resources we're looking in and the information we're looking for.
This could by why Logos has such a huge learning curve. Trying to make a distinction between looking something up and searching is like trying to split a hair, and all you have after attempting to split a hair is split-ends.
As a user, I do not care how a resource is tagged/marked-up. What I care about is how the results are displayed. This is because it makes it easier for me to see what I want to read and what I do not want to read.
I use a custom passage guide to do 90% of my research. I have a special collection for the commentaries that I want to see in the PG, and my prioritized commentaries are listed first. I also have a collection for my journals. And the JBL journals should be listed before all of my other journals because I have JBL prioritized.
As a user, the reason I put resources on the prioritized list is to tell L5 that these resources are the ones that I really really really like, and I want them to be listed first.
I do not care how resources are tagged/marked up or any of the other behind the scene things that Logos has to do. I simply want to read what I need/want to read.
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tom said:
This could by why Logos has such a huge learning curve. Trying to make a distinction between looking something up and searching is like trying to split a hair, and all you have after attempting to split a hair is split-ends.
I don't agree. Personally, I find it a very obvious distinction (though I accept that nowhere does Logos really explains it). It's exactly the same concept as using the Contents pages of a book (look up), and the index at the back (search). In a book you use those two tools (Contents and Index) differently, and for different purposes. It's just the same in Logos, look ups and searching have different uses, and we should learn the strengths and weaknesses of both. If a student said he was never going to bother with contents pages because he didn't like the fact it wasn't in alphabetical order, you'd think that was a little strange, wouldn't you? You've seen this video before, but it's always worth viewing again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ
tom said:I use a custom passage guide to do 90% of my research. I have a special collection for the commentaries that I want to see in the PG, and my prioritized commentaries are listed first.
Me too.
tom said:As a user, the reason I put resources on the prioritized list is to tell L5 that these resources are the ones that I really really really like, and I want them to be listed first
That's fine, but that's not what the prioritisation list has been designed for. It's been designed to specify the order in which you look things up, not to specify the ranking for a search. You're trying to using a feature for a different purpose than the one it's been designed for, so it's no wonder you're dissatisfied with the outcome. We all do that from time to time, but generally it's best to use software in the way that it's been designed, even if we wouldn't have designed it in quite the same way. It' much less frustrating that way, and almost always better in the long term.
tom said:I use a custom passage guide to do 90% of my research. I have a special collection for the commentaries that I want to see in the PG, and my prioritized commentaries are listed first. I also have a collection for my journals. And the JBL journals should be listed before all of my other journals because I have JBL prioritized.
If that's really what you want to achieve, it's very simple to do. Create a collection of JBL journals, and another collection of everything apart from JBL journals and commentaries. Then have three sections in your custom PG: Commentaries, JBL Collection, Everything Else Collection.
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tom said:
Trying to make a distinction between looking something up and searching is like trying to split a hair
Mark has already answered this well, but I wanted to reiterate that these are two fundamentally different concepts in Logos, and you'll probably find yourself fighting the software if you conflate them.
As a simple example, looking up John 3:16 takes you to the text "For God so loved the world" in your top prioritized Bible. Searching for John 3:16 finds citations of that verse in commentaries, lexicons, etc. and finds no results in most Bibles. The same distinction applies throughout the software for other data type references and headwords, and will be more apparent for senses and Bible Facts as more of that data is integrated into other resources.
tom said:I do not care how resources are tagged/marked up or any of the other behind the scene things that Logos has to do. I simply want to read what I need/want to read.
This is great feedback, and it's good for us to try to think about how we can make things simpler, easier, and more integrated in a future version of the software. But for now, for better or worse, lookup and search are two different things in Logos 5.
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I can sympathize with Tom's position as the terms are sometimes used as synonyms. I think of it as looking for an item vs. looking for references to the item when I know what the item is e.g. <John 3:16> and think of it as searching for the item when I use a few words (or a fuzzy search[;)]) to find the item.
Where I get myself in a tangle is in how I use "reference" vs. "citation" ... I've given up trying to keep their use straight and let others figure out what I mean
I'd like to see a glossary in which Logos declares how it intends to use the term in help and training materials.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:
I'd like to see a glossary in which Logos declares how it intends to use the term in help and training materials.
Now MJ, how is Logos supposed to create a glossary when they can't even get the difference between archiving a resource license and hiding the resource right. [:P]
(You'd think I'd get tired of complaining about that one, but nope! I'm still game. [:)])
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So, in summary,
Logos is using two synonyms to describe retrieving requested information but they do two totally different unrelated functions within L5. One of these two synonyms uses prioritisation while the other does not. The results of the one synonym that does not use prioritisation has been called "not very intelligent" by one user, and I say the displayed results of this one synonym is basically worthless.
It has been suggested that items should be sorted by book (http://community.logos.com/forums/t/6962.aspx) for this synonym that doesn't use prioritisation.
I agree, and I will add that that the books should also be sorted by our prioritized list. For me, things like author and publisher are more important than how often a word appears within an article.
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Mark Barnes said:
It's exactly the same concept as using the Contents pages of a book (look up), and the index at the back (search). In a book you use those two tools (Contents and Index) differently, and for different purposes. It's just the same in Logos, look ups and searching have different uses, and we should learn the strengths and weaknesses of both.
Yes and no. Since we are talking about search (index), A user will complain if the index is not sorted alphabetically, but was listed by how often the word appears within the book.
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tom said:
Logos is using two synonyms to describe retrieving requested information but they do two totally different unrelated functions within L5.
How can "look up" be a synonym for "search"? They're two different words, with two different meanings that have two different functions. "Look up" I don't see any place in Logos where they're used as synonyms.
"Look up" suggests you know where to look - you look up names in a telephone directory, or words in a dictionary, because you know that "Barnes" will after "Barlow" and before "Barnett". "Search" suggests you don't know where to look, but you're going to hunt until you find something. That's just what it means in Logos.
What could be confusing is that certain sections of Guides don't tell you whether they're searches or look-ups. But once you understand the concept, it's very easy to determine the difference.
tom said:I agree, and I will add that that the books should also be sorted by our prioritized list. For me, things like author and publisher are more important than how often a word appears within an article.
This would break most users workflows. Most of us (probably yourself included) group together our prioritisation lists, and that certainly is the recommendation. So English Bibles are grouped at the top, Greek texts are grouped lower down, perhaps Greek lexicons then Hebrew lexicons, then English dictionaries, then commentaries and so on. Does that mean English Bibles are "more important" than lexicons, or that lexicons are more important than commentaries? Of course not. Almost at the bottom of my prioritisation list is McNeil's translation of Calvin's Institutes (it's above other translations of the institutes, but below everything else). If I'm searching for systematic theological concept that's prevalent in the Instituties, should that be right at the bottom of the search results even though it's mentioned 100 times in a few pages, whilst some lexicon that happens to mention it once gets pushed to the top? Of course not.
We can both agree that ranked searches are fairly useless, because the ranking is far too simplistic. But ordering search results by prioritisation is not the answer. Now if you suggested using rating as one of the factors in ranking, and prioritization as another, weaker, factor, in addition to search frequency, then I think we could be getting somewhere.
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tom said:
Yes and no. Since we are talking about search (index), A user will complain if the index is not sorted alphabetically, but was listed by how often the word appears within the book.
I agree that the search ranking is poor. But that doesn't change the fact that look ups and searches are different functions. Conflating the two will not improve search ranking.
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tom said:
Just because it is a basic search for bible~ref does not imply that it should not be sorted by my priority. I am more interested in reading something if the reference is in one of my references that I have also prioritized than not.
tom said:I will add that that the books should also be sorted by our prioritized list. For me, things like author and publisher are more important than how often a word appears within an article.
Tom, I share your intention, but I don't think you want this quite as much as you believe you do.
Let's say you're working on some well-known passage in the early part of Isaiah. Let's also say that only 3 of your 10 highest prioritized commentary series actually have a volume on the early part of Isaiah. What then would you get if a reference search was sorted by priority?
Well, first you'd get every prioritized Bible that happens to refer to your passage somewhere in the notes or cross references. Then, depending on how you've organized your Priority list, you might get every prioritized lexicon, dictionary, grammar or whatever that happens to mention one of your verses. Then you'd get all the volumes of your highest prioritized commentary series that list your reference in a footnote somewhere. Then you might finally get your first actual Isaiah commentary. Then you'd get another couple of dozen of completely irrelevant commentary volumes before the second Isaiah commentary turned up. And so on. -- And if you happened to be so lucky as to have an entire book devoted to that particular chapter or pericope, it would almost certainly show up well after you stopped looking.
I don't think you'd be happy to find the first commentary on the book you're studying on page 5 or 15 of the search results... If you're studying Isaiah, even a third rate commentary on Isaiah is going to be of more help to you than three dozen excellent commentaries on other books of the Bible that have nothing to offer you other than that Jesus quoted one of your verses somewhere or that something else took place at the same location (which you probably already knew anyway).
And as for monographs, you can't possibly prioritize every book that might interest you at some point -- and even if you could, you're going to want different prioritizations for different searches. Since you're not Catholic, you'd probably put most Catholic books fairly far down. But let's say you suddenly want to research Mariology. Then your normal prioritization would be a huge disadvantage in a prioritized search.
So you see, the number of hits is important. That's generally what separates a text on the right subject from a mention in a footnote.
tom said:Since we are talking about search (index), A user will complain if the index is not sorted alphabetically, but was listed by how often the word appears within the book.
Since Logos does the search for you, it doesn't matter if the index is sorted alphabetically or not; you will be taken to the right word anyway. The book equivalent to Logos search result list isn't the alphabetical index list; it's the page numbers listed after each word. You wouldn't mind if an index listed the book's main entry on that word first, would you?
Surely you've looked up something in an index only to find 30 page numbers without any bold or italics to indicate where the important entries are? I fear that that's what a prioritized search result list would be like most of the time. The ranked search is supposed to be like getting those page numbers in order of importance, which would be a huge help if it actually worked.
But I certainly agree with you and Mark that the current ranked searches are fairly useless. In fact, they are so useless that when I added an Entire Library Collection to a PG, I ended up with results that were uncomfortably close to my horror story above: dozens upon dozens of entries from CHALOT, TWOT and various lectionaries. The last resources I would have wanted to see. And switching to an All Commentaries Collection instead hid my few Isaiah commentaries among many times more commentaries on other books. So improvements are certainly sorely needed.
Mac Pro (late 2013) OS 12.6.2
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Mark Barnes said:
certain sections of Guides don't tell you whether they're searches or look-ups
I appreciate this discussion. I loaded the beta just to see what had "started" the issue.
As one who has prioritized certain commentaries and use them in a PG in order to see how they distinctly treat a passage, it was very very confusing, frustrating to now have the materials listed appearing visually like a "search"
-- I have come to depend on seeing that commentary name listed FIRST and then checking out its opinions. Having the title or section title of the article first is really not very helpful.
This "breaks" a long standing way of doing things going back years and many iterations of this software. No wonder people are confused, upset etc?
I've not really seen "convincing" practical reasons/explanations? versus "philosophical" defenses? so...puzzled, etc
Thanks
Regards, SteveF
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SteveF said:
I've not really seen "convincing" practical reasons/explanations? versus "philosophical" defenses? so...puzzled, etc
The change in 5.1 was unintentional and will be reversed in the next beta. The philosophical debate was launched because of a misunderstanding about how various sections were designed to work.
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