Initial Thoughts and Questions
After two hours of playing:
1. Resource intensive! Even with Indexing postponed for 4 hours, the program runs slowly, comparable to Logos 3. But I'm running on a netbook with 512MB. Will try on a more powerful laptop once I get the DVD.
On the topic of Indexing, is it possible for Logos to pre-index each resource, and add that as part of the resource download process? The indexing is so resource intensive that I doubt it will ever finish on a machine like mine. Please think about all the missionaries in the field in developing countries who may not have the latest and greatest and richest hardware to run the latest software.
3. Nice, clean, intuitive interface (in most cases), as many have commented already. Again, beautiful job!
4. Beyond the new UI, I was expecting some major technological breakthrough that I thought Bob was hinting at in the last two years. Things like: really smart search, driven by semantic tagging, or some other way to draw out the richness of the LDLS library to the average user (I do not read the original languages). So far I've only found Biblical Places and Things, which look like a specialized form of searching. Can you provide a list or hints of what we should be discovering in terms of "wow" features?
As a non-OL user, the criterion I use to judge the success of this software (and any other Bible software) is: Does it help me discover more about God's word that the other software help me discover?
5. I initially thought the "Command" textbox was some super-intelligent natural-language gateway to the library as mentioned in #4 above. So I tried typing in "audience of isaiah" expecting it to find something. It looks like it's some glorified form of search? Can you give us some guidance what the Command textbox does and how is it different than Search?
6. UI Comments:
a. Really like the ability to change text size on each individual window.
b. Love the Clippings feature.
c. In Read Aloud mode, love the fact that the cue follows the reading of each verse.
d. Love the full history.
e. In general, too many little arrows, little triangles all over the screen.
f. Why is there a little horizontal line on the vertical scrollbar?
g. Please make the vertical scrollbar more visible and more intuitive to use (e.g. dragging it will not abruptly jump me to an entirely different section of the Bible).
h. Looks like the right click menu on a word still needs more work.
7. How-To Questions:
a. After I float a tab, how do I unfloat (re-dock) it?
b. How do I set the Passage Guide to use a specific Commentary Collection?
c. How do I change the voice of the Read Aloud feature, and are there settings to that feature?
8. Feature Questions:
a. The Bible Explorer seems to be just a slimmed-down version of the Passage Guide. How how they different?
b. Can we assume that the missing features such as visual highlighting will be added back later?
Comments
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After I float a tab, how do I unfloat (re-dock) it?
To redock a floating panel, just click on the tab and drag it to the panel where you'd like to dock it. (See here: http://screencast.com/t/oaQ0Y6cUPDSU.)
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Another question: What is Apparatus?0
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Reading View: Does it do anything other than maximizing the tab panel? I would suggest that Reading View will open a separate floating window that I can resize based on my screen size, with the option of "reading" one page or two pages side-by-side (as in Word).
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1. Resource intensive! Even with Indexing postponed for 4 hours, the program runs slowly, comparable to Logos 3. But I'm running on a netbook with 512MB. Will try on a more powerful laptop once I get the DVD.
512MB is outside our target specs; it will be very hard to make it perform well with that much memory, thought we still plan some optimizations.
On the topic of Indexing, is it possible for Logos to pre-index each resource, and add that as part of the resource download process? The indexing is so resource intensive that I doubt it will ever finish on a machine like mine. Please think about all the missionaries in the field in developing countries who may not have the latest and greatest and richest hardware to run the latest software.Each book was separately indexed in earlier versions, and that's why your searches returned results one book at a time. This big index takes a lot of time upfront, but it's what lets us search the entire library in (many cases) less than a second.
4. Beyond the new UI, I was expecting some major technological breakthrough that I thought Bob was hinting at in the last two years. Things like: really smart search, driven by semantic tagging, or some other way to draw out the richness of the LDLS library to the average user (I do not read the original languages). So far I've only found Biblical Places and Things, which look like a specialized form of searching. Can you provide a list or hints of what we should be discovering in terms of "wow" features?If you download the extra syntax resources, your Bible Word Study Guide should get much smarter. (See http://community.logos.com/forums/t/743.aspx) Syntax searching is also dramatically improved. Other "wows" should (I hope) emerge as you play with it....
5. I initially thought the "Command" textbox was some super-intelligent natural-language gateway to the library as mentioned in #4 above. So I tried typing in "audience of isaiah" expecting it to find something. It looks like it's some glorified form of search? Can you give us some guidance what the Command textbox does and how is it different than Search?You can type part of a book name time to find it quickly, or type commands to the system, from "Set" (for setting the program settings) to "Read Aloud" to a Bible reference to jump to.
f. Why is there a little horizontal line on the vertical scrollbar?I'm not going to answer this yet. :-) Give it some more time and see if it starts to make sense.
g. Please make the vertical scrollbar more visible and more intuitive to use (e.g. dragging it will not abruptly jump me to an entirely different section of the Bible).h. Looks like the right click menu on a word still needs more work.
The scrollbar should work like in 3.0. Is it that dragging it is too sensitive? It covers the whole span of the book, and since Bibles are so big it doesn't move much before you're in another book of the Bible...
What do you want improved on the right click menu?
b. How do I set the Passage Guide to use a specific Commentary Collection?
c. How do I change the voice of the Read Aloud feature, and are there settings to that feature?
If you customize the Guide template, you can add a Commentaries section limited to a particular collection. Use "Edit guide template" from the panel menu of the Passage Guide, or "Make a new guide template" from the Guides menu.
The voice is controlled by Windows; your control panel for Speech should support changing the voice settings.
a. The Bible Explorer seems to be just a slimmed-down version of the Passage Guide. How how they different?
b. Can we assume that the missing features such as visual highlighting will be added back later?
The Bible Explorer is a bit faster, and designed to be left open instead of generated on command. Visual highlighting is planned for a future release. (Automatic highlighting is available now through the "Visual Filter" documents you can create from File > New.Thanks for all the feedback!0 -
The horizontal line on the vertical bar is very nice.
I thought it was a visual glitch. Thanks for the pointer to explore it further.0 -
I'd like to give a shout out to something.
I got finished indexing (before the second coming
and installed the syntax search and sentence diagramming updates and open Logos and just typed in Titus 3 1 at random.What I got was my bible, the exegetical guide, the passage guide, and my favorite commentary all ready to go at once and pretty darn quickly!
Robert Pavich
For help go to the Wiki: http://wiki.logos.com/Table_of_Contents__
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Another cool thing...add a tab is contextual!
If you are in a particular resource..when you click the + sign to add a tab...you see all of your related resources to pick from....nice and better than v3's list type....
thanks!
Robert Pavich
For help go to the Wiki: http://wiki.logos.com/Table_of_Contents__
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wow...for a real freak show...get a layout going and then click one of the other ones..see attachment...
Also THANK YOU FOR THE "CLOSE ALL TABS" ( AND ALSO "CLOSE ALL OTHER TABS) FEATURE!
Robert Pavich
For help go to the Wiki: http://wiki.logos.com/Table_of_Contents__
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After I float a tab, how do I unfloat (re-dock) it?
To redock a floating panel, just click on the tab and drag it to the panel where you'd like to dock it. (See here: http://screencast.com/t/oaQ0Y6cUPDSU.)
The screencasts are great Phil and we ned more of them...it took me days to find the answer to this one.... I was beginning to think this software was really dumb because there was no way to re-dock a floating window.
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Also THANK YOU FOR THE "CLOSE ALL TABS" ( AND ALSO "CLOSE ALL OTHER TABS) FEATURE!
I never new beta testing this product would cause this much joy! We should have issued a warning in the release notes.
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soemtimes we can even be happy with some of the small things in life! LOL enjoy.
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Also THANK YOU FOR THE "CLOSE ALL TABS" ( AND ALSO "CLOSE ALL OTHER TABS) FEATURE!
I never new beta testing this product would cause this much joy! We should have issued a warning in the release notes.
If your happy and you know it say LOGOS 4.0!
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