Scripting Collections

I think I've about searched everything I can for collections. I kind of decided to go with the following methodology for collections

01-Genesis through 66-Revelation with the following syntax: subj:Bookname type:commentary
Multi-Book commentaries nested in each appropriate collection above.
A collection for NT and OT Commentaries, nested appropriately
A collection for whole Bible commentaries, nested in all

Is there a way to script step 1 so that I can write these collections in a batch from a text file?

Also, any criticism of my methodology is appreciated. I've read and re-read the wiki and the big collection threads on here and it seems like this is the best way to get to the commentaries you want quickly.

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Comments

Dave Hooton

01-Genesis through 66-Revelation with the following syntax: subj:Bookname type:commentary

For commentaries on "Gospel of John" you may need a query to eliminate the "epistles of John" & "Revelation" eg.

type:commentary (title:john, subject:john) -subject:("1 John", "2 John", "3 John", "John, 1st", "John, 2nd", "John, 3rd", revelation, "epistles of john")

It uses (title:john OR subject:john) where the separating comma = OR. A separating space = AND. The unary minus = ANDNOT

Scripting is not an option within L4 but you might be able to generate the simple queries within a competent text editor or Excel if you have a list of the books of the bible.

Multi-Book commentaries nested in each appropriate collection above.

I'm not sure what you achieve by trying to nest multi-book commentaries. This assumes you can accurately identify dedicated single-book from multi-book eg.

type:commentary title:("II Peter", "2 Peter")

provides both dedicated and multi-book commentaries. I could use a complicated ANDNOT to separate them but is it worthwhile?

Michael Dickey

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/61832#Comment_61832

Yeah, generating the text entries within excel is what I was going to do for the script. In this case, I'll just use the script I create in excel and copy paste 66 times.

Thanks for the heads up on the John issues (and 1 and 2 Samuel, etc I would guess). I"ll have to do some more thinking on that.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/61952#Comment_61952

Can I ask a stupid question? Why do you want collections for every book in the bible? A custom passage guide will give you links to relevant commentaries, as will the plus tab on an open commentary. And in 4.0a you can restrict the passage guide to a collection of commentaries, so you can exclude less helpful or whole-bible commentaries from this quite easily. Of course, if you're preaching through a series on a bible book, I can see why collections for individual books could be useful, but if that's the case you could just create the collections as you need them.

Michael Dickey

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/61956#Comment_61956

Not a stupid question. I'm trying to figure out a way to get to the books I want without finding cross references.

So if I do a search in Dan 12 for something, I don't want to have to sift through all the Revelation commentaries that pop up due to all the cross references, so I do a search against my Daniel collection.

If that's not the best way to do it or if I'm making a mountain out of a molehill I'm open to suggestions. I think maybe I need to look into customizing the passage guide before I invest a lot of time in collections.

If I can avoid all the cross references, I'll have reached my goal.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/61992#Comment_61992

When you say "do a search in Dan 12 for something", can you give a concrete example?

Michael Dickey

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/62003#Comment_62003

Well, I poked around and decided that what I needed to do was use the passage guide. I was doing a search (clicking magnifying glass) for Dan 12 and coming up with a lot of cross references when all I wanted were my Daniel commentaries opened to the appropriate place. But I'd end up with Revelation opened as well because there are cross references there.

My solution was going to be to search collections. But I think I'd rather use the passage guide for commentary oriented stuff and stick to collections for background, history, theology, etc.

Saves me some work