Top 10 Minor Issues / Major Annoyances of 2013

MJ. Smith
MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 54,888
edited December 2024 in English Forum

I'm curious what your list would be - mine is skewed to the PC app. I don't use my Kindle app enough to believe my opinions should count for much. But I have considered how broadly an issue effects users to make the list more useful than "MJ's current rant topics"[:@]

Top 10 Minor Issues / Major Annoyances of 2013

1. Logos added pre-defined Reading Plans ... but didn't allow for the user to create a pre-defined plan (at least as far as I know). Especially make the feature work well for Vyrso devotionals and seasonal or 30 day devotionals that are not built as calendar devotionals.

2. Logos assumes that only one lectionary is in use at a time ... what about the poor Anglican who uses the RCL and the traditional morning/evening prayer?

3. Logos built a very nice Reading Cycle for Daf Yomi. However, in trying to create a similar patristics plan, I discovered that one can only build dynamic references to a generic entry - not the long, short and Syriac version as in Shaff's collection (and the reading plan).

4. Prioritization has never gotten done for me - as others have also requested, I need subheadings and the ability to contract subunits so I know where I am and don't take forever to move a new item to location.

5. Liturgical preachers of the world unite! The sermon feature doesn't include liturgical date in the metadata. Anglicans and Reformed of the world unite! The sermon feature allows only for Scripture as the main text while you (and others) have a strong tradition of sermons based on the Book of Common Prayer and the Catechism.

6. Do something that unites and makes easy to find the Faithlife groups that are devoted to sharing Logos documents generally ... I know we have them for collections, sentence diagrams, visual filters ... It would especially help new users who need models that work.

7. Please give me a new feature - the ability to see the collection of resources that is being used for each section of the Guides. Why? So I can search the resources not yet tagged to be used by a section (example outlines) or build a collection of similar resources not used (think Vyrso Bible by topic books ... or PB's)

8. Add a filter function to note files to hide all notes that are highlighting only without any comment. Why? This doesn't bother me but I am tired of answering the questions of those who are legitimately bothered.

9. Logos' assumption of where I want to see my highlights/notes errs on the excessive side. Give me a one click option under filters to turn them all off in this resource. Perhaps, as a bonus allow me to turn off all Community Notes, all Notes, and all Visual Filters individually as well.

10. Create some default collections for commentaries and monographs that a new user can easily use: for example, an option to automatically split the commentary section into Background, Expository, Historical, Intermediate, Technical or Other. Or use Mo's categories: application/devotional; language; pastoral/exegetical; scholar/critical ...

Bonus: please let me put a scripture reference in a prayer list or easily see a pop-up in the specified translation ... when the author goes to the work to note a particular translation, I'd like to cooperate ...



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."

Comments

  • toughski
    toughski Member Posts: 1,288 ✭✭✭

    How about a function to submit your "gripe list" on your Wish List and then have Logos sales team call you with a "price you can't refuse" to fix the issues. I am serious. I would go for something like that!

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 54,888

    That could be fun ... first come, first serve I assume. Might create some source control issues in development and some arbitration expenses for opposing requests but ...[:D]

    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."

  • mike
    mike Member Posts: 2,111 ✭✭✭

    Indexing still slow for non i12 with 256gb RAM laptops/desktop...

  • Simon’s Brother
    Simon’s Brother Member Posts: 6,822 ✭✭✭

    Yes to all of them but particularly number 4. Libronix did number 4 better than L4/5.  Please fix this up Logos.

  • Niko
    Niko Member Posts: 164 ✭✭

    While I am happy with the program and I do not have much to complain, I must admit it is not among the fastest of my programs..

    Maybe it is a bit annoying to find seven ocr / typos in a new hebrew grammar in the first 30 mins of reading it. I have read enough to spot these and do not mind them, but it is still nicer to read a typo free resource. 

  • Lee
    Lee Member Posts: 2,714 ✭✭✭

    I understand that there are costs involved in fixing bugs and typos.

    I think it really wouldn't hurt for Logos to work out a bug and typo bounty program to a select few.

  • Kevin Olson
    Kevin Olson Member Posts: 173 ✭✭

    MJ. Smith said:

    I'm curious what your list would be - mine is skewed to the PC app.

    First of all, I want to preface this post by saying that I love Logos Bible Software, and I share these because I want the software to be better.

    I am running Logos 5 on a Mac, so these may be Mac specific.  I do not know how to do everything I want to do in Logos, so some of these may be just an ignorance issue on my part.

    1.  Cmd Q.  When I want to exit out of the program, it often seems like the program stops responding, and refuses to quit completely.  I have to use force quit often.

    2. Syncing.  I wish we had more control over what syncs and what doesn’t.  I love it that resources sync, but I am not so sure I want all my notes and other documents synced. I think that syncing is what causes Macs to hang up when exiting.

    3. Read Aloud.  When I start the read aloud (Cmd R), the text keeps jumping to the current verse being read.  I sometimes want to look at a previous verse while continuing to listen, but scrolling back either restarts the narrator, or worse, it sometimes starts a second narration.  If there are two voices, you can only stop one, and the other cannot be stopped unless you exit out of the program completely.

    4. Lectionary.  I wish you could set up a default lectionary layout, so that when you click into the lectionary, you can have other resources open.

    5. Devotionals. Similar to 4, I wish you could also set up a default devotional layout.

    6. Incomplete palate for toolbar shortcuts.  I wish we could get all the Hebrew, Greek and English letters, and a few other symbols as well.



    7. Small Thumbnails in Library Preview and Parallel Resources.  The size of the thumbnails sometimes appear to be much smaller than the normal size.



    8. Notes.  I wish all of our note files would be visible in the context specific panel, not just the last one used.  Could they all be listed so that we could post to any of them, or even to more than one?



    9. Reading Plans.  I wish we could start a predefined reading plan at any time of the year.  It asks for a start date, why doesn’t it use it?  For example, I wanted to set up McCheyne’s plan starting in November.  But the program sets all the readings for the whole year listed as behind.  It would be nice to start the beginning of McCheyne in November and read through to the end of October if I wanted to.

    10.  Prioritization Labels.  I wish there was an easy way to label groups of resources in the prioritization panel.  Labels like Bibles, Dictionaries, Commentaries, etc.  Also, if the resource has a long name, you cannot see the end of it, and that sometimes causes confusion.

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 54,888

    Thanks for your input - a couple may be Mac specific but most apply across platforms. I hadn't tried the McCheyne plan to discover its quirk ... I agree with you.

    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."

  • GregW
    GregW Member Posts: 848 ✭✭

    I also love Logos and use it all the time.  I'm also glad that Reading Plan syncing now works so well across all my devices. I think my request would be:

    • I would like to see a chapter-based option on Reading Plans i.e. be able to specify one (or more) chapters per session, whether for Bibles or monographs. While it's not a major problem, it is a niggle. When I have a RP for a theology book it often breaks off mid-chapter and sometimes even mid-paragraph, which means you have lost the thread of the argument by the time you return to it, and being able to set it up to use chapters would help with that. 

    Running Logos 6 Platinum and Logos Now on Surface Pro 4, 8 GB RAM, 256GB SSD, i5

  • fgh
    fgh Member Posts: 8,948 ✭✭✭

    1.  Cmd Q.  When I want to exit out of the program, it often seems like the program stops responding, and refuses to quit completely.  I have to use force quit often.

    That sounds like one of two things:

    • You don't give it enough time to finish syncing.
    • A Mac bug that is supposed to be fixed in the current beta.

    8. Notes.  I wish all of our note files would be visible in the context specific panel, not just the last one used.  Could they all be listed so that we could post to any of them, or even to more than one?

    [Y][Y][Y][Y][Y][Y][Y][Y][Y][Y]

    Layouts and Prioritization can be done nearly as you want them, but not quite.

    I may post my own list after Christmas.

    Mac Pro (late 2013) OS 12.6.2

  • Brad
    Brad Member Posts: 928 ✭✭

    8. Notes.  I wish all of our note files would be visible in the context specific panel, not just the last one used.  Could they all be listed so that we could post to any of them, or even to more than one?

    Some great points in this thread, Folks.  Thank you.  

    Kevin, your point 8 is indeed intriguing.  I have a minor struggle with this one on a regular basis.  I wonder how unruly the list could be for users with a large number of notes and clippings files if we had had to scroll through them all.  Nevertheless I agree with your take.  I would gladly have the tradeoff of scrolling through a long list rather than having to go to "Documents" and open a particular note or clipping file in order to make it appear in the small "access list" just so I can make a simple note or clipping.

    The ability to add a note or clipping to more than one file also sounds like a useful additional capability.

    While we're at it, some of us would really appreciate the ability to merge 2 or more notes files into one consolidated file.  Maybe even with the option of retaining the original separate files as unique files.  I know we can copy and paste from side-by-side notes files, but that's a bit tedious. 

    Thanks again for sharing your thoughts in this tread.

  • Don Awalt
    Don Awalt Member Posts: 3,540 ✭✭✭

    In case this thread is getting more attention within Logos, see this post; Notes needs a lot more work IMHO.

  • tom
    tom Member Posts: 3,213 ✭✭✭

    MJ. Smith said:

    Logos assumes that only one lectionary is in use at a time

    [y]
    MJ. Smith said:

    Liturgical preachers of the world unite! The sermon feature doesn't include liturgical date in the metadata

    [y]
    MJ. Smith said:

    Bonus: please let me put a scripture reference in a prayer list

    [y]
  • Simon’s Brother
    Simon’s Brother Member Posts: 6,822 ✭✭✭

    Yes please.  This was originally missing L3, it was eventually added at users requests and when L4 came out they removed the option.  Bad decision to do so IMHO for the very scenario you suggest.

    GregW said:

    I also love Logos and use it all the time.  I'm also glad that Reading Plan syncing now works so well across all my devices. I think my request would be:

    • I would like to see a chapter-based option on Reading Plans i.e. be able to specify one (or more) chapters per session, whether for Bibles or monographs. While it's not a major problem, it is a niggle. When I have a RP for a theology book it often breaks off mid-chapter and sometimes even mid-paragraph, which means you have lost the thread of the argument by the time you return to it, and being able to set it up to use chapters would help with that. 

  • Donovan R. Palmer
    Donovan R. Palmer Member, MVP Posts: 2,881

    Logos 5 has improved dramatically since Logos 4.  So I am extremely happy.  These are my top three:

    • Better management of tags. I fear that we will have to wait until Logos 6 to see this taken any further.  Tags are essential to crafting the structure of a large library to your study needs.
    • More robust internet code in the event of a dirty or unstable connection. The answer is always to just run Logos in offline mode, but it would be nice if Logos could be a bit hardened to just give up trying to phone home when it cannot do so.
    • Fix crashes associated with hibernating Logos 5 on a Mac.  Good news is that a fix is on the way, but until it arrives, this is an issue and major annoyance.