selecting a verse or two winds up selecting a paragraph or two

Often when I try to select a few words in order to copy a couple of verses, Logos 6 expands the selection to include the whole paragraph or multiple paragraphs if the verses I want span more than one paragraph. L5 did not work this way.

Is there any way of turning this feature off?

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Levi Durfey

It's a new feature called "Smart Selection." You can turn it off in the preferences, or you can override it temporarily by holding the ALT/Option key while selecting.

Ken F Hill

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/671445#Comment_671445

Thanks. I've looked in preferences several times and overlooked this.

Mike Binks

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/671450#Comment_671450

Thanks. I've looked in preferences several times and overlooked this.

Ken - Don't forget that which ever way you set your preferences the 'other' function can be selected by holding the Alt (or equivalent key) during selection.

Graham Criddle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/671692#Comment_671692

Thanks. I've looked in preferences several times and overlooked this.

Ken - Don't forget that which ever way you set your preferences the 'other' function can be selected by holding the Alt (or equivalent key) during selection.

This isn't working both ways at the moment - you can't use it to toggle on if switched off in preferences - see discussion at https://community.logos.com/forums/p/97123/669821.aspx#669821

Chris Culy (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/671704#Comment_671704

The behavior has changed slightly recently. Alt/Opt will only work one way as of 6.0a RC 1. More information here: https://wiki.logos.com/Logos_6.0a_RC_1#Smart_Selection

Mike Binks

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/672496#Comment_672496

Thanks for the reference Chris but the still begging question is...

Was the change made (from two way working) on purpose or by accident?

If the former; what was the logic behind the change?

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/672843#Comment_672843

Was the change made (from two way working) on purpose or by accident?

It looks like it was done on purpose, since it is documented in the release notes.

But still...why?

Chris Culy (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/672846#Comment_672846

It was done on purpose. I believe our interaction design team would like to establish holding Alt/Opt to always indicate "precise" selection mode and would like to use this concept in other places. I will see if I can get a more in-depth explanation for you. Thanks!

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/672962#Comment_672962

Hi, everyone.

Yep, I requested that change on purpose. Two reasons:

First, we try to avoid UI modality as a general design principle. That is, we want to avoid changing the meaning of a user input gesture based on settings that are not currently visible.

(Yes, smart selection is itself a modality: dragging the mouse across the text has different results depending on the setting. Some users are already finding this confusing.)

(Yes, several other modalities remain in the UI, such as settings for "match case" and "match all word forms" being in the Search panel menu, and worse, we compounded that issue by applying the Search panel settings for Inline Search. This is convenient for the code, but unfortunate for users, because if you are required to retain knowledge of an unseen state of the system in order to accurately predict the results of performing a given input gesture, we've failed a basic usability test. Or, as people are fond of putting it: "Logos is not intuitive." [:)] I hope one day to eradicate them all.)

Second, we are considering using ALT to allow manual selection within hyperlinks, some of which (as of L6) are inserted via Community Tagging. Normally, dragging within a hyperlink doesn't make a selection at all, but drags the link into the layout. That behavior is neat, unless what you really want is to select part of the hyperlink -- that is, if you want a precise selection. This isn't very much related to the smart selection preference at all.

"Press ALT for manual selection" is a simple rule to document/explain/video/remember; "Press ALT to get the opposite behavior of the current smart/precise selection setting, whatever you've set it to -- note that this setting also controls some behavior not directly related to smart selection, such as dragging hyperlinks" ... not so much.

That said, we hadn't anticipated that anyone would find it useful to opt in to smart selection. Is that really useful? Will you-all be sad if we don't allow that?

Mike Binks

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/673082#Comment_673082

First, we try to avoid UI modality as a general design principle. That is, we want to avoid changing the meaning of a user input gesture based on settings that are not currently visible.

I have always thought of the ALT key as 'do the other thing' but this probably stems from my days with RISC OS.

Rod Bergen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/673082#Comment_673082

Why change things from the way every other Windows program works?

I want to select a portion of two verses by dragging my mouse over the text just like in every other windows program but now it can't be done. And in order for the program to work the way that it always has, i need to spend a half hour trying to figure out why some programmer changed things?

Why don't programmers ever talk to the average user?

I REALLY don't like smart selection.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/679697#Comment_679697

Taxee, I assume that you know that Microsoft Office uses smart selection - sometimes much to my annoyance. However, the feature is important in a touch screen environment.

Rod Bergen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/679700#Comment_679700

I assume that you know that Microsoft Office uses smart selection - sometimes much to my annoyance. However, the feature is important in a touch screen environment.

Smart select in Word is different than smart selection in Logos 6. Word uses word by word selection while Logos 6 selects a verse or a whole paragraph. I didn't spend much time trying to figure out how it worked because it wouldn't let me do what I wanted to do. It was extremely frustrating trying to figure out how to turn it off.

The Logos help function was completely useless and a search of the wiki turned up nothing either. i finally found it after some time searching the forums.

My beef is that when you change something this fundamental, you have to tell everyone up front in very clear terms AND make sure that all of the documentation in your help manuals talks about it, or, better yet, allow people to opt into the change.

I finally purchased Logos 6 yesterday and wasted 45 minutes trying to figure out how to do something that I didn't have to even think about in Logos 5.

That is not how to implement change.

Simon’s Brother

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/679697#Comment_679697

I don't find smart selection any help at all. In fact it is quite annoying whether I am on my desktop or iPad. In a touch screen environment I want precision in selection rather than some algorithm deciding for me that i should select a whole paragraph when in reality all I want is to select two verses /sentences. Smart selection should be something you have to opt into but instead in Logos 6 the designers opted everyone in and you have to try and work out what's going on - and turn it off. Like you I did not realise what was going on at first and wasted a lot of time. Designers need to stop thinking like designers sometimes and stop forcing these quirky features onto unsuspecting users and instead think how users who no nothing about the latest design theories - which is going to more Logos users than not - how that poorly documented change is going to impact upon their experience of the software - particularly when an upgrade ignores and overrides a users previous default setting to have this feature turned off. Taxee I recommend turning off this feature in program settings and it won't matter what they do with the toggle key as it only works if you have the feature turned on. And a further recommendation with this software these days is every time it is updated, whether it be the desktop or mobile version, every time it is updated ensure you go and check the program settings as the developers have shown they no longer respect what you have set as default behaviour for the software.

Why change things from the way every other Windows program works?

I want to select a portion of two verses by dragging my mouse over the text just like in every other windows program but now it can't be done. And in order for the program to work the way that it always has, i need to spend a half hour trying to figure out why some programmer changed things?

Why don't programmers ever talk to the average user?

I REALLY don't like smart selection.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/679813#Comment_679813

My beef is that when you change something this fundamental, you have to tell everyone up front in very clear terms AND make sure that all of the documentation in your help manuals talks about it, or, better yet, allow people to opt into the change.

I finally purchased Logos 6 yesterday and wasted 45 minutes trying to figure out how to do something that I didn't have to even think about in Logos 5.

That is not how to implement change.

I'm not a fan of the feature in Logos or Word, but it was implemented in L5.2 with the following notification in the release notes:

Smart Selection

Smart Selection has been implemented for select resources (See this thread for more info), and a toggle has been added to Program Settings.

Smart Selection allows for text selection based on word, clause, sentence, and paragraph groupings. Holding Alt/Option will allow normal selection, and Alt/Option+RightClick will select the word’s logical cluster.

Implemented Smart Selection based on words in all resources (when smart selection is turned on) even if more detailed smart selection data is unavailable.

The thread referenced gives additional detail:

As a quick reference, Smart Selection progresses it's automatic selection by Word->Phrase->Sentence->Paragraph.

To explain how Smart Selection works, consider the example sentence "I am testing the new feature for the next version of Logos."

Selecting "new" will select "new" (reaching the end of a word will select the beginning of the word as well), selecting "new feature" will select both full words, and dragging into any other words will instantly select those whole words.

As soon as you select past "feature", it will begin selecting not by word, but by phrase. So if your normal selection was "testing the new feature for the", smart selection would extend your selection to be "the new feature for the next version", assuming the new feature and the next version are logical phrases in the text. Whenever you pass a word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph boundary, it begins selecting at that level (e.g. when you pass the end of a sentence, selection will extend to the beginning of the sentence you were previously selecting words in and select the one you just entered).

As for the Alt/Option commands, holding Alt/Option while click+dragging will use the old character-based selection, while Alt/Option & right clicking a word will select that logical "chunk". In our earlier example, Alt+Right click on "new" would select "the new feature". Normal Right click remains as it is currently.

While it is less than ideal for searching after the fact, I believe that Faithlife is doing better at providing the users with information. One suggestion for the average user would be to copy the feature information from release notes into a notes file (skip the bug fixes) and copy any linked threads where Faithlife tries to tell us what the feature is. And if, when reading the forums, you find an especially useful example or hint, copy it into the notes file. Its an imperfect solution but in this particular case would have saved a number of people much frustration.

Rod Bergen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/679877#Comment_679877

I'm not a fan of the feature in Logos or Word, but it was implemented in L5.2

That's quite possible but it must not have been the default since I am constantly cutting and pasting from Logos into Word and other apps. Only when I installed Logos 6 did it suddenly appear and completely mess up the way it had treated how I could select text.

My problem is not with the introduction of the "feature" but how it was implemented. It caused me an hour of completely wasted time trying to figure out what they had done.

And that's when the complete lack of a user manual and the almost useless help function serve to increase the frustration.

Christopher Evans

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/680139#Comment_680139

I agree with Taxee. This smart search function is easily one of the most frustrating changes in Logos 6. So many times I come tantalizingly close to being able to select a phrase inside a verse only to have it grab a whole paragraph when I let go of the mouse button. Even when I found the right way to express the problem in a search and found this thread, I still had to translate the advice about preferences to Settings and then to look for the smart search setting in text display (also counterintuitive). Even after setting it, it took me 10 tries to select just a phrase inside a verse (I even tried ALT some times to no effect). By the time I was done, I felt some carny should have given me a stuffed bear or something for my accomplishment.

I don't see how it could possibly be good UI design to make this change. How many people really routinely want to snap to paragraphs? Why not just let them be the ones to try holding down ALT and leave the rest of us to the way it has always worked everywhere?

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690454#Comment_690454

I agree with Taxee. This smart search function is easily one of the most frustrating changes in Logos 6. So many times I come tantalizingly close to being able to select a phrase inside a verse only to have it grab a whole paragraph when I let go of the mouse button. Even when I found the right way to express the problem in a search and found this thread, I still had to translate the advice about preferences to Settings and then to look for the smart search setting in text display (also counterintuitive). Even after setting it, it took me 10 tries to select just a phrase inside a verse (I even tried ALT some times to no effect). By the time I was done, I felt some carny should have given me a stuffed bear or something for my accomplishment.

I don't see how it could possibly be good UI design to make this change. How many people really routinely want to snap to paragraphs? Why not just let them be the ones to try holding down ALT and leave the rest of us to the way it has always worked everywhere?

I am confused by what you wrote, so for clarification: You can turn "smart select" (not "smart search"!) off in preferences and return to the "old" behavior. If you are seeing something different, either you misunderstood and didn't do what you were supposed to do, or there is another issue at work. If the later, please create a new thread and explain your issue clearly. Screen shots might be beneficial.

Rod Bergen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690459#Comment_690459

I am confused by what you wrote, so for clarification: You can turn "smart select" (not "smart search"!) off in preferences and return to the "old" behavior.

The problem is that Logos 6 defaults to smart select even if you had deselected it in Logos 5.

Personally, I did not even remember that I had deselected smart search in Logos 5 as I had done it a long while ago. Suddenly, everything changed and it simply seemed that the select mechanism was "broken" in Logos 6.

Given the lack of proper documentation, it took me an hour of wasted time (when i could least afford it) to determine exactly what the problem was.

That is the beef - Logos 6 overriding selections that we had forgotten we had made.

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690569#Comment_690569

The problem is that Logos 6 defaults to smart select even if you had deselected it in Logos 5.

I agree. "Smart" select is, well, less than "smart." [;)]

The person I responded to seemed to be saying that he was still having issues.