Warning about Logos 8 Notes: Dangerous Deletion Bug or Weakness in Program?

Adam Borries (Faithlife) said:

Levi, this is working as designed.

Not a real smart move on FL's part. This is like requiring users to become mind-readers of the programmer's thoughts. [:(]

Jack Caviness said:

Adam Borries (Faithlife) said:

Levi, this is working as designed.

Not a real smart move on FL's part. This is like requiring users to become mind-readers of the programmer's thoughts. 

There was a thread somewhere about that. Ctrl-Shift-K is explained in help as "erase highlighting" and the context menu command "Remove annotations" means to remove the annotations (=notes and highlights) to a verse - and it's not mind-reading to understand that erase=remove=delete. Use such commands at your own risk!

Moreover, I think it is not only smart but even gracious of FL to not really delete the written notes but to keep them as unassigned - and even if we tell the program to really delete something, Logos will keep it in the trash can of the New Notes to allow for undelete. They are less careless with our data than we are.  

Mark Barnes said:

A command labelled "erase highlighting" shouldn't remove anchor points for notes, surely?

I'm trying to find out what exactly happens under various circumstances - the video linked above was very unclear and claimed things that didn't happen or that aren't true. If the command takes away all annotations (like the menu command) then it should be renamed - but this doesn't seem to be the case. If it takes out all annotations (=notes & highlights) made by selection rather than by reference, this needs to be documented.

So far it seems I can make it clear some anchors in some circumstances (not all of them) and even delete a note made by selection with text in it, which is admittedly not what Ctrl-Shift-K should do. When it deletes notes with no content, as the video showed, that's not an issue except for documentation, but deleting notes with text shouldn't happen - even though we can undelete them.

Wayne levi Price said:

to Change the Color of your highlights you cannot just choose another color, but you have to DELETE the old color first.

This is where you're simply wrong! I'm happy to bring you the good news!😜

Wayne levi Price said:

We need to be able to change the COLOR without removing the NOTE itself. 

we are, just not from the highlighter panel but from the Notes tool:

Wayne levi Price said:

Thanks for your guidance. You did point me in the right direction.

I made a video showing people how to change the color the way you showed me.

Let me know if it is right or not.

For the most part, yes. Some things:

- you talk about "files" when all there is is a note or highlight, even without text. The old notes system used to have files (called "notefiles" - they have been converted to the "notebooks" you are using for test or study purposes). Now all notes and highlights are in one big database. There are no files, you were making notes and highlights (which technically are notes, too) - it may confuse people when you talk about files.

- deleting a highlight by dragging it to the Trash was something I didn't even show you, but you found it: great stuff. There's one even better thing: If you really manage to delete a note, as in written text = study results, go to the trash: it keeps them all and you can undelete them. You don't lose the study results you wrote into your notes. (What it currently does not keep is removed anchors when there are other anchors in the note/highlight. So using the Ctrl-Shift-K on a by-selection-note without text or a highlight will delete those and put them into the trash, just as when you drag them - they can be recovered. When you use it on a by-selection-note with text or highlight with multiple anchors, it will take out that one anchor. Actually this worries me a bit)    

- you found that you don't need to delete a highlight to change it: that's what I tried to show with my screenshot (actually that's what Adam tried to point you to as well in the very first answer you received on page 1 of this thread). So changing green to blue or whatever will work like a charm. 

- You seem to like adding highlights: bold and large and yellow and a box around, then maybe put a note. You found that all of these are different individual highlights that just happen to have the same anchor. If you use the same combination very often, it will pay off to have a custom highlight that combines all of those in one style. You can have a note and all of the highlighting in one place - I know, when one is used to it, it's much more convenient. I happen to dislike Logos' orange highlighter, which just marks a kind of red. So to get to a bright orange, I'll type OY or YO to add orange to yellow and it's instructive too. And I will mark a longer passage yellow and then use orange overlay for the real core message. This all to tell you: I feel your pain in getting told to make it in a different way. You don't need to. Just keep on.

- There's one thing: you said how do I find the four different highlights I put on a passage - putting all of them in a notebook is tedious. That's true. You don't need that as long as the facets help you find stuff. They currently won't if you highlight in a long book in the bible, since you can find a note by simply clicking on it, which is not true for highlights. This would argue for keeping the highlight together with the note (e.g. if the highlight conveys a certain meaning and you use the note to document why you think the words should be understood like that).  But Logos developers are working at bringing back the sort order By Reference. Then all your highlights and notes made for one passage are directly next to each other and you can find them regardless of notebooks. I was hoping for this feature for the current beta, but it hasn't materialized yet. I'm sure it will in short time.  

I do hope this helps.

Wayne levi Price said:

Because I am using the same series of Highlights, you said, " it will pay off to have a custom highlight that combines all of those in one style."

How can I do this?

In the Highlight tool you choose a palette you like and choose "Add new style" from the dropdown command. Then you can add all the things you might like. I just built a style I called LYB for large yellow box:

Then you can play with all the effects:

red: make text larger

red box: make text bold

blue box: highlighter/solid background color selection

blue arrow: draw box around 

those are just examples of what you can do. This is how it looks, and it's applied with one keyboard stroke

Wayne, 

In addition to NB.Mick's response, I'll add two things:

1. I would say that for what your are creating 4 annotations (3 highlights and 1 note) I would create only 1. To do this first create your custom highlight as per Mick's instructions, then when you apply this highlight simply add a note icon in the Notes tool (the newly applied highlight should automatically be active)
2. You can find any annotation regardless of where you "saved" it by simply right-clicking on the highlighted text and choosing "open annotation(s)". This will open a notes tool panel with this/these annotations already selected.