Most Important Logos 8 Bugs and Improvements for Academic/Seminary Users

I would love to be able to view the translations within commentary series as translations to compare with other translations.

That is I want to see how the NICNT, WBC, ZECNT in-commentary translations compare to the ESV and the original greek/hebrew.  Eg. attached appendix which took a while to make.

Thank you for asking!

I'd like to have the lexicon information of any word just right-clicking.

Another suggestion would be to have a collaborative way to include answers and commentaries to the exercises proposed in languages textbooks.

1. n-tuple function in the concordance function so that occurrence of multi-lexeme elements can be studied.

2. ability to provide a manual stemming table for both the concordance and search functions - this would not only handle the exceptions but also allow older texts with variant spellings to be found more easily.

3. Option to show all possible parsing of a manuscript lexical item - root and morphology - to encourage the learning of actually reading the language rather than accepting Logos tagging as true. Especially useful if linked, when relevant, to a commentary that supports the particular parsing.

4. ability to add bible milestones to psalters and bibles from Text Creation Partnership

5. Repair BUG: Display of thorn forms and all other font issues

Off the top of my head, I seem to remember that neither the morphology charts nor the tagging of the LHB have ever been completely finished. It seems to me that both of these would be a must for academic/seminary users.

We'll be investing in fixing bugs, improving existing UI and features, and maybe a little bit of new feature work.

The performance of the context menu is a big one for me. It's grown out of control, and it's the most important and most used tool when I'm in the original languages. While you're fixing it up, we also need to be able to execute Milestone searches from the context menu.

This might not fit tightly in your definition of 'original languages', but the biggest single improvement you could make to Bible searching would be to add wildcard searching to labels/datatypes, so you could search for all women, or all cities, or even all people. There's dozens and dozens of academic and lay uses for that feature.

A few bugs that fit broadly into this category are:

• Reproducible Bug: Logos mangles a valid INTERSECTS search
• Can't add non-Bibles with a Bible index to the Passage List

And some more minor ones:

• Latin BWS is broken
• Bug in clause search: to feel (emotion) not available
• Bug: Search autocomplete doesn't suggest entities when three words are entered

...mobile...

I'd like to suggest improving the mobile orignial word study ui with a "One Click Word Study Panel." I quickly put together a mockup below of how it could look and work. Right now doing word studies in mobile is slow and clunky. I use Android mainly, but ios could use this kind improvement as well!

Is Logos set up for writing papers within Logos? Do most people do this as a Sermon?

Edit: I am not intending to hijack this thread, but I guess this is by way of suggestion... If the only way to write a paper in Logos is as a sermon or a note, perhaps that could be one area of improvement?

(But people with more experience may say that there is another way to do it that I don't know about.)

Edit: I guess you just write the paper in word and upload it as a Personal Book? I guess that's fine with me...

What bugs would you like to see us fix? 

In the desktop software, it would be very helpful if, when using the Passage Guide, clicking to expand/close the preview list of three (only three [:(]) results for an item in a Collection never sent me (my visual focus) back to the top of the Collection section, as it frequently does now and has as long as I can remember. This bug makes using the PG exceedingly tedious when there are lots of results.

EDIT:

I still would like to use this (New Testament Use of the Old testament Interactive) in class... and it is still as broken and utterly useless a tool as ever. The content is good enough, but the tool just doesn't work (in all the ways already mentioned in this thread).

https://community.logos.com/forums/t/119433.aspx

I have often found that when you switch from an interlinear language view with the ESV that you don't wind up at the same verse. It's kind of wonky. 

Give BHS a thorough once-over for orthographic/encoding issues: x-ref this thread.

Export to LaTeX, especially for handling language boundary transition correctly.

Works Cited.

What good is it if when I copy and paste from a resource, the works citation is not correctly formatted?  It even lets you pick the format (Turabian, Chicago, etc..), why if it is not correctly formatted?  

Thread => Help with a how to.... for learning Original Language words. Idea for Reader's Edition is choosing to hide words occurring less than ### times (so frequently appearing words have inline interlinear).

Dreaming of a filter so can exclude resources from search whose explicit copyright does not allow snippets to be printed for other students to use in their papers: e.g. inmates in prison who are studying for ministry (who are not allowed to use Logos Bible Software plus have an enforced limit of personal books in their possession).

Example copyright restrictions (so would like to exclude these resources from searches since am not allowed to print snippets for seminary students inside prison to consider for their papers):

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—except for brief quotations for the purpose of review or comment, without the prior permission of the publisher, P&R Publishing Company, P.O. Box 817, Phillipsburg, New Jersey 08865-0817.

Richard D. Phillips, Revelation, ed. Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2017), iv.

You may use brief quotations from this commentary in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission.

JoAnna M. Hoyt, Amos, Jonah, & Micah, ed. H. Wayne House and William D. Barrick, Evangelical Exegetical Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).

Hugh Williamson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.

H. G. M. Williamson, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 1–27: Commentary on Isaiah 6–12, ed. G. I. Davies and C. M. Tuckett, vol. 2, International Critical Commentary (London; New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark: An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018), iv.

Keep Smiling [:)]

During the next six months, we plan to make some improvements to Logos 8 for academic and seminary users with an emphasis on original language study.

We'll be investing in fixing bugs, improving existing UI and features, and maybe a little bit of new feature work.

What bugs would you like to see us fix? What areas of the software would you like to see us improve? Feel free to include issues for desktop, mobile, and web. If there are existing threads that discuss your issue in more detail and you can find them, it would be helpful if you include a link to them in your post.

Phil, I'm grateful that you and Faithlife will be working on improvements in these areas. Here are a few ideas:

Original Language & Datasets

• Canvas Tool (and/or text-charting/bible-arcing). I recently provided some feedback here.
• Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ). I've reported a number of formatting and editorial errors in BHQ via the typo tool. The problems appear to be common and likely widespread, similar to recent problems with Emanuel Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible and the Von Gall's Samaritan Pentateuch. Faithlife seems to have recurrent editorial problems with Hebrew. This is understandable to the extent that Hebrew text, diacritics, and formatting are complex. These problems, however, go well beyond that. I'm not sure if part of the problem is a lack of fluency among proofreaders.
• LDGNT & LDHB. The Lexham Discourse HOT and GNT Datasets have been in desperate need of revision for years now. I discussed this with Tavis Bohlinger and Steven Runge on the Nerdy Language Majors Facebook group just a couple of days ago (under my comment here for members of the NLM group). Steve is well aware of the issues and left a gracious reply. Please, do whatever you can to get him and his team the resources and the time needed to resolve these issues. The initial revision will be costly but will make future revisions that much easier. Such unique and useful databases and datasets shouldn't be left in such an incomplete, unrevised state.
• Names of God Interactive. When it comes to the Holy Spirit, this dataset has been a disaster for some years now. Many instances of the Holy Spirit in Hebrew have been miscategorized under the Father and many/most are no longer tagged at all. This was not originally the case. It seems to have arisen after some potential false positives were reported, although I wouldn't agree with many of them if understood in their proper literary, discourse context. Regardless, something happened behind the scenes that made a complete mess of this dataset, well beyond any reported problems that I'm aware of. The Bible Referent Data for the Holy Spirit is much more reliable—or was the last times I've checked—even if there are some potential errors and room for some disagreement / alternative readings. Don't get me wrong: The Names of God interactive is/ was/ could be a wonderful tool! But when problems this severe can go unresolved for so long (even after being reported), it does not engender confidence in the quality of Faithlife's data.

Mobile

• Bible Word Study fails with Modern Hebrew UI font. This function fails on my Moto G5 Plus Android device (8.1.0) when my default UI-font is set (or prioritized) to Modern Hebrew. I finally figured out what was causing this problem somewhat recently. I haven't tested this with other right-to-left and left-to-right, non-English languages. It's a major problem, but I'm not willing to sacrifice Hebrew fluency for the BWS feature to work all of the time. I can change the device language to English if I really, really want to use it; otherwise, I now avoid using it altogether.

Suggestions

• Modern Hebrew UI. Modern Hebrew has many benefits for biblical scholars (e.g., reaching the highest levels of Hebrew fluency and easy access to Israeli scholarship, publications, and resources). Setting UI settings to Hebrew is just one simple and effective way to redeem the time and immerse oneself further in the language. This could also make Logos Bible Software and other products, such as Noet, more accessible to many Israelis and Hebrew speakers.
• Hebrew Audio Bible.
• (Restored) Koine Greek Pronunciation Audio Bible (and Church Fathers, "LXX", Josephus's Jewish Wars, etc.). A couple scholars who are capable of this would be Randall Buth and Benjamin Kantor from the Biblical Language Center. Benjamin Kantor is producing Koine Greek audio and video resources at an impressive rate on KoineGreek.com. An even more unique and ambitious project would be a multi-cast audio recording that draws on the most experienced teachers and associates of the Biblical Language Center and perhaps elsewhere. Hearing multiple, fluent speakers with different vocal qualities facilitates greater fluency in listeners. Modern Greek Audio Bible(s) would also be welcome.

I would like to see a really comprehensive documentation for advanced search functions. E.g. about
- possibility and limits for using brackets in clause/morph search
- some operators in syntax search like 'gap'
- labels like <Person God> are great... i'd like to have the possibility in morph search to restrict a label e.g. to 'noun' (i know the workaround via 'INTERSECT', but there should be a more simple and more effecitve way)

I'd like a text comparison tool which would function with the addition of any manuscript, including original language fragments, codices, medieval texts, modern versions, etc.

I know that's not asking much. [:)]

During the next six months, we plan to make some improvements to Logos 8 for academic and seminary users with an emphasis on original language study.

I'm really happy to hear this! Here's my list:

• Search
• Create a full search builder that makes it easy for non-power users to construct accurate, complex searches
• Simplify the search syntax (most useful for the command-line approach)
• Also, auto-complete search syntax elements
• Also, highlight syntax errors
• Hebrew
• Independent affix highlighting
• Vowel pattern searching
• Fix BBHG (involves the addressing the bigger Unicode encoding problem)
• Notes
• Hebrew (RTL) support (switch text direction and alignment based on keyboard selection).
• Note categories/content type.
• Content Styles
• Put auto citations at bottom of note with an intervening line (this should be a style).
• increment footnote number (currently each one stays at “1”)
• Ability to link to another specific document like a canvas
• Keystroke to navigate to the tag field 
• Speed (important to mitigate the disparity with a competing software often used and promoted by profs!)
• Provide setting to delay sync during startup. Most college/seminary students will be operating primarily on a single laptop machine. Starting up as if offline will drastically reduce startup time. Sync can happen later, once everything has settled down.
• Optimize the context menu and Info panel for poor network conditions and other speed bottlenecks.
• Misc
• Hebrew support in Canvas (there are many other threads asking for this as well)
• Allow individual instances of a Bible to display a filter (consider the case of propositional outlines).
• Allow different RI lines to be displayed in the OT vs NT.
• Make RI font size independent of resource font
• Allow Concordance on Series/Collections
• Bugs
• Inaccurate/Incomplete Morph Charts [link1, link2, link3, link4]
• UI bugs in the Syntax search window [scroll issue, checkbox scaling, alignment]
• Cantillation search bugs [Text Segment Lemma, Visual Word Lang, AND/OR Logic]
• RI options inconsistent [RI menu design]
• New Note button doesn’t see text in Courses Tool [will link here later]

One thing that has always irritated me when using Logos is that in most programs when I double click a word that word becomes selected, but in Logos it brings up a dictionary entry, even for English words.  I rarely want to see the definition of an English word, but double clicking on a word is part of my habituaI process when Icopy and paste, which I do from Logos frequently.

The ability to have multiple sets of resource linking in the mobile version would be helpful.

Integrated citation manager (like an import of Zotero) so that all non-logos sources could be stored in a database and annotated by the user from within the program (basically a souped up version of Nota Bene).

The ability for users to create custom citation schemes or to override citation output on specific resources.

The ability to track annotations of non Logos PDFs and ePubs (not importing material, but allowing for ebook management and annotations similar to Calibre).

I would like to see different layouts as tabs at the top of the work space. It would be very helpful to be able to change layouts like clicking on tabs in a web browser. For example in a browser one can go to different pages by clicking on tabs, in Logos it would be helpful while studying to have tabs that changed to different layout.

not sure if this was super relavent to the thread? But hope it will be considered!

Thank you,

JD

Instead of a footnote saying "Ibid" which makes it very difficult to locate the original source, could they all refer to the full resource? Given the size/type/colour of the preceding footnotes, it can make for a difficult hunt for the first resource note. This is especially true in that using Logos we are skipping between many resources and not reading each one from the beginning.

I would like to be able to build a bibliography within Logos where I can add resources that are not in Logos. Any bibliography I build in Logos will be incomplete. This would be a nice addition.

Please keep your requests focused on the kinds of things relevant to the needs of the academic/seminary audience

Here's something that would be really nice... partner with www.academia.edu to have all their academic papers available on demand in Logos. One possibility would be to simply have them available in the "public" tab of our Docs menu (with relevant faceted browsing, of course). I would prefer a solution, however, where I could get notified within Logos of any new Papers from the people I follow or the subjects I've selected. Also, I'd strongly prefer having these as library resources rather than "documents". Of course, a new resource type ("article" or "paper") would be required. 

I would like the ability to set up "channels" that would automatically download papers that meet my criteria. Additionally, if the entire catalog could be indexed and populate the Cloud Resources Search Results, that would be incredible.

I know this is more of a New Feature request, but I think the value would be HUGE for academic users.

Thanks for doing this and for giving us a place to be heard! (I'm often confused if we should submit these sorts of suggestions here on the forums, on the UserVoice site, or @ the social media type place on faithlife.com)

1. Nonbiblial Texts & Corpora. Currently, the biblical text enjoys more features and usability than other corpora. The ability to do thinks like graph search results, etc. in the Apostolic Fathers, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, etc. would be wonderful. To offer my anecdotal experience from four different institutions, the focus on, availability, & usability of (current) nonbiblical texts is where some of Logos' competitors have gained a leg up to be known as (a) program(s) that is/are more geared towards academic use. 
2. Building out the morphology charts would be helpful. Occasionally, I run into forms in nonbiblical texts that I want to double-check; the morphology charts would be a great help in times like these but they mostly aren't due to their abbreviated nature. 
3. When compiling notes, quotes, etc. for papers and reference, the notes tags (though not on mobile devices) & notebooks can quickly become very cumbersome. Not to mention a multiplicity of tags, I currently have a growing list of 30+ notebooks labeled "Dissertation - XXXXX" to simply try to keep some of my research straight. The ability to have some sort of hierarchical or otherwise similar organizational structure would be a huge win in terms of functionality & usability (cf. https://community.logos.com/forums/p/182741/1057169.aspx#1057169)
4. Oftentimes in academic use, the TOC in lexical and reference works get out of hand. A way to expand/close all would be a great help.
5. The ability to see our notes/highlights in non-downloaded sources on ios/mobile devices would be a great win.
6. On Android devices, a more streamlined way to pull up a lexicon entry on a highlighted word would be great. The only way I am currently aware of is to highlight a word > Info > Bible Word Study, and then select a lexicon. Could there be an option along the way–maybe between "Search" and "Bible Word Study"–that would take us directly to our preferred lexicon?
7. It would be a HUGE win for academic users, would be the ability to highlight footnotes. Much academic interaction comes from these little guys and, at best, highlighting the footnote number to copy and paste the actual text within the note is a bit cumbersome.
8. Being able to use filters on mobile devices (e.g. setting up a reader LXX or GNT) would be a great feature
9. If I were to shoot for the stars, a big ask would be for a feature that competes with Accord.'s Infer search.

I've noticed that in the LSJ, if I have the work of an author in my library, the only option in the context menu is to go to their work. If I don't have an author/work in my library, it links to the author in the "I. Authors and Works" section. In the former situation, it would be nice to have both location options available in the context menu upon a right-click so that we could easily navigate to either place.