Logos 9 Wishlist

For L9:

This applies to LA181 Learn to Use Biblical Greek but may apply elsewhere as well.

At the end of a lesson, a locked resource is encountered:

Clicking the padlock takes you here:

Since there are already enough / too many (time consuming) distractions, what is need under Add to cart is Add to Wishlist to continue lesson uninterrupted.

The Wishlist would sort / categorize the added items according to each course, to be viewed at a more convenient time.

Another idea is to have a "global list" for all locked items - in the course and / or on Logos course description page.

I got two error messages trying to send this with FireFox, hopefully this one will include the screen shots via Safari.

For L9:

This applies to LA181 Learn to Use Biblical Greek but may apply elsewhere as well.

At the end of a lesson, a locked resource is encountered:

Clicking the padlock takes you here:

Since there are already enough / too many (time consuming) distractions, what is need under Add to cart is Add to Wishlist to continue lesson uninterrupted.

The Wishlist would sort / categorize the added items according to each course, to be viewed at a more convenient time.

Another idea is to have a "global list" for all locked items - in the course and / or on Logos course description page.

How about you do a little project like this:

Create teams within FL and have them each perform a typical user function that revolves around the Bible and the study thereof.  Create a forum for each and have said employees create conversations around that use for feedback.

This way FL developers get a stronger sense of the use of Logos for specific needs and can relate to the suggestions/frustrations/etc. from users.

Ideas:

Using Logos Mobile in church as a layman (reading, liturgy, notes, etc).

Using Logos Mobile in church as a pastor.

Using Logos Mobile in devotions/journaling.

Using Logos just to read a resource.

Using Logos for each specific type of study/guide.

Mobile Items could be broken down into tablet group and phone group.

Other items could be broken down into desktop group and mobile group or further into PC group, MAC group, mobile group. 

Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:

What improvements should we make to existing features?

The following proposal relates to Reading Plans, Passage Lists and Sermon documents. The proposal is an extension of the function of each in an integrated way.

Problem:
I have a time-consuming problem in using Passage Lists, Reading Plans and Sermon Documents, when planning a series. My schedule is as follows:
Proverbs Prep: On Monday, I prepare 5 messages that will be delivered over a 5-day period (Monday-Friday). For this, I use a Reading Plan that schedules 5 texts every Monday.

Proverbs Delivery: When I have finished the preparation, I switch to a Delivery Reading Plan that spreads the 5 texts over 5 days from Monday to Friday. This way I can keep track of preparation and delivery of texts. Drawing up the Reading Plans and Sermons is time consuming.

Suggestion:

Reading Plan: It would be great if there was an option to import a Passage list with a choice to schedule each Reference on a specific day (Sun-Sat in the Proverbs Delivery Reading Plan) and another to be able to group a certain number of Passages together for preparation purposes (Proverbs Prep Reading Plan).
It would then be possible to draw up both Reading Plans, Monday's preparation of 5 texts as well as the Reading Plan for daily delivery, with an import.

Sermon Document: It would also be very helpful if it were possible to export the Reading Plan to Sermon Documents, one for each date from the Delivery Reading Plan, where the Reference is entered as Title and the date as the Sermon delivery date.

Example:

Ted Weis said:

I just want Logos to run smoother!

I've been working with it all day on an important project and have been thoroughly frustrated with its frequent long delays with simple tasks like underlining, spinning circles, not responding messages, and crashing.

Uggh!

Exactly! Amen! We need speed! When indexing everything else gets super slow in my laptop (e.g. google chrome, IE, Word, clicking a verse to open it, etc.).  Some have suggested spending $3,000 on a laptop, but a good program shouldn’t require us to spend that kind of money for it to run smoothly.  Logos is expensive as it is and it’s supposed to save us time not make things take longer.

They’ve known about this all along, but they still haven’t figured out what to do to fix the problem.  Maybe Logos is running out of ideas to sell their product — well, guess what, here’s a great idea 💡 Improve the speed without having users spend $3 grand on a laptop.

Just a suggestion 😉

DAL

How about clean metadata?

I've recently been experimenting with Zotero. I have 20000 logos books, thousands of journal articles, thousands of print books, and kindly books. I want a list somewhere of all the books I've got. I was using calibre before, but Zotero seems better so far.

Any way in the process of bringing the data from Logos into Zotero, I've discovered a lack of normalization of meta data.

Some have: "Title: A Journey in Grace", and some have "Publication Title: A Journey in Grace"

The latter show up in zotero as blank titled entries. I have thousands of the second type.

Denise said:

Martin Hall said:

I too was getting very frustrated with the program, but it seems it wasn't the software that was the problem, it was my hardware. It turns out that my frustration was misplaced ...

Martin, you confirmed DAL's point. When the engine's terribly inefficient, get a bigger engine. Since Logos is all that's still running on our remaining PC, the answer was dump the Logos Caddie. There's better uses for the money.

I just read his response and was going to reply: “That’s what I just said...” 😁😜 But then read your response 👍😁👌 Good catch!

I'd like to request a "Read Aloud" speed of 1.25. The current 4 speeds just aren't quite enough.

Cloud-based indexing... would cut way down on resources, client-side, if it were possible for the desktop user to query the program's index online. I suppose that is where the web app development comes in handy though... moving all that resource use to the cloud.

Some space saving changes would help...like making the sidebars collapsible. An option to hide the Windows Titlebar it's taking millimeters of valuable space.

If the shortcut bar could change for each layout it would help a lot. What about a 50-50 resizable bar? Half always accessible and other half accessible by layouts.

A Searchable Favorites?

Make the Workflow Headword available as a parameter? (and to be able to include it in a link so that custom searches will act on the Workflow)

Get it on the iPad. With its own OS and now a trackpad I could have my whole study tools in my bag. The web app doesnt have all the tools and the mobile App is too restrictive. 

But if you can’t do this, give us the ability to draw notes with the Apple Pencil on the mobile app. I would study a lot more with Logos if I could do this simple task. 

GaoLu said:

1. Folders on the shortcuts bar.  Like Chrome.

2. Be able to open all contents of a folder in a new panel.

Yes. Layouts kind of does this, though. Stack the resources you want in a layout. Then select the layout.

I would like to be able to filter my books according to index.  To see what books are indexed by Bible and which are not would help in setting up my tags and collections.  Thanks

I had to quit work three years ago because I got sick.  Still can't go back.  On a plus side, it's given me more time to do my real work: Bible study.

I find working with Logos often like working with a huge bag of water that you have to try to move around.  

I have a large library.  20,000 books.  So I had a hundred commentaries titled Gospel of John.  Not helpful.  I had to go through each one, list the series and the author.  For all 66 books of the Bible.  

Authors are often more important than titles.  I have thousands and thousands of monographs.  I put the author's name in front of most of the titles.

Now I'm working on my passage guide.  I might have 200 commentaries on a passage.  Some are useless, some are really good.  When you are trying to prioritize that many books, this current system is almost useless.  The only thing that matters is some books get prioritized and some don't.  You really need the ability to prioritize them from within he passage guide.  A second best approach would be to create folders in the prioritize function and prioritize within that, but that would take way too much time, unless you had the guide and function opened on two screens.  

Hundreds and hundreds of monographs are Bible book specific, like a study of the parables, or the Kingdom of God according to Jesus.  When I do a passage guide study, all these books should already be there in a separate category.  I should not have had to go through my entire library to find them, tag them,and now add that collection every time I do a passage guide.  e.g. add the collection Matthew when studying a passage in Matthew.

And I mentioned this before.  If I'm doing a study on a subject, passage, etc that takes more than one session, I will be opening and using resources that I won't remember from day to day that I already looked at them.  You need a mechanism within a guide, maybe a 5 star system, maybe not, where I can mark: read, good, not helpful, use, so I don't waste time going over the same resources again and again.

Thank you

I was prioritizing a resource.  It gave me several options: Prioritize this resource, or prioritize this series. 

There should also be an option: prioritize this author.

I would like to see better tagging added to the LES. I’m a bit baffled that an in house resource doesn’t have things like speaker labels throughout the resource. 

I keep multiple note files, such as "From Sermons" "From my Quiet Times" "From My Library" etc. All notes at anchored to verses so they appear in all Bible versions. I would like to be able to set a default note icon and color for each note file, so I don't have to manually select them each time I switch from one file to another. Perhaps there is already a way to do this. If so, please let me know!

It's probably been mentioned many times on this post, but I'd like the ability to use an apple pencil on my ipad, to make notes, circle, underline or highlight when doing study.  Even the ability to draw when using the Canvas tool.  Also I use a Windows Surface Book with a windows pencil, so even that would be nice on it as well.  

I mentioned this already, but I'm not sure I said it the best way I could.  

The prioritizing system is only good for a very small library and for prioritizing a favorite Bible or something like that.  

When you have a large library, it's a mess.  There are 66 books in the Bible, so basically about 50 or so basic passage guides for Bible commentaries.

Right now, I'm trying to organize my commentaries on ! Samuel a little better.  I have 110 commentaries in the passage guide.  I have my old standbys like Driver, Keil, and Clarke, but there are a lot that I am not familiar with.  So I'm testing them on a key passage to see if they are worthy.  The ones that are I want to put higher in my list.  The ones that are not I want to, what, lower them?  How would I do that?  I guess by putting the other books higher.  

Now prioritizing them is confusing, because I have series that are prioritized, so when I do it's like I have two sets of priorities: the series and the individual books.  

I just end up prioritizing a bunch and not others.  Then when I open the guide, I am surprised to see what I get.

What would I like to see?

Tags or folders, whatever you want to call them.

commentaries on Matthew, say.  Then I will know exactly the order they are in and I can easily move them up or down.  or better yet, let us be able to do it in the guide.  Click and hold on it, and then move it up or down the list.  That would be ideal.

Thank  you

Logos 8 is still way too slow. Although my laptop is not a gaming laptop, it's configuration is standard for computers nowadays. So it's not my computer. I've always had trouble with Logos on all the new computers I have bought.

I would say, please simplify the program. A good question is...cut out some features. You should do a pole on that. Which features could you cut without angering too many people. The program has become too much of a resource hog.

Kendall Sholtess said:

Logos 8 is still way too slow. Although my laptop is not a gaming laptop, it's configuration is standard for computers nowadays. So it's not my computer. I've always had trouble with Logos on all the new computers I have bought.

I would say, please simplify the program. A good question is...cut out some features. You should do a pole on that. Which features could you cut without angering too many people. The program has become too much of a resource hog.

Agreed that Logos 8 is 'too slow' - but this has less to do with number of features and a lot more to do with how it is programmed using older frameworks to output to the screen (the particular framework they are using - there are old threads about this!).

Logos 9 would be a good chance for them to change underlying programming - like they did with Logos 3 to 4 - which would speed up Logos on the desktop. This would presumably take a lot of work and a long time, but they need to make a start - a long journey starts with a footstep! The final result would be a speedy and more efficient program with less complaints (IMHO!)

James Hudson said:

Agreed that Logos 8 is 'too slow' - but this has less to do with number of features and a lot more to do with how it is programmed using older frameworks to output to the screen (the particular framework they are using - there are old threads about this!).

Logos 9 would be a good chance for them to change underlying programming - like they did with Logos 3 to 4 - which would speed up Logos on the desktop. This would presumably take a lot of work and a long time, but they need to make a start - a long journey starts with a footstep! The final result would be a speedy and more efficient program with less complaints (IMHO!)

Where are the old threads about the programming framework being outdated?

James Hudson said:

Lee Gordon said:

Where are the old threads about the programming framework being outdated?

I said they were older not outdated! But even the fact they used a framework for display is going to slow down things like populating dropdowns and visual filters and changing layouts etc.

Not sure of specific threads but over the years there have been a number that discuss the sluggishness of Logos. If you are really interested then you may want to search the forums for WPF or Microsoft Framework or Internet Explorer (yes, I know that is wierd but it is related!). I believe James McLeod wrote some posts about it (but I could be mistaken).

Anyway, the point is that the number of features won't necessarily slow Logos. Also, I realise that there are other things that will affect performance that also suggest accessing resources may be an issue (e.g. using a fast SSD).

Yeah, I'm not disagreeing with you. I just wanted to see the threads that tied it to programming as the cause. It will be more persuasive if we have specific proof it's related to how they're coding it.

Lee Gordon said:

DominicM said:

In light of current events, fixing and polishing 8 seems best for this year, most folks funds likely to be tight for almost all year, and into 2021, where hopefully the economy is back on track and this wont need considered to be a luxury purchase

Although almost everyone will be getting a check for at least $1,200 around the end of April. It would be a shame if the package sale (30% off) ended right before everyone got their checks.

I think it will end May 15th

DAL