Help needed re: tools for searching
What have I forgotten?
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."
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There's also the Search command.
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Good catch - it hadn't even crossed my mind
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."
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MJ, are you making a bid to replace Mo Procter when he decides to retire? [;)]
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There's also the Search command.
And Look Up. Unfortunately, the Logos Wiki refers to the "Lookup" command, which does not exist in Verbum/Logos 9, which regularly causes me to end up at strange articles in the Factbook rather than where I actually want to be. It seems these days that "Lookup" is only considered a word in the context of "Power Lookup", which I suppose is a form of searching itself.
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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MJ, are you making a bid to replace Mo Procter when he decides to retire?
I'm many years of retirement ahead of Mo ...
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."
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There's also the Search command.
And Look Up. Unfortunately, the Logos Wiki refers to the "Lookup" command, which does not exist in Verbum/Logos 9, which regularly causes me to end up at strange articles in the Factbook rather than where I actually want to be. It seems these days that "Lookup" is only considered a word in the context of "Power Lookup", which I suppose is a form of searching itself.
I hadn't realized that the Lookup command had been changed to Look Up. Technically it's more grammatically correct, since "lookup" is a noun, and a command should be a verb. But I would have been mystified if I'd tried it and it didn't work as it used to. (Though I haven't used it in years.)
The wiki should be updated to reflect this. I'll take care of it.
It seems Logos does guess that you might be trying to type Look Up when you type lookup, but it's not the first choice, so you can't just hit Enter.
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lookup is an alias for look up, so either will work just fine. I don't believe this has changed in a long time.
It seems Logos does guess that you might be trying to type Look Up when you type lookup, but it's not the first choice, so you can't just hit Enter.
This is unrelated. The order of the groups (Tools, Look Up, Search, etc) is based on which items you have selected recently. If you start doing a lot of Lookups compared to Tools, then you'll see that move to the top of the list.
Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer
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Would the Wikipedia Search tool or the Faithlife Assistant qualify?
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or the Faithlife Assistant qualify?
Yes it would - thank you.
Would the Wikipedia Search tool
I think I'd class it with Perseus and such as a tool within a tool ... but I need to think about it
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."
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lookup is an alias for look up, so either will work just fine. I don't believe this has changed in a long time.
It seems Logos does guess that you might be trying to type Look Up when you type lookup, but it's not the first choice, so you can't just hit Enter.
This is unrelated. The order of the groups (Tools, Look Up, Search, etc) is based on which items you have selected recently. If you start doing a lot of Lookups compared to Tools, then you'll see that move to the top of the list.
I want to believe you. But they are not treated exactly the same for me in the dropdown. I haven't used either Lookup or Look Up in years. Yet when I type "look up wesley" it goes immediately to the top of the list, but if I type "lookup wesley" it goes after the tools. Compare this screenshot to the one I posted above.
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I want to believe you. But they are not treated exactly the same for me in the dropdown. I haven't used either Lookup or Look Up in years. Yet when I type "look up wesley" it goes immediately to the top of the list, but if I type "lookup wesley" it goes after the tools. Compare this screenshot to the one I posted above.
This is likely because when you type something that is an exact match for something you typed (recently) previously, it will promote to the top of list whatever you selected the last time.
Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer
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How about including a branch off of Basic search to highlight the ability to search your documents/personal books?
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lookup is an alias for look up, so either will work just fine. I don't believe this has changed in a long time.
This is likely because when you type something that is an exact match for something you typed (recently) previously, it will promote to the top of list whatever you selected the last time.
If I write Look Up x, the option to Look Up x always appears first. If I type Lookup x, the option to Lookup x never appears first. This is true whether or not I run these commands on a target word that I have ever looked up previously. Give me any ten random words to use as x and I will give you that same result ten times in a row. I have never ever intentionally chosen anything other than a Lookup result when I have written in Lookup x, but doing so and hitting Enter right away now gives me a garbage article from Factbook. Therefore the program is treating Look Up and Lookup differently. It did not do so in the pre-9 past.
I believe that Logos/Verbum should be set to always default to the Look Up command when Lookup x is typed.
Imagine if Open <exact resource title> and Open <abbreviated title> returned Factbook articles as the first result: Open NIV would open the Factbook article "Open Place"! Mutatis mutandis, Reindex NIV would open the Factbook to the article "Residue"; Rebuild Index would open Factbook to "Index Librorum Prohibitorum", Delete Unlicensed Resources would open the Factbook to "Mineral Resources", Set update channel to beta would open the Factbook to "Beta".....
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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If I write Look Up x, the option to Look Up x always appears first. If I type Lookup x, the option to Lookup x never appears first.
Ah, I see what's happening. There's an extra check, that if you've typed something that's an "exact" match for one of the listed suggestions, it's going to float that suggestion to the top.
It's working as designed for Lookup, and not seeing that as an exact match. I agree that it's not ideal. It not at all as trivial to fix as you might think. I recommend not holding your breath on getting a fix for this any time soon.
Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer
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If I write Look Up x, the option to Look Up x always appears first. If I type Lookup x, the option to Lookup x never appears first.
Ah, I see what's happening. There's an extra check, that if you've typed something that's an "exact" match for one of the listed suggestions, it's going to float that suggestion to the top.
It's working as designed for Lookup, and not seeing that as an exact match. I agree that it's not ideal. It not at all as trivial to fix as you might think. I recommend not holding your breath on getting a fix for this any time soon.
I won't hold my breath. I understand that it's not necessarily a trivial fix. I'm just going to vote: https://feedback.faithlife.com/boards/logos-desktop-app/posts/make-lookup-command-work-exactly-like-look-up-again
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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Did I count correctly? The diagram has 27 end points, i.e., 27 different kinds of searches. This is just way too complex.
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Did I count correctly? The diagram has 27 end points, i.e., 27 different kinds of searches.
You may have counted correctly but you made one very bad assumption. For my purposes, I did not link elements that are simply different references to the same thing/tool. Nor is there a consistent definition of what constitutes an element worth showing ... that was determined solely based on what I needed for my use of the diagram in building my tips posts. Nor did I indicate which searches are of interest only to the specialist/academic; Nor which searches are dependent upon your level of access to features. My purpose is to return to the same material over and over until the reader retains what is useful to them. In short, any conclusion based on the number of end points is meaningless
However, for the actual number of search types shown which is under ten - what search functions do you believe are not needed?
PS. My full version of the diagram has over 100 entries because most guide sections appear as their own end point.
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."
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Hi MJ,
I did not intend to criticize you nor your amazing help files which I regularly convert into PBBs. I really appreciate you doing this work for the Logos community. You must be spending hours on these.
For the last 20 (?) years, my main complaint about Logos has been its lack of usability. It has improved in recent years but it still has a long way to go. Unless I use a feature regularly, I forget it. When I go through help videos or training videos, I keep re-discovering things that I once knew but then again forgot. In my view, I keep forgetting these features because they are just not very intuitive. I have tried numerous times to point out inconsistencies in the GUI to FL in the hope that usability improves, but it does not seem to have the same priority for FL as it has for me. Here is one thread that I have used: https://community.logos.com/forums/t/197602.aspx
Although I don't do it anymore as often as I used to, but I still turn to Google at times before I give it a try in Logos. Google has just one search and gets it right most of the time. It would be great if Logos could reduce the number of different kinds of searches and increase accuracy of results. But I know, this is easier said than done.
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I did not intend to criticize you
I didn't take it as criticism but as misinterpretation - which implied I needed to clarify so others didn't make the same mistake..
I appreciate the effort on inconsistencies and strongly believes that is significant source of complexity using Logos. I have, unfortunately, come to expect a certain level of sloppiness but continue to push against it. Unfortunately, I am less impressed with google than you - first, the requirement for computer power (and data to train the AI) is very large; second, the accuracy of results is tied rather tightly to the frequency of the requests for the information ... and I get frustrated trying to convince it that I did spell what I wanted correctly.; third, the results at the end of the list i.e. the less likely one, have less accuracy than Logos. Try finding Sogdian materials and ... okay, I'm not happy when I can't find a document for a second time.
I find Logos no better or worse than Microsoft Word ... where I have forgotten how I did multi-part documents and have not been able to get it to work again ... despite remembering that it was very simple once I figured it out. I've gone nearly 4 months trying now and then to get it to work. On the other hand, there have recently been forum questions from long-term users that show confusion of input boxes in ways I would never have imagined and believe should never happen. So I don't want to minimize the problems real users have using Logos in real time.
Google has just one search and gets it right most of the time
No, there are multiple google searches - standard, image, academic, n-term, books, maps, . . . - google simply assumes most people won't want to use them so they are more hidden.
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."
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What have I forgotten?
Not sure if is included above, but at the macro level and for users with very large libraries, the library panel itself is of help as it shows resources related to your search, and by hovering over you can get an idea of what sub topics may be involved.
One can open resources that seem to have something important to say, and then do basic search on open resources.
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