Libronix DLS Object Model Reference... something like it for L4?
My homepage slideshow just displayed the 'Libronix DLS Object Model Reference', which reminded me that once I had enjoyed tinkering with it.
Seeing how Logos 4 is written in .NET I am assuming it would be a lot easier to program for than COM-based Logos 3. Does (or will) Logos 4 expose an API (application programming interface) and set of extension points to allow third parties (and interested programmers) to extend it using a .NET language like C#?
Here's hoping.
Comments
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Stuart,
This discussion had come up during the early pre-release beta - unfortunately I no longer have a way of searching that forum. I can't remember nor find the details but I seem to recall that it was not out of the question, but low on the priority list.
I wish I could find that post....
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you. 0 -
I saw a forum post from Bob where he said that an API may come at some point. Maybe a search on "API" will turn it up.
EDIT: OK - A search on "API" did find it, but it seemed to be about web access, not the Logos client application.
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Thomas Black said:
I wish I could find that post....
I had forgotten I had this, until now, but ...
I still have a mostly-full set of the messages from the old Logos News Server, up to about the final day.
For the post you seek, do you remember the writter, any key points, or key words, so I can try a search?
[ I am searching for "Object Model" right now, but it might be a long time to get a hit. The dataset is rather large I guess. ]
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I'd love to get some commitment from Logos about an API that "plugins" might use - and would love to read that original post too... :-)
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I too am hoping they expose an API. The big thing I used the old one for is respositioning windows when switching between Landscape and Portrait modes on my Tablet PC (reorienting everything from side-by-side, to be top-by-bottem instead). Of course in Logos 4, that wouldn't be really possible with the side bars, but in profile, I'd like to stack both side bars on one side.
I'm also hoping it's possible to intercept the random number generator used to pick which window to open new tabs in and provide my own more deterministic algorithm (bibles here, commentaries here, etc.).
It would be cool if I could intercept the tags too and force certain books to not be tagged as Bibles (such as the Book of Enoch). (I did NOT bring that up again did I? There goes this thread into a tangent. Sorry about that).
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Jeffrey Glen Jackson said:
I too am hoping they expose an API. [snip] I'm also hoping it's possible to intercept the random number generator used to pick which window to open new tabs in and provide my own more deterministic algorithm (bibles here, commentaries here, etc.).
Agreed. (And, I chuckled over the "random number generator" reference - {grin}.)
Fred
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Jim Towler said:Thomas Black said:
I wish I could find that post....
I had forgotten I had this, until now, but ...
I still have a mostly-full set of the messages from the old Logos News Server, up to about the final day.
For the post you seek, do you remember the writter, any key points, or key words, so I can try a search?
[ I am searching for "Object Model" right now, but it might be a long time to get a hit. The dataset is rather large I guess. ]
Sorry Jim, not the old newsgroups. There used to be a private beta forum - before L4 was released. Only the beta team had access to it. (Hope I didn't just give away a secret) [:#]
As for the writer, I'm pretty sure the chief response was Bradley Grainger's, but alas - even that trail takes me nowhere.
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you. 0 -
Jeffrey Glen Jackson said:
It would be cool if I could intercept the tags too and force certain books to not be tagged as Bibles (such as the Book of Enoch). (I did NOT bring that up again did I?
I didn't see a thing[;)]
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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StuartRobertson said:
My homepage slideshow just displayed the 'Libronix DLS Object Model Reference', which reminded me that once I had enjoyed tinkering with it.
Seeing how Logos 4 is written in .NET I am assuming it would be a lot easier to program for than COM-based Logos 3. Does (or will) Logos 4 expose an API (application programming interface) and set of extension points to allow third parties (and interested programmers) to extend it using a .NET language like C#?
We're currently implementing a new API that should first be available in 4.0d. (I don't know what the plans for documentation are; for example, if it'll be a downloadable resource (like the LDLS OMR), or just at wiki.logos.com.) The API will be very limited (and hopefully thus very stable) initially; more features may be added in future versions of Logos 4. For example, I don't think that repositioning panels will be part of the v1 API.
At the same time, we're working on a new URL protocol that will allow you to open more than just resources in Logos 4 (from hyperlinks in web pages).
Although .NET brings a lot of new features to Windows programming, interoperating with other applications isn't really one of them; for that reason, our API will still be COM-based. You'll be able to access it from VB, JavaScript, C#, Perl, and any other language that supports COM.
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Bradley Grainger said:
We're currently implementing a new API that should first be available in 4.0d.
SWEET!!! Thanks Bradley and Team.
I love to play in that space where one application meets another, or systems interact, so I look forward to this very much.
I had been mapping out ideas for something that would work with the Clipboard and the current cut/paste support already in Logos4, but its very possible that what is comming next wil be better, or make it more worthwhile.
[:)][<:o)][D][G][Y][:P]
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Bradley Grainger said:
We're currently implementing a new API that should first be available in 4.0d.
That's great. Please tell me we can use it to get data out of Logos (I'm thinking querying the library as much as copy/paste from resources).
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Mark Barnes said:
That's great. Please tell me we can use it to get data out of Logos (I'm thinking querying the library as much as copy/paste from resources).
The current design leans more towards automating actions in the Logos 4 UI, rather than using it as a back-end database (e.g., of resource data, reverse interlinear alignment, search results, etc.)
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Bradley Grainger said:
The current design leans more towards automating actions in the Logos 4 UI, rather than using it as a back-end database
That's a real shame. Knowing what resources are available would be an pretty important foundation for building automated tools, I would think. It would also be useful to be able to extract bibliographic information which is stored in resources and not in catalog.db
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Bradley Grainger said:
For example, I don't think that repositioning panels will be part of the v1 API.
Bummer. That's about the only thing I really want. I'm painfully missing my scripts from Logos 3. That's all any of them do is position panels. Some of them are obsolete because of the way panels and tabs are handled in Logos 4, but those for making life more pleasant on tablets make their absence felt almost every time I use Logos4.
I just opened Logos3 to remind myself if I had anything else, but that's all. But man is Logos3 ever faster than Logos4. Literally an order of magnitude faster. To scroll one screen down in Logos4 is taking 5.8 seconds by my stop watch. Logos3 I can't press start and stop fast enough to actually time it. (This is on remote desktop, so the times are slower, but not by much, than directly on the machine.)
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Bradley Grainger said:
The current design leans more towards automating actions in the Logos 4 UI, rather than using it as a back-end database (e.g., of resource data, reverse interlinear alignment, search results, etc.)
Drats - I was hoping to access note files to build lessons.
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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Bradley Grainger said:
At the same time, we're working on a new URL protocol that will allow you to open more than just resources in Logos 4 (from hyperlinks in web pages).
Although .NET brings a lot of new features to Windows programming, interoperating with other applications isn't really one of them; for that reason, our API will still be COM-based. You'll be able to access it from VB, JavaScript, C#, Perl, and any other language that supports COM.
Good news (times two). Thanks for that info.
Fred
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Bradley Grainger said:
The current design leans more towards automating actions in the Logos 4 UI, rather than using it as a back-end database (e.g., of resource data, reverse interlinear alignment, search results, etc.)
Oooh - not such good news. That's too bad. (Thanks for the info anyway.)
Fred
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This is just a "v1" API. We're keeping it simple and lean for the first release; it's intended to enable (what we think are) the most common scenarios. (We have some partners who want to automate the UI, and the new API is designed to supply the functionality they need.)
We're definitely open to your input on how the API could be better in future releases of Logos 4. I can't promise that we'll make the entire application scriptable, but we can add new APIs where it's apparent that the benefit of the new API outweighs the cost of creating, implementing, documenting, and maintaining it.
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This is good news....looking forward to it! You guys are the greatest!
Robert Pavich
For help go to the Wiki: http://wiki.logos.com/Table_of_Contents__
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Bradley Grainger said:
We're definitely open to your input on how the API could be better in future releases of Logos 4.
Speaking only for myself, I would be happy if some of the API calls have very basic functions, and simple output formats. So the burden of the work falls to the external application to format a complex input request, and has to parse the outputs to be meaningful.
What I'm attempting to say is, I would rather have an API call where I need to do a lot of work to make it work, rather than Logos exclude it, as Logos would have to do too much work.
I know that the above is NOT very script-friendly, and is a better fit for a powerful language instead, but someone could always write a wrapper so scripts can still "play along".
In summary, lets us please have "low-level stuff" rather than load the burden of work onto the Logos developers, and hence exclude something we could use.
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