Logos 11

EastTN said:

Factbook reminds me of Wikipedia circa 2003. Just enough content and links to make it interesting to try it out, but not nearly complete enough to rely on for actually getting stuff done. I know that I'm going to have to do a search anyway, after I see what Factbook has. Most of the time it's easier for me to go straight to the search than to mess with Factbook first.

Now, if Factbook were to expand as rapidly as Wikipedia, in ten years it would be a killer tool. But without crowdsourcing, I don't know how that happens.

What base package do you have? With the Logos Collectors Edition base package and properly prioritized resources/etc, I get an enormous amount of info on Factbook... Logos is amazing with any base package, but because of how everything is interconnected, each additional resource makes the software more powerful. Anyway, I get an enormous amount of info and links back on almost anything I search for in Factbook. I use it freq in Logos 10 mobile on my tablet & phone for quick inquiries or to get pointed to another resource or guide if I want to go deeper.

Donovan R. Palmer said:

MJ. Smith said:

I like your thinking although my personal interests are more with tools to be integrated into Logos rather than links to external software e.g. sentence diagrammer, English parser, additional concordance features, n-gram usage ... One consideration, however, is that external links are a comparatively high-cost item in maintenance as your software may fail with changes to the external software. It can also be confusing to the less computer-literate user. So, while I support your basic concept, I need to be convinced that its implementation is Logos is well designed rather than thrown together.

I believe we are probably in violent agreement here. The implementation of any operability would need to be done well. There are plenty of things that need to be completed or improved in the existing Logos toolbox.

I think though the issue might be philosophical in the design or priority in the development of Logos, as opposed to technical.

Personally, I moved years ago from using proprietary formats for note taking, using initially RTF and now MarkDown. I still do note taking in Logos when it is necessary to get the most out of Logos, but my curation and writing is done elsewhere to accommodate the collection of material from other resources that will never be in Logos. Why? Logos is too limiting and is a walled garden, which I think is becoming more obvious as time goes on. So here are three possible canaries in the coal mine:

1. For years we have asked for there to be the ability to import PDFs into Logos. A lot of resources that are not in Logos are often in this format (i.e. journal articles).

2. For years we have asked for there to be the ability to view our personal books on the mobile app. This feature is the number one requested item in its category in the feedback forum, with 447 votes.

3. For years we have asked for there to be something in the toolbox for writing papers, which at its best, might make it easier to put Logos in the centre of your writing workflow. This again is number one in its category the feedback forum, with 363 votes.

I am not being critical. I love Logos. What I am trying to make a case for is the management of knowledge and information in studying the Bible in expanded ways. In my view, the Bible Software market is in need for new innovation.  I wonder if the next stage of development is seeing these massive libraries of quality resources, forming the foundation for studies on a much broader scale?

Obviously this is my use case, so I appreciate the indulgence in this free exchange of ideas.

Amazing - you hit on almost every limitation I've noticed. I used Logos heavily from version 4/5-7 and stopped for a few years right around or before 8 was released. When I upgraded to Logos 10 last year, I was pleasantly surprised in the improvements. It was more dramatic after not using it for a few years and a few versions. That said, while notes have become better, they are limited. I also hate that you can't exclude highlighting/markup from specific versified resources. For example, I would love if markup carried over to my other Bible and most other versified resources. However, I do NOT want it to markup my exegetical and critical commentaries. It's somewhat of an annoyance to have 20 pages of a technical commentary marked up the same as my Bibles. Two different types of resources. One in convenient - the another annoying and difficult on the eyes. I've stopped using any sort of markup by verse because of this and, instead, carefully highlight within the verse. This is obviously far less convenient and then doesn't carry over to other Bibles.

On the notes. It seems they've gotten somewhat better between the versions I was absent, but still not amazing. There's a lot of room for improvement there. I do use them frequently on mobile--but, I limit my usage strictly to Bibles for the most part. I have used them for lecture/class notes, but it just leaves a lot to be desired. I'm torn on it, because I committed to moving everything theology/devotional related into Logos many years ago, but there are just still some limitations.

I brought up how great it would be to be able to import PDF's to another student two weeks ago. Primarily, because of journals. I have the Galaxy library subscription--which is great, but I still frequently need to check EBSCO or JSTOR for the most uptodate journal entries. The other usage I was thinking of for PDFs, is occasionally, we'll get a PDF as part of an assignment.

Speaking of EBSCO/JSTOR - another great feature (that relates to putting Logos at the center of the workflow as an all-in-one solution) would be if you could authenticate your JSTOR/EBSCO account in Logos and have it add the any journal results found to your Logos search. Both JSTOR and EBSCO have search APIs making integration relatively simple. Understand it would be limited in the search capacity, since it's not a fully tagged resource, but I just glanced over the API documentation and it does support metadata searches. 

Re: personal books - if you mean the books in your physical library, that might get tricky due to licensing. What's to stop someone from stopping by their local seminary library and scanning everything into their physical library. If that's what the request is for, I'd guess it's potentially a licensing issue. I do like the new physical library features and how incorporates into search. That's atleast a time saver.

The ability to write papers in Logos would be huge. I switched to primarily using Google Docs in my time away from Logos. One of my greatest annoyances is that auto citations/footnotes seem to just not work for Google docs. It should - Docs supports a hotkey/keyboard shortcut to create a citation, so theoretically, it should be easy for them to add support. My guess is, that Microsoft and Google use a different shortcut/variable in the data passed/pasted. But this could be easily remedied by creating a new master setting option to specify your preferred word-processor application. Similar to specifying your specific citation style.

Overall I love Logos and wouldn't trade it for anything else out there. It saves an enormous amount of time in seminary and personal study. But there's definitely still room to improve and smooth out general user workflow (things like incorporating JSTOR/EBSCO search if you have credentials and perhaps adding a workflow) and some of the functionality around core features (like notes and supporting Google Docs--especially since Google Docs has surpassed Microsoft Word interms of percentage of market share).