Sermon Builder "Improved Passage Blocks" Comments

Logos Bible Study 38.0 Beta 1
38.0.502
(Update channel: beta)

I REALLY like this idea! I never liked how passage blocks changed to quotes before when I wanted to bold some words for emphasis.

I also REALLY like the "Go to Passage" option, which was sorely lacking before.

Looks like this works for copy/pasting quotes from other resources. AMAZING!

My only comments:

If a passage appears at the end of a heading, when I do a carriage return to get a new line underneath the heading, it now inserts the passage. If the passage was already inserted immediately below the heading, it appends it to what was previously inserted. It also retains the "Include in Handout"/"Include in Questions" setting for the heading. This made it difficult for me to get a normal blank line between an existing heading and an existing Passage Block. I had to go to the start of the text in the Passage Block, and click Enter.
I liked being able to click and select the passage block as a whole. It doesn't seem like this is possible now? To delete, I have to drag-select and delete everything, which is tedious for chapter-length passages that get inserted accidentally. (Would be nice if you could enable dragging, and cut/pasting Passage Blocks as well! Right now to select them, I need to also select a blank line before and after in order to select the passage block to copy/paste).

After clicking Enter to try to get a new line where I can type:

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

David Vela (Logos)

Hi Robert, we're glad you like this new capability! Thank you for the report about Bible references at the end of headings, I'll create a case for the team to fix that.

I'll also pass along your feedback about selecting/moving passage blocks.

Robert Kelbe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1325485#Comment_1325485

More thoughts

Regardless of the issues mentioned above with Passage Blocks, clicking "Enter" from the end of a heading should give you a new line formatted "Normal" with "Include in Outline/Handout" turned off.
I actually would like to be able to insert a Bible Reference from a heading. However, it should have a "Insert Inline (TAB) Insert Block (ENTER)" prompt, AND there should be a way to prevent it.
Preventing the Passage block from being inserted is a problem everywhere. Whenever there is the "Insert Inline (TAB) Insert Block (ENTER)" prompt, I think SHIFT should escape the Bible passage insertion. So SHIFT+TAB and SHIFT+ENTER should allow you to type TAB or ENTER without inserting the Bible Text.
I would have expected Ctrl+Shift+V to paste the copied selection as plain text, but instead it always inserts as a passage block, and the only way around this is to use the right click -> selection -> copy menu. This is especially important!

Robert Kelbe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1325568#Comment_1325568

More thoughts

I've been writing sermons more in an outline style lately, where I make use of indention to help me organize my thoughts. I know Passage Blocks can be indented. And, when I type a Bible reference and click ENTER to "Insert Block", it remains at that indention. However, when I copy/paste from a resource, it ignores my indention level, inserts a blank line, and then inserts it with indent level 0.

DOES NOT BEHAVE AS EXPECTED WITH COPY/PASTING FROM RESOURCES:

BEHAVES AS EXPECTED WITH BIBLE VERSES:

Robert Kelbe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1325485#Comment_1325485

Another oddity:

If you have a paragraph of normal text, followed by a text block, when you select and delete just the lines in the text block, it works as expected. HOWEVER, if you select the text block and the preceding paragraph of text, the text block header is not deleted.

See video:

Recording 2024-11-08 110029.mp4

Robert Kelbe

I liked being able to click and select the passage block as a whole. It doesn't seem like this is possible now? To delete, I have to drag-select and delete everything, which is tedious for chapter-length passages that get inserted accidentally. (Would be nice if you could enable dragging, and cut/pasting Passage Blocks as well! Right now to select them, I need to also select a blank line before and after in order to select the passage block to copy/paste).

An easy fix for this would be to make the blank space in the passage block between the Bible translation and the 3 dot menu clickable, so that if you click on this area, it would select all text in the passage block.

Savanna Lineberger

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1325736#Comment_1325736

Thanks for all your great testing and feedback. I'll make sure we have cases passed to the team for the issues you've noted.

Robert Kelbe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1325818#Comment_1325818

Some more things:

There seems to be a weird bug where after you insert a carriage return, the cursor stays on the left and writing is inserted backwards. See video: Recording 2024-11-09 135100.mp4.

Since we can do more formatting of the Passage Block (to aid memory), it would be nice to be able to indent lines without indenting the entire passage block. How I would want this to work:

The Passage block would have it's own overall indentation; the bar on the left would stay where it is based on the overall indentation of the passage block, and not move when tabs are inserted within the Passage Block.
Tabs would only be inserted when the cursor is at the beginning of a new paragraph and you press TAB. If the cursor was anywhere else, TAB would indent the entire passage block.

This would enable you to take this:

And format it to look like this:

Robert Kelbe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1325980#Comment_1325980

If I enter a new line of normal text after a passage block, it retains the red letter color from the passage block (which would otherwise not even be an option, since the red font color that you can choose is a different color red).

Dustin Mackintosh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1326004#Comment_1326004

Thank you for the continued feedback, Robert. You should see a lot of the fixes in the next Beta release. I am walking through all your comments to be sure we have captured it all.

The in-passage-block indentation is a good suggestion. You can (awkwardly) do it now with spaces, or if you can copy/paste a Tab character, but a native option would be great.

Robert Kelbe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1326622#Comment_1326622

Thank you for the continued feedback, Robert. You should see a lot of the fixes in the next Beta release. I am walking through all your comments to be sure we have captured it all.

The in-passage-block indentation is a good suggestion. You can (awkwardly) do it now with spaces, or if you can copy/paste a Tab character, but a native option would be great.

Thanks, David. Here is another quirk which is (I'm sure) related to what has already been discussed. I'm trying to cut/paste a text block to move it from one location to another. The passage block I want to move has another passage block immediately before it.

Whether I cut the passage block with the header or not, I am always left over with an extra blank passage block.

Attempt 1. Cut/paste the whole passage block including the header:

Attempt 2. Cut/paste the passage block without the header:

Robert Kelbe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1326744#Comment_1326744

A few more changes I've noticed (since there seem to be additional behavior changes beyond what's been noted):

GOOD

I can paste text from outside of Logos into a heading without losing the "Include in Handout/Outline" in the heading that I'm pasting into.

Headings no longer have "Include in Handout/Outline" turned on by default
Shift+Enter no longer enters a new line without a paragraph break (this was a new feature within the last year, and seems to have been lost)
When I copy/paste headings with Ctrl+Shift+V, it adds 3 blank lines between every line! See below.

Robert Kelbe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1325568#Comment_1325568

Just a note that the "Paste as plain text" option (also Ctrl+Shift+V) still doesn't work…

Robert Kelbe

Just wanted to once again draw attention to the fact that copy/pasting anything with Ctrl+Shift+V still adds 3 blank lines between every line…