Another plea for eInk/eReader/PDF conversion at risk of losing business: A gentle rant

[If there is already a solution disregard the following message and tell me about it ]

Grace and peace to you all in the Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with such an amazing resource for understanding His Word!

Yes, every one of us with Logos who are either in seminary or the pastorate and who also possess an eReader which utilizes electronic ink has likely scoured the web for a way to read Logos books on their eReader. I love my Logos software, and the ability to multitask and extend my study beyond one book to nearly limitless linked resources (dictionary/hebrew-greek concordance/exegetical commentaries/various translations etc.) is amazing and I understand that to put the software onto an eReader would severely limit the speed and efficiency at which one might utilize Logos. However, I often find myself doing nothing but, suprise, reading one source at a time (as if I had a real book open like in olden times).

As of yet I have found no way to even convert Logos files to PDF so that I can transfer them to my eReader. I believe I should have the right to do that as an owner of the property which I have purchased. I know that one could hypothetically scroll through their books and highlight/copy/paste into a Word document then convert to PDF. But this defeats the purpose for which I purchased Logos to begin with: convenience.

Now I find myself at a crossroads, I currently have the NICOT (22 volumes) and NICNT (18 volumes) in my shopping cart at an online retailer which far undersells the digital price here at Logos. Why? For the same reason everyone here purchases any physical book that they can get a great deal on; to save themselves the eye strain, and to have the joy of holding onto what your reading without cord's/noise/boot screens/etc. But I've yet to click the confirm purchase button because I thought I might try to appeal to this community to continually beg the fine folks at Logos to give us some method of saving our eyes from (*calculates time spent reading from Logos today*) 11 hours in front of the computer screen! It's madness I tell you!

So please, Logos, provide a way for us to, by a few clicks, convert .logos4 and .llxss?ish files into PDF or even word. You already allow it through the copy/paste feature. Why not make it easy on us? I don't want to spend $1100 on books that I could otherwise spend towards expanding my digital/portable library. But you leave me with little choice! I will hold off for now since this is my first time posting regarding this issue, and perhaps there is some trick to accomplish said file conversion.

So then, is this a threat? I suppose it is, hahah. Competition with other retailers might accomplish what we've all been begging for (I hope all, anyway... I'm just sort of assuming after reading a few dozen similar faqs, but none with such a direct threat for loss of business).

Blessings from Wilmington, NC,

John Shelton

P.S. My apologies to anyone directed to this page from their search engine in hopes of finding a way to convert .logo4 in PDFs. I understand your hopes are now crushed. But perhaps capitalistic inovation will win the day!

P.P.S. Please forgive spelling errors. I assure you, as a graduate student, I know how to use spell check, but due to my great eye strain, I'm unable to look at the screen any longer, save pressing the post key...

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Comments

Donnie Hale

First, I agree with this request. I have a Kindle, and I love it for pure reading. I have a lot of monographs in Logos that I just want to read end-to-end. Even on my laptop it's just not as nice as on the Kindle. I'm not going to discontinue my business to Logos - I'll always look first here for resources because of how I can use them, irrespective of price.

Second, all they have to do to make this at least marginally do-able is get rid of the 100 page limit on printing / export (and easily do-able if they have single-click "select all" functionality on the print/export screen). If there are agreements with specific publishers, then honor those (though I still think those are suspect - anyone can break the binding off a book and scan / digitize it - silly rules like 100 page limits only impact the honest). But a huge portion of the Logos catalog is public domain.

Third, make sure you check out http://www.isv.org/anomaly/index.htm before placing too much faith in MS Word => .pdf conversion.

Donnie

Rob Kuefner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190561#Comment_190561

John & Donnie,

While I agree that reading on an e-ink reader is much better for the eyes, and I don't do much reading of logos resources end to end on the laptop... from previous responses from Logos, I do think that Logos is providing some of what we currently want by way of Biblia.com through your ereader's browser if it has one... I have read on my kindle through the advanced mode some of the resources available on Biblia.com which continues to be a growing #... the challenge for Logos of course would be which ereader to publish to... do you put your eggs into the Kindle .azw basket... or the epub basket... it's still a fairly changing market... since we do have the ability to access biblia.com... it makes it possible to read our Logos resources through any device with a browser and web access... smart phone, ereader, computer or whatever. If you need assistance Donnie in using your kindle to access biblia.com, I'd certainly be willing to help you do so... John, I didn't notice a mention of what type of ereader you have, so my answer may or may not help you...

Dave Hooton

John,

Welcome to the forums!

As of yet I have found no way to even convert Logos files to PDF so that I can transfer them to my eReader. I believe I should have the right to do that as an owner of the property which I have purchased. I know that one could hypothetically scroll through their books and highlight/copy/paste into a Word document then convert to PDF. But this defeats the purpose for which I purchased Logos to begin with: convenience.

It's unfortunate that we have to start by discussing user right's and expectations:

The EULA (Logos 4 licence) states that you MAY NOT - "reverse engineer, disassemble, decompile or
make any attempt to "unlock" or circumvent the digital copyright
protection of the Content".
But you can export portions of a resource to a PDF Printer via the Print/Export feature (Ctrl+P).
If the product is not suitable for your
purpose then Logos will refund your money (Logos is more generous
than standard consumer protection laws in many instances).

Now I find myself at a crossroads, I currently have the NICOT (22 volumes) and NICNT (18 volumes) in my shopping cart at an online retailer which far undersells the digital price here at Logos. Why? For the same reason everyone here purchases any physical book that they can get a great deal on; to save themselves the eye strain, and to have the joy of holding onto what your reading without cord's/noise/boot screens/etc. But I've yet to click the confirm purchase button because I thought I might try to appeal to this community to continually beg the fine folks at Logos to give us some method of saving our eyes from (*calculates time spent reading from Logos today*) 11 hours in front of the computer screen! It's madness I tell you!

The community can be of little assistance with regard to the urgency of your decision. We have continually appealed for better printing support for many years with Libronix (L3) and now with Logos4 (L4), so we clearly cannot coerce ("the risk of losing business") Logos into making decisions on your behalf.

If this indeed is "A gentle rant" then Logos Customer Support should have been your audience.

Mark Barnes

I'd be 99% sure that the licence agreements Logos has signed with publishers prevents them allowing Logos to export into the formats you specify. Remember, Logos doesn't own the books it publishes in Logos format, and publishers are free to publish the same books in other formats (and many do). Personally I can't see that situation every changing. At least with Logos our one licence covers many devices, even if it doesn't cover multiple formats.

This situation is compounded by the problem that Amazon won't let other formats on their Kindle. The best you could hope for, I would imagine, is that someone releases a very popular reading device that is sufficiently powerful to run a version of Logos. Logos might then develop a version for it, just as they've done with the iPad. Until then…

One final thought. If all you're going to do is read books, by all means purchase from a competitor. But if you're actually going to study them, I think you'd be far better of with Logos and all its tools - despite the limitations.

Mark McP

John, I fully agree with your request ... I want to spend my money on Logos resources but need also need the eye relief that comes with using a Kindle. I post here just so that Logos might recognize that others have this same need and I certainly hope that Logos finds a way to solve the legal (and any technical) issues posted in the other responses because I know that it would certainly be a great help to many of it's customers to provide them the ability to use resources to study and to just enjoy (simple ebook reading) when we have some down-time.

NetworkGeek

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190587#Comment_190587

IMHO you only have to read a little on these forums and see the performance challenges people have on desktops and laptops to know that the only way Logos 4 would run on an eReader would be with a specific version built for it, severely stripped down in capability. I wonder if it would even be possible for things like search to work at all, with acceptable performance. Screen display etc. would be very problematic with the hardware on the eReaders.

That said, the only choice then would likely be to build some sort of simple reader only program, to download a resource from the blog and let it be read. That costs time and $$$$. This would be one more thing Logos has to do while many features and improvements that a larger percentage of their audience desires, go uncompleted.

Maybe it happens today, but IMHO I can't see that an eReader is the right priority given the other things currently unfinished on Logos' plate.

Jerry M

book that they can get a great deal on; to save themselves the eye strain, and to have the joy of holding onto what your reading without cord's/noise/boot screens/etc.

Until there is an advance in e-ink technology and/or a loosing up of restrictions on exporting of resources, there are a couple of things we can do. We can go into program settings and change the screen color to grey to ease eye strain; ipad also has settings to help read in different light situations. A paged view for reading is currently in beta and will be generally released soon. For portability the ipad is just the ticket, but with some restrictions on total Logos usage. The HP Slate 500 is soon to be widely available, which is to have all the portability of the ipad but will be able to run all of Logos 4, but probably will not be as smooth in the use of some apps. So in my opinion it is better to try to flow with what is available whenever possible. Of course these tablets aren't free, but are necessary if portability is a high priority.

Kevin A. Purcell

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190605#Comment_190605

Publishers of digital content will not allow us to read what we want where we want even for a fee because they assume we are all thieves looking for ways to steal their content and sell it to others at worst or just give it away to all of our friends. We know this is silly, even though it does go on. But those who would steal will find a way around the limitations and those of us who won't will be hurt by the policy. So until there is a big change in the publishing industry, what you want will not exist.

The closes thing to it is the iPad and the Logos app, or maybe if they publish an Android app. Now that Kindle has an API maybe Logos will go in that direction, but I doubt the publishers will let much of the content work on it.

Floyd Johnson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190616#Comment_190616

I have suggested it before, but will do it again: It is easy to print to PDF using any number of virtual printers (I use CutePDF - choose your favorite). I then will read with PDF Annotator on my TabletPC. Note, I cannot legally share these files, but for personal use, I think I am safe. PDF Annotator is not free but not too expensive and allows files to be marked up using a large number of highlighters, pens, and stamps. In fact the more recent versions include their own virtual printer (i.e. "Print to PDFAnnotator") saving the hassle of finding one of your own. I owned CutePDF before PDF Annotator, so I continue to use it.

If I remember correctly, the Kindle can read PDA files - so that may also be a solution.

nicky crane

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190605#Comment_190605

We can go into program settings and change the screen color to grey to ease eye strain;

How do I do that in Vista? I've tried and failed to find how to do it.[:(]

Thanks in advance for your help[:)]

Jacob Hantla

I am able to read my Logos books on eReaders easily:

1. My kindle has internet access and I can access the books and reading plans at library.logos.com which works pretyt well.

2. I can copy and paste sections into Word and then send the word file to my Kindle. I often do this as I'm doing research with the passage guide but am not going to have time to sit and read at the computer. I create a compiled Word doc of what I want to read using copy and paste. Logos has done us a huge favor by trusting us not to abuse the privilege of copy/paste and as far as I can tell not limiting the amount of text you can copy and paste. BUT option #3 is even better

3. Print/save as a word doc/xps/text/html document. I can also print to my pdf printer and end up with a pdf document. The new print/export function (Ctrl-P) is an incredibly useful tool. View the screen shot below that shows how you can select the exact section you want to print or export.

Logos is not in the business of locking down our books, but rather they are going through great effort and expense to ensure that we can use the resources we purchase in a multitude of different ways. The new Print/Export function and the online access (biblia.com and library.logos.com and iOs readers) are just the newest examples of how they are working hard to do that.

Jerry M

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190640#Comment_190640

We can go into program settings and change the screen color to grey to ease eye strain;

How do I do that in Vista? I've tried and failed to find how to do it.

Thanks in advance for your help

I meant the program settings in Logos 4 in the tools drop down. The selection called Resource Panel Background has a small triangle on the right side which has a dropdown menu of background color choices. I don't know how to change Logos from windows.

Dan Sheppard

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190662#Comment_190662

3. Print/save as a word doc/xps/text/html document. I can also print to my pdf printer and end up with a pdf document. The new print/export function (Ctrl-P) is an incredibly useful tool. View the screen shot below that shows how you can select the exact section you want to print or export.

I didn't know you could select the section and copy/paste from there. I have always highlighted the section and then went into it, to see what did not copy.

spitzerpl

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190707#Comment_190707

3. Print/save as a word doc/xps/text/html document. I can also print to my pdf printer and end up with a pdf document. The new print/export function (Ctrl-P) is an incredibly useful tool. View the screen shot below that shows how you can select the exact section you want to print or export.

I didn't know you could select the section and copy/paste from there. I have always highlighted the section and then went into it, to see what did not copy.

don't forget also that you can right click on a section in the print panel and select to print all sub-sections. So if you right click on a Chapter title you can auto-check all the sub headings in that chapter.

Jacob Hantla

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190711#Comment_190711

3. Print/save as a word doc/xps/text/html document. I can also print to my pdf printer and end up with a pdf document. The new print/export function (Ctrl-P) is an incredibly useful tool. View the screen shot below that shows how you can select the exact section you want to print or export.

I didn't know you could select the section and copy/paste from there. I have always highlighted the section and then went into it, to see what did not copy.

don't forget also that you can right click on a section in the print panel and select to print all sub-sections. So if you right click on a Chapter title you can auto-check all the sub headings in that chapter.

Yup. Logos has made it very easy to make your books printable and portable. They have done far more than the original poster is even asking for.

nicky crane

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190684#Comment_190684

I meant the program settings in Logos 4 in the tools drop down.

Thank you, Jerry! Easy with your help! [:D]

Donnie Hale

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190722#Comment_190722

Yup. Logos has made it very easy to make your books printable and portable. They have done far more than the original poster is even asking for.

Try it for a selection more than 100 pages, i.e. the length of a real book. Doesn't work so well...

Donnie

nicky crane

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190788#Comment_190788

Yup. Logos has made it very easy to make your books printable and portable. They have done far more than the original poster is even asking for.

Try it for a selection more than 100 pages, i.e. the length of a real book. Doesn't work so well...

Donnie

So do it in steps! That works with printing, a chapter or 2 at a time.

Michael March

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190662#Comment_190662

When I use ctrl p, I don't get the bottom options you have, including, "send to new document/microsoft word"

How can I get that in mine? I have logos 4 latest (not beta) and word 2007 on one computer and 2010 on the other.

thanks--

Mike

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190939#Comment_190939

It's currently a beta feature, and will be available with Logos 4.2 probably in a month or two's time.

Simon

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190946#Comment_190946

Printing to PDF using a PDF printers works OK. But i would love to be able to print more than 100 pages, wich is at this moment the limit.

Floyd Johnson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/191224#Comment_191224

Printing to PDF using a PDF printers works OK. But i would love to be able to print more than 100 pages, wich is at this moment the limit.

Using CutePDF allows you to append adjacent print jobs to the same PDF document - print 100 pages, print 100 pages, print 100 pages - and you have a 300 page PDF document.

Again - caution - you may do this for personal use, but serious issues are raised if you choose to share the resulting PDF file eith others.

nicky crane

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190616#Comment_190616

Now that Kindle has an API maybe Logos will go in that direction, but I doubt the publishers will let much of the content work on it.

what's an API?

Incidentally, Kevin, I discovered your website when searching for Laridian after reading your recommendation of it for prayer list. I like it (website and impression I have of Laridian). [:D]

Floyd Johnson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/191318#Comment_191318

what's an API?

API = Application Program Interface

The API provides a series of links that program developers can use to interface with a standalone program. The API typically allows a third party developer access to the internal operation of a program - thereby controlling it as well as sending and receiving information from it. What can be done on the Kendle will depend on the richness (i.e. the set of functions) built into the API.

Casey Ballard

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190946#Comment_190946

Hello Mark, So if I buy a kindle for Christmas will I be able to use my logos books on it in the future?

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/191408#Comment_191408

You can access some of your Logos books on it now so long as you have internet access. But it's unlikely whether you'll have full access to your Logos books on the Kindle, even in the future.

Floyd Johnson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/191420#Comment_191420

You can access some of your Logos books on it now so long as you have internet access. But it's unlikely whether you'll have full access to your Logos books on the Kindle, even in the future.

... Unless you create your own PDF or mobi files using 3rd party software - but, as Mark says, there will not likely be a official LOGOS versions of your books on the Kindle. I do remember Bob saying something about Kindle awhile back - but I don't remember him making any commitment to pursuing it as a platform.

Kevin A. Purcell

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/191318#Comment_191318

Now that Kindle has an API maybe Logos will go in that direction, but I doubt the publishers will let much of the content work on it.

what's an API?

Incidentally, Kevin, I discovered your website when searching for Laridian after reading your recommendation of it for prayer list. I like it (website and impression I have of Laridian).

An application programming interface - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API

It is basically a way for developers to work with your software/website/tool to be able to develop programs that will work in/on it. For example Logos has released an API to use their web interface.

Regarding the web site. Thanks. It is just a labor of love and as I say, My brain explodes into cyberspace. Gives me a chance to put out more than just a monthly column at Christian Computing Magazine and to focus on Bible software which I don't get to do much at Notebooks.com or iPhone Life, other places I write.

Mike Newsom

I was very disappointed when I contacted LOGOS 4 by email to see if there was a way to read all the books I have in LOGOS on an eReader. My reply was to go to the blog page. A simple yes or no would have worked. I do appreciate what you had to say about the subject.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/190561#Comment_190561

Third, make sure you check out http://www.isv.org/anomaly/index.htm before placing too much faith in MS Word => .pdf conversion.

Way to go, Jeanne Sheldon! I worked with her when I was at Microsoft. She was the Testing manager at the time. She rocks! I'm sure she'll get her team to fix the problem in the next version of MS Word.

Hello Mark, So if I buy a kindle for Christmas will I be able to use my logos books on it in the future?

I'd get an Android instead. There's a Kindle reader for Android. And then you've got all the other power of a smartphone, not just a book reader. Plus Logos has let out hints that they are at work on a Logos app for the Android.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/191922#Comment_191922

I was very disappointed when I contacted LOGOS 4 by email to see if there was a way to read all the books I have in LOGOS on an eReader. My reply was to go to the blog page. A simple yes or no would have worked. I do appreciate what you had to say about the subject.

Mike,

Welcome to the forums.

As you say, it only takes a "yes" or "no", so did you get some information from this thread (it's not clear to what you responded)?

Rodney Marsh

Thanks John

ABSOLUTELY AGREE.

I have purchased books from all over the place and they re in various e-readers. I have been trying to collected them together in one e-reader. My current situation is that I have most of my library in EPUB books which are in one lirbrary. Some of my most valued books are in "logos4" format and so I cannot include these in my library. It is like visiting a library only to be told that I have to go down the street to borrow my books from the shop I purchased them from. FaithLife plase change your policy and allow the export of my books to other ereading platforms.

Rodney Marsh

Thanks John

ABSOLUTELY AGREE.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1087799#Comment_1087799

Welcome to the forums, Rodney, but did you notice that you responded to a thread that was a decade old?