Concerning Maps

Yes, that will be great, may be Logos could use the "Visual filters or Lens" mechanism to implement such:

• Turn on / off "Empires" as what Charlene suggested
• Turn on / off "Details / Overview" such as Provinces / Cities / Mountains / Seas / etc
• Turn on / off "User defined details" etc.

Robert Pavich said:

How about one huge map that you can "toggle" different things on and off and they overlay and appear and disappear so you can see the "big picture" and not have to "get your bearings" for every different map? Like acetate map overlays on an easel.

That is an excellent idea. 

Charlene said:

To start with, I just want to say that I love the new maps that are being added.

That being said, there is one feature that I wish we had and that is the ability to overlay maps. Not sure if this phrase communicates what I want, so let me explain.

When I first started studying Isaiah, I wondered what part of the Middle East was included in other empires. In other words, were there certain areas that were in the Assyrian Empire, but also later in the Babylonian Empire, as well as the Greek Empire, and also the Roman Empire? It would be great if we could overlap the boundaries of these different empires to see if there were any overlaps.

When I mentioned something like this in the newsgroup, someone (I'm sorry that I forgot who!) sent me a map where he had done (was it in the Accordance program?) exactly what I wanted to see. It was great! Can this be a feature that we could have also in L4?

Charlene

Ummm, at the risk of appearing "out of the loop" (and since I apparently am), what maps?

Melissa Snyder said:

A map overlay feature is being considered for a future release.  ~ Thanks, Melissa

Woo hoo!! (doing the Snoopy happy dance)

Charlene, while we don't currently offer the overlay feature you're wishing for, you can see something of this content on the map entitled "Empires with Both Ancient and Modern State Boundaries" (it's the second map you get with the command "Open Biblical Places to Rome"). It's fairly busy, but it shows the boundaries of the various empires on a large-scale map.

Sean Boisen said:

Charlene, while we don't currently offer the overlay feature you're wishing for, you can see something of this content on the map entitled "Empires with Both Ancient and Modern State Boundaries" (it's the second map you get with the command "Open Biblical Places to Rome"). It's fairly busy, but it shows the boundaries of the various empires on a large-scale map.

Thanks, Sean!  Peace and Joy to you!

           Very good!   Quite fascinating!   And it's very earlyi in Logos 4 ...       Really appreciate the link to Google Maps.

   ... Mel

AndrewMckenzie said:

Sean Boisen said:

Charlene, while we don't currently offer the overlay feature you're wishing for, you can see something of this content on the map entitled "Empires with Both Ancient and Modern State Boundaries" (it's the second map you get with the command "Open Biblical Places to Rome"). It's fairly busy, but it shows the boundaries of the various empires on a large-scale map.

 

 Sean, while we may sometimes seem like Egyption taskmasters we do appreciate the efforts being put in behind the scenes...but would really love to see that overlay feature there someday.

Your suggestion leads me to a question of how we can browse the available maps, I thinking an index or listing of some sort and also what about searching them ?  Can this be done in some way ?

One more question.  Is there a way to measure distance between to places on a map ?

Thanks Melissa, that is good to know.

Hopefully some of these subtler commands to do things like this will be documented so on launch users will not be groping around like blind men and women. Remember, Jesus came to heal these afflictions and the Word is an eye opener everyday.

Thanks again for ALL of your efforts.

Melissa Snyder said:

AndrewMckenzie said:

[One more question.  Is there a way to measure distance between to places on a map ?

Andrew ~ If you hold the Ctrl key down as you click and drag cursor from one place to another, the distance will be displayed.  ~ Melissa

 

Thanks I thought it could be done.

Andrew: we don't currently provide a way to search for maps by title. Our (ambitious) design goal is to make them appear in the right context at the right time. The best way to accomplish that is usually to search for a place of interest, and then review the list of maps at the bottom.

Charlene: i'm still finding clever features myself, but here are two neat ones you may not know about.

• As of beta 7, you can search for labels on maps with Ctrl-F. That helps when you have a map but you don't really know where the place is on it: it will "fly" you in for a close-up
• If you have the Biblical Places report open, you can type a passage in the search box, and it will show you a list of the places mentioned in that passage (sort of like the Bible Explorer, but just for Places). Here's an example, entering "Acts 13" in the search box. 

Note this same trick works with both Biblical People and Biblical Things as well.

Sean Boisen said:

Andrew: we don't currently provide a way to search for maps by title. Our (ambitious) design goal is to make them appear in the right context at the right time. The best way to accomplish that is usually to search for a place of interest, and then review the list of maps at the bottom.

Top marks for the goal Sean, keep purising that but don't allow such goals to determine that things like my request are not necessary. Sometimes I use like to pick up a resource and look at its table of contents without having a specific place of interest.  By what you are saying Logos is determining on my behalf, without my consent, that such a practice is not relevant, that I should need to simply browse an atlas.  I have a little bit of trouble with that determination by Logos.  Please reconsider and give us the ability to browse the 'table of contents'.

Sean Boisen said:

Andrew: I agree with you that having a maps resource that could be searched by title would be valuable. Perhaps the wording of my response sounded like that i don't value that kind of usage, but i do. I was simply trying to communicate how to find a map in the application as it stands now.

Thanks for your response.

At the moment I am a little troubled by some things that have been lurking beneath the surface and are starting to come through with this application in terms of a big brother approach, both in underlying philosophy of its development and in terms of actual software behavior.  I appreciate you are just the messenger so sorry if I shot you in the foot Sean.

Being serious,

What you call "big brother" I call automated...trying to do the best thing for the user with as little fuss as possible.

I agree that their are things that I'd like to see mad emore flexible, but the reality is that all of the software that I use have some parts "adaptable" and some not....that's just the way it is...

It's not big brother trying to keep us down...it's business decisions trying to keep cost down and stay in business...