Logos asks, what do you wish you could search for, but can't?

What strange and unusual things God commanded the prophets to do to convey His message?

if this idea is mentioned above I apologize. Anytime a word that can be translated "light" appears near a word that can be translated "dark"

Bob Pritchett said:

We're looking at combining our databases in new ways to enable a whole new world of super-powerful queries. This alternate database would have a difficult (and non-trivial) search syntax, but allow searches that cross multiple data sets.

Are we talking library wide or restricted to biblical searches?

Bob Pritchett said:

Is this useful?

WOW, WOW, WOW....is this going to be possible anytime soon...[:P]...I'm getting excited about the possibilites....[:D]

Don't know if I missed something in the last few months, but I'd just like to be able to search article titles/headings (ex. Journals) and chapter headings/titles....

And what is the cost?  Will we need a 20 core CPU? (At 900 gig Hz) And hard disk space for the data files?  Do you have some data specialist that can do this ‘magic’ but who is useless for work on all of the current suggestions on the forums and user voice for updates ? [So that this project will not affect any of the items getting done]  [It is a GREAT idea!] [Can we add Artificial intelligence also?]

Bob Pritchett said:

This alternate database would have a difficult (and non-trivial) search syntax

Would it be possible to slap an NLP (natural language processing) front-end on top of it, so we can just ask our questions in plain English (as you just did in your first post)?

Bob Pritchett said:

Are there queries you'd like to run that you can't?

"Given a specific Bible verse or passage, what are the top 5 most pertinent insights that the commentaries in my library have to say about that passage?"

Explanation: This may not be implementable with the cross-db search you've mentioned, but I've always wanted a smarter, 21st-century of the "Summarize" feature that L3 used to have, that would cross multiple commentary resources, and return an intelligent synopsis of the most frequent (and infrequent) things being said about a certain passage.

Peter

I am interested in  questions like this (and I am VERY concerned if this requires harder searching and syntax instead of easier - seems to me an equal part of the problem is building software with sophisticated search interfaces tied in!):

1.  "What are some good devotional thoughts about grieving?"; "Why do bad things happen to good people"; "What does St. Augustine say about grace" are some simplistic examples.  Of course there are ways to look for these now, but there is so much stuff that gets returned that is not relevant, it's hard to find the gems. It's not unusual to have these kinds of searches returning 5000 results, which means I go to specific resources or specific collections. So why do I own all these resources then?

2.  Can I give an example of what I am looking for, and the search engine finds other examples of it?

3. Support for successive drill-downs - can it get more sophisticated in how I drill down into the data with successive searches?

4. Use of external sources - can it be blended into using other external search engines, for example could I use Google to do a search, and feed its results into Logos to create context for what I am looking for?

5. Search needs to incorporate content other than text better. Technology exists today where software can scan pictures and identify people if you give it a reference photo.  Video and pictures should be tagged a lot more than they are.

6. Imagine running a passage guide against files of research papers, books in Logos, resources, etc., and then if you needed to write a paper or develop a sermon on a particular scripture verse(s), you could search your passage guides and see if there is a relevant topic that supports itself through this scripture !

7. Classify the types of commentary responses my library has for <John 3:1-25> so I can see a representative type of each thought. For example, I have 34 commentaries that say some verse is a foreshadowing of the Messiah, and 1 commentary says the verse also indicates the disunity the Church will undergo.  It would be nice not having to read through dozens of Commentaries to find the unique thoughts.

I really think building major sophistication into something that has a difficult syntax is not going to gain wide acceptance. While that syntax may be under the covers, we see people reluctant to use Syntax Searching now because it's difficult.  Imagine how many people would use Syntax search if I could say through point and click of a user interface :

- "Find grammatical structures like the first clause of John 3:8"

-"Find grammatical structures like the first clause in John 3.8 where the lemma  is ____"

- "Find grammatical structures like first clause in John 3.8 followed by third clause in Luke 3:2"

-"Find occurrences where a predicate clause using lemma: is next to a _______

etc..

Here was a recent attempted search. I had little success in Logos, but powerful information through Google:

• Differences and similarities between the Temple and Tabernacle

Also, and maybe I'm revealing my ignorance, I'd like to search a single book of the Bible, say Philippians, and know the greatest to least occurrence of verbs and nouns

I can think of three useful searches:

• Being able to construct a syntax search from an existing syntax document (i.e. so I could select some text and say "find more like this". I'd need two options (syntax only, or syntax and vocaubulary).
• Second, and more important, to be able to use the interlinear data more effectively across translations. For example:
  • Every time the ESV translates xxxx as yyyy, but the NKJV translated it as zzzz.
• Third, improving boolean ranges
  • NEAR and WITHIN queries that work across verses.
  • Be able to restrict Boolean searches to paragraphs, sentences and pericope.

George Somsel said:

What I would like to see is a syntax search which someone with at least a PhD could manage to use.

thanks for the compliment George...I don't have a PHD but I did stay at a Holiday Inn...that must have been it.

Dominick Sela said:

1.  "What are some good devotional thoughts about grieving?"; "Why do bad things happen to good people"; "What does St. Augustine say about grace" are some simplistic examples.  Of course there are ways to look for these now, but there is so much stuff that gets returned that is not relevant, it's hard to find the gems. It's not unusual to have these kinds of searches returning 5000 results, which means I go to specific resources or specific collections. So why do I own all these resources then?

2.  Can I give an example of what I am looking for, and the search engine finds other examples of it?

3. Support for successive drill-downs - can it get more sophisticated in how I drill down into the data with successive searches?

4. Use of external sources - can it be blended into using other external search engines, for example could I use Google to do a search, and feed its results into Logos to create context for what I am looking for?

5. Search needs to incorporate content other than text better. Technology exists today where software can scan pictures and identify people if you give it a reference photo.  Video and pictures should be tagged a lot more than they are.

6. Imagine running a passage guide against files of research papers, books in Logos, resources, etc., and then if you needed to write a paper or develop a sermon on a particular scripture verse(s), you could search your passage guides and see if there is a relevant topic that supports itself through this scripture !

7. Classify the types of commentary responses my library has for <John 3:1-25> so I can see a representative type of each thought. For example, I have 34 commentaries that say some verse is a foreshadowing of the Messiah, and 1 commentary says the verse also indicates the disunity the Church will undergo.  It would be nice not having to read through dozens of Commentaries to find the unique thoughts.

I particularly like Dominick's ideas, especially #1, 3, 5, and 7.

On #3, if this new, sophisticated search also provide drill-down / faceted search capability (like what's available on the new Logos.com website now), that may solve the problem of having to learn a complex search syntax.

Peter

These abstruse searches Bob mentions seem trivial and pointless to me.

I want this: I want Logos to do a better of job of the kind of condensed searching that Libronix used to do under the heading "Topic Browser". I want an elaborated / subheaded index of all the index pages of all the the books in my 1000 plus Logos library. It seems such a simple thing to implement, but it is so far preferred to the hundreds/thousands of undifferentiated and useless word occurence matches that pour out from any search that I do under Logos now.

Furthermore, I don't want to have to learn a highly technical system of search syntax that you can only master by attending a Morris Proctor seminar. I want Logos to do some intelligent thinking for me and offer a range of options which I can used to refine my own investigation and conceptualisation of search problem. Is this too much to ask from a libary management product that I have invested thousands of dollars in?

Sam's post triggered a thought.

It would be nice to be able to search for an words in combination with section headings. For example searching for phileo that was somewhere under a heading that contained the word love. This type of search would likely help replace the calls for the Libronix topic browser.

1. God's promises to me and what conditions I need to meet to claim them
2. Verses that list the character of God
3. Verses that list the names of God
4. Other similar queries for Jesus and the Holy Spirit, etc.

I know you can find names now if you already KNOW them but I'd like to just say, "Show me the names for God in the OT or NT or both".

Kaye

2 questions I've struggled with recently:

distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  (Eventually found it when not looking for it!)

Why Christians don't need to be circumcised.  (eventually satisfied the enquirer by telling of the great commission, which doesn't mention circumcision _ this solution arose from wandering thoughts during Bible Study!)  [:P]

I'm hopeless on searches.  Am now praying the airports will be working in February so I can get to Morris Proctor in London![;)]

For me, the more important kind of search is not a more specific search. I often wished that searching in Logos would be similar to searching the Internet with Google: I just type a search and get the right results. 

Armin

Bob Pritchett said:

(If you've ever had to query an SQL database, you understand the problem. The real power is in the SQL, but it's complicated and requires a knowledge of the underlying table structure. )

 

Been there and done that [am yet another former SQL programmer] - Thank you for the Question and Thanks for the reply [and everything else]

I would be more than happy with a Topic Search that searches through all your books or a collection before any of this other stuff.

What do I wish I could search for?

My Window History using a drop-down menu button not at all unlike the one pictured here in an incredibly useful Bible program I use called Libronix 3...perhaps you've heard of it.

This magic button allows the most amazing thing...it provides a list of all of the different windows I've searched (both backward AND forward) up to ten windows deep in the drop-down menu, and I can even click the tenth choice and get a list of ten MORE pages even further back in my history...all the way back to when I first opened the window. This incredible spaced-age option is so useful, I probably click on it a couple of hundred times a day, every day. If I could get a window this fancy, I'd trade it for all the cloud search options on earth. Maybe when when L4 grows up, it can aspire to be as useful as Libronix 3 is...at least one can hope.