Handouts driving me crazy!
I thought I'd give the Handouts feature a try.
While I love the idea, it's driving me crazy because:
- Lots of irrelevant stuff appears. I tried Hebrews 10:19-39 and am getting "Zacchaeus", "On the Road to Emmaus", "Philip & Nathanael Called" and so on.
- You seem to always be forced to have enough content to fill 4 pages, even if 90% of it is irrelevant. Let me turn things off without having other things automatically turned on to fill the space. (I might want the blank space for something I'm going to photocopy in).
- There is no way to rearrange and resize the material on the page.
- More options would be great. Eg word find size, words included, difficulty (ie whether diagonals are used).
Regards,
Nigel
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1. We're working on including a lot more (relevant) content. This should improve.
2. Yes, but we'll look at ways to let you be blank. At the least, you can insert your own blank sections.
3. We aren't going to offer manual editing of the document. A) It's a lot of code, and 
there are lots of better tools. (Word, Publisher, InDesign, Illustrator, Quark, etc.) The point is to make something quick and easy; if you want to be the graphic artist -- which is fine and legitimate -- we're the wrong tool.
4. To avoid cluttering the UI we're planning to leave these options out of this section, but I'm pretty sure the WordFind will adopt the settings you last used in a standalone WordFind. If this isn't enough we can revisit this.
Hi again.
#3 especially is fair enough. It makes me think about an aspect, though, that I hadn't yet considered: How are we supposed to get the content into these other apps? I can only see a "Print" button. I suppose you could print to a file... This would probably make #2 irrelevant too.
Re #4, you already have "Edit" buttons for each of the blocks. I'd pop these options in there. There's a lot of space wasted at the moment with the preview (you can already see it on the page preview on the right), and the Caption, Credit and Copyright fields seem a bit pointless to me - at least at the moment.
the Caption, Credit and Copyright fields seem a bit pointless to me - at least at the moment.
Nigel
I see this as a great "marketing" tool to promote your Church within the community. If, for example, you are having a fund raising day you could have your Church's contact details on a sheet that can be distributed to any children that turn up and you have created an activity for them to do and/or take away. And of course acknowledging Logos for the material is also helping them out [;)]
How to ask for help for Logos issues.
Nigel
I see this as a great "marketing" tool to promote your Church within
the community. If, for example, you are having a fund raising day you
could have your Church's contact details on a sheet that can be
distributed to any children that turn up and you have created an
activity for them to do and/or take away. And of course acknowledging
Logos for the material is also helping them out
Yeah, I suppose so.
I was imagining that they should be the copyright etc for the particular element. I would have thought Logos would provide those details.
Nigel
2. You seem to always be forced to have enough content to fill 4 pages...
2. Yes, but we'll look at ways to let you be blank. At the least, you can insert your own blank sections.
What? No! I do not need to have a four page handout every time I do something. Why? what on earth is your mindset in "requiring 4 pages?" It's a completely random requirement with no basis I can comprehend.
Handouts should start with one Blank page and a collection of stuff you can add on the left. Then it should expand to as many pages as necessary to fit the stuff.
Don't add or require anything by default. I don't mind i fyou put the Logos Icon on there, that's fine, but don't require me to have any given length or handouts is effectively worthless.
If I'm teaching kids about the tabernacle and I want only a graphic of the tabernacle and a word-find, shouldn't' that be enough?
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you.
Scratch some of that, By setting it to Sheet/letter/singleside I'm able to force it to one page, but I feel like I'm pulling teeth the whole way, and random junk keeps being automatically added.
Please, start with a blank page and let me choose what to add, rather than forcing me to figure out how to take away.
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you.
You can also start a blank handout through File>Handout. Use "Add Blank Item" at the top of the left column and "Add Item" to search for other items that can be inserted by drag-n-drop.
User Interface Designer - Logos Bible Software
Darren,
Thanks for showing me that. It is slightly better. Yet we still require a "clear all" button for the already generated Handouts like the ones that appear in passage guide.
And of course I'm eager for some proper tagging to begin showing a difference. I have no clue why Stephen's accusation and Esther's family tree is included in Nehemiah 6:1-9. The selection of materials in the handouts are so completely random and disconnected that it is in β2 worthless.
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you.
The mindset is that the handout is a single page document that is always ready to print. You can push content in or out, or re-order the content, but at any given moment it's ready to print a "complete" document.
This is a design choice that we hope reflects an easier to use application. If you want to start with a blank page and fill it up with the content you create and lay it out the way you want it, great. But that's not our handout feature, that's a word-processor / desktop-publishing app / document-editor. There are lots of those out there, and there's no need for us to build another.
This is probably not the answer you wanted, and this is definitely a new strategy for us. Maybe we're going the wrong way. :-) But we're experimenting with features that make more assumptions in the hope that we can become more useful and accessible to more people.
It also lets us write less "duplicative" code -- it really does seem pointless for us to make a more generic document editor. Over time we'd need to recreate Microsoft Publisher. If you want that level of control, which we know many people do, then there are lots of great tools. And maybe we need to make it easy to copy/drag/export the excerpts from the handouts to external tools. But we know lots of people don't take the time to make a handout because of all the overhead, so we want to see what happens if we make it "just print this" easy.
Bob,
Thanks for your reply, especially in light of my not-too-generous outburst. I do understand now what you want to do. I just think it's the wrong direction.
This is a design choice that we hope
reflects an easier to use application. If you want to start with a
blank page and fill it up with the content you create and lay it out
the way you want it, great. But that's not our handout feature, that's
a word-processor / desktop-publishing app / document-editor. There are
lots of those out there, and there's no need for us to build
another.
I am not asking to add a bunch of my own content. I am asking for a blank page with all of the preconfigured options defaulted to off instead of on.
I feel that it is a mistake to make me take stuff away from the start. I feel a much better interface would have the handout blank and the empty checkboxes to the left. In other words, the precise same setup but with the checkboxes defaulted to off instead of on. That way I can see what's available and add it.
Obviously I disagree with your intent, and that disagreement can become moot real easy as soon as the handout starts making better choices (why do I want the family tree of Jesus or Mary or Zacheus in 1 Peter 1:1-5?). But I can guarantee right now that I'll get very frustrated if every time I want to create a handout I have to uncheck thirty items I don't want. That is not a document that is ready to print from the start. It's a headache.
I know you're trying to read your customers mind and provide them immediately with what they want, but handouts are inherently personal, and will always demand personalization.
If you really want to make the handout busy from the get go than choose 2-4 items that you think will go on every hand out like the passage, a word find and a graphic and leave the rest blank. But please please please do not auto-enable 20-30 items.
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you.
BTW, I also have to retract some of what I said about the infographics. I spent some time on it today, and think I will definitely find use for it... especially with my own kids when they ask Bible questions I can easily show them a relative size or measure. Cool!
I am not asking to add a bunch of my own content. I am asking for a blank page with all of the preconfigured options defaulted to off instead of on.
After playing a bit with this feature last night (Australian time), I agree with this completely. I had to take off more than I put back on.
Checked items should go to the bottom of the list not to the top.
Bob,
Thanks for your reply, especially in light of my not-too-generous outburst. I do understand now what you want to do. I just think it's the wrong direction.
This is a design choice that we hope reflects an easier to use application. If you want to start with a blank page and fill it up with the content you create and lay it out the way you want it, great. But that's not our handout feature, that's a word-processor / desktop-publishing app / document-editor. There are lots of those out there, and there's no need for us to build another.I am not asking to add a bunch of my own content. I am asking for a blank page with all of the preconfigured options defaulted to off instead of on.
I feel that it is a mistake to make me take stuff away from the start. I feel a much better interface would have the handout blank and the empty checkboxes to the left. In other words, the precise same setup but with the checkboxes defaulted to off instead of on. That way I can see what's available and add it.
Obviously I disagree with your intent, and that disagreement can become moot real easy as soon as the handout starts making better choices (why do I want the family tree of Jesus or Mary or Zacheus in 1 Peter 1:1-5?). But I can guarantee right now that I'll get very frustrated if every time I want to create a handout I have to uncheck thirty items I don't want. That is not a document that is ready to print from the start. It's a headache.
I know you're trying to read your customers mind and provide them immediately with what they want, but handouts are inherently personal, and will always demand personalization.
If you really want to make the handout busy from the get go than choose 2-4 items that you think will go on every hand out like the passage, a word find and a graphic and leave the rest blank. But please please please do not auto-enable 20-30 items.
I have to agree, some of the suggestions further down could improve this but as they stand I wouldn't bother with the handouts from Passage Guide as they stand. Leaving it up to the computer to randomly decide what is relevant to what I am trying to achieve with a handout just doesn't add up at all. And I wouldn't like to think someone gave me a handout in which they hadn't really put anythought into the content either.
Working with a blank handout from FILE menu sounds more useful, but yet to explore that fully to offer definite thoughts on it.
The mindset is that the handout is a single page document that is always ready to print. You can push content in or out, or re-order the content, but at any given moment it's ready to print a "complete" document.
Resurrecting an old thread to reiterate a point: Always ready to print is NOT the same as full. Flip it around, just because a page is full of information doesn't mean it's the right information. Less is more. A single word find and the passage should be enough but I have to create a blank section and add about a dozen lines to "make it ready to print." Why not let blank be ready to print? Then at least I can add what needs added.
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you.
George,
thanks, I actually like the idea of generating handouts for study.
If it was customizable like an exegetical guide or passage guide, that would be great! (you know...sections to check off and on and reorder as necessary)
Robert Pavich
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