How do I conduct a topical search

The home page gives the option to "Enter a passage or topic". Entering a topic does not work.

How can I find the codes for narrowing my topic search in the search window? I am getting far too many hits!

V3 had a specific topical search field that took almost anything including grammatical terms like "verb", which is not directly linked to the Bible.

Is there an equivalent of the Topic Browser as seen in v3?

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Comments

Sean Boisen

Ian:

As noted in the release notes (http://community.logos.com/forums/t/741.aspx), despite the label you can only currently search a passage from the home page, not topics.

There isn't a direct equivalent to the Topic Browser of LDLS 3. The best way to narrow a search is to limit how much of the library you're searching: in the image here, by clicking on "Entire Library" and changing it to "Open Resources" or a particular title. Though collections work differently in Logos 4, if you have defined collections they show up here as possible restrictions as well.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/8057#Comment_8057

There isn't a direct equivalent to the Topic Browser of LDLS 3. The best way to narrow a search is to limit how much of the library you're searching:

Please clarify that v4 will search topics at some stage, even if there will not be a Topic Browser, because a normal text search does not provide topics irrespective of the scope of the query.

Bob Pritchett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/8076#Comment_8076

Much of what we called "topics" in the past is now incorporated directly into Basic Search. At the moment you only see suggested alternate terms, but more information will follow, including direct links to key dictionary entries. Type "communion" or "septuagint" to see alternate words for these controlled vocabulary "topics".

Topics that aren't universal -- that are really just "slightly more important words for this article" -- are being phased out and replaced with field searching. So instead of putting, say, the title, composer and lyricist of a hymn into English "topics", they're going into "title", "composer" and "lyricist" fields, which you search as "composer:smith".

Headwords will be distinguished as such for the purposes of navigation, instead of conflating them with topics. So Greek lexicons, which presently might have both Greek headwords and English glosses as "topics", will have Greek headwords and the primary English glosses in "gloss" fields.

To get a preview of which words are considered part of the global controlled vocabulary, take a look at http://topics.logos.com.

Richard Stevens

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/8105#Comment_8105

Hi Bob,

So in essence v.4 will not have the facility when you type in a word, a list of resources come up automatically as per the screen shot for you to select from; this is one of the features I really like and appreciate in v.3.

The issue therefore as already mentioned on v.4 therefore is that when you do a topic search you have to either do a search of the Entire Library or Open Resources, is this correct?

Bradley Grainger (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/8196#Comment_8196

The issue therefore as already mentioned on v.4 therefore is that when you do a topic search you have to either do a search of the Entire Library or Open Resources, is this correct?

Searching the entire library for a "topic" is not finished in Beta 1.

spitzerpl

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/8261#Comment_8261

Searching the entire library for a "topic" is not finished in Beta 1.

Very cool that on search does both topic and Library. as long as it doesn't slow down and I can quickly hide the category I don't want it makes it much easier. Thanks! Looking forward to the feature.

Richard Stevens

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/8264#Comment_8264

Thanks Brad, I’ll look at for the completed/updated Topic search in the next Beta version. Yes the Wikipedia search is a new great feature added to v.4 that I came across experimenting a couple of days ago too.

Sean Boisen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/8196#Comment_8196

"The issue
therefore as already mentioned on v.4 therefore is that when you do a
topic search you have to either do a search of the Entire Library or
Open Resources, is this correct?"

There's a richer set of constraints, including

resources you've tagged with a particular tag
those you've rated > 3 stars
collections you've defined

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/8105#Comment_8105

Headwords will be distinguished as such for the purposes of navigation, instead of conflating them with topics. So Greek lexicons, which presently might have both Greek headwords and English glosses as "topics", will have Greek headwords and the primary English glosses in "gloss" fields.

To be clear about this let's look at DBL Greek lexicon:-

in v3 the context menu shows Greek headword = Lemma and bold English = gloss

Search Capabilities in About this Resource shows both lemma and gloss to be Fields. So I can search for lemma:Gkword and gloss:Enword.

in v4 the context menu designates Greek headword as Headword and bold English as English

The resource "i" button (About) does not show them as Search Fields but I can still search for lemma:Gkword and gloss:Enword!

Please explain ....

Bohuslav Wojnar

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/8105#Comment_8105

Much of what we called "topics" in the past is now incorporated directly into Basic Search. At the moment you only see suggested alternate terms, but more information will follow, including direct links to key dictionary entries. Type "communion" or "septuagint" to see alternate words for these controlled vocabulary "topics".

Topics that aren't universal -- that are really just "slightly more important words for this article" -- are being phased out and replaced with field searching. So instead of putting, say, the title, composer and lyricist of a hymn into English "topics", they're going into "title", "composer" and "lyricist" fields, which you search as "composer:smith".

Headwords will be distinguished as such for the purposes of navigation, instead of conflating them with topics. So Greek lexicons, which presently might have both Greek headwords and English glosses as "topics", will have Greek headwords and the primary English glosses in "gloss" fields.

To get a preview of which words are considered part of the global controlled vocabulary, take a look at http://topics.logos.com.

The more I learn about the new concept of searching, the more I am excited. I like your thinking "out of the box", Bob. Thank you for that.

Harry Hahne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/8105#Comment_8105

Too bad. The topic browser was very fast, returned only the main titles, could search collections, was easy to work with. It will be greatly missed.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/23678#Comment_23678

Too bad. The topic browser was very fast, returned only the main titles, could search collections, was easy to work with. It will be greatly missed.

I agree. But you do get Topics returned with Basic Search. I would restrict it to Bible Dictionaries (not lexicons!).

Todd Phillips

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/23678#Comment_23678

Too bad. The topic browser was very fast, returned only the main titles, could search collections, was easy to work with. It will be greatly missed.

Agreed, and you only had to type a partial word. It was much easier to find topical entries that way.

Jeremy

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/24127#Comment_24127

I have no idea why the topic browser was not incorporated. Its positives far outweighed its negatives. Disappointing.

Mark Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/26466#Comment_26466

I have no idea why the topic browser was not incorporated. Its positives far outweighed its negatives. Disappointing.

I concur and complained during the beta testing. There is nothing equivalent in 4.0. Topic search/browsing is one reason I have to keep 3.0 running alongside 4.0. I don't like to wish this on Logos but I hope there are enough complaints to get full topic searching restored to this 'updated' edition. It is needed.

Jeremy

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/26468#Comment_26468

Maybe I used the topical l browser more than most, but I thought the whole point of Logos was that it made Bible study quicker and easier. The topic browser, using the right search techniques, was one of the quickest and easiest ways to perform topical searches. Maybe I just need to learn how to use the new searches on Logos 4 for topics, but could it really have been easier than using the Topic Browser?

Timothy Lovegrove

I too was frustrated about this at first but now it does seem that the "topic" section at the top of the "basic" search results in L4 (as illustrated by Bradley) is doing just what the "topic" search in L3 did - giving you the basic dictionary and encyclopedia entries (as Richard illustrated with his L3 screenshot). So it works fine for me.

However I do agree that this needs to be built into the home page "go" box, and it sounds like that will happen. This is a super important feature for new/basic users, so hopefully it will work soon.

If that doesn't satisfy, I think the best thing is for us to consider what we are looking for when we search for a topic, and create a custom collection that meets that need. If you want dictionaries and encyclopedias, make a collection with your favorites. It's quick and easy to select and search that collection.

Mark Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/26482#Comment_26482

If that doesn't satisfy, I think the best thing is for us to consider what we are looking for when we search for a topic, and create a custom collection that meets that need.

Wow, Timothy. Why should we have to work around the fact that Logos has taken away a basic capability? All we need is for Logos to put some features back into 4.0.

I too was frustrated about this at first but now it does seem that the "topic" section at the top of the "basic" search results in L4 (as illustrated by Bradley) is doing just what the "topic" search in L3 did - giving you the basic dictionary and encyclopedia entries (as Richard illustrated with his L3 screenshot).

Who's shown that the results in 4.0 are the same as in 3.0??

Am I missing something? I have Erdmans in 4.0 and not in 3.0 so that would be another 3.0 hit if I had it. 15 references in 3.0 and 4 in 4.0.

I'm not trying to be antagonistic or a pain in the neck. I just don't think it takes all that much to see that topic searching/browsing in 4.0 is missing in action.

Todd Phillips

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/26754#Comment_26754

Am I missing something? I have Erdmans in 4.0 and not in 3.0 so that would be another 3.0 hit if I had it. 15 references in 3.0 and 4 in 4.0.

I bring up the same issues in my post on the topic browser thread. I think that resources have to be "set up" somehow to get topic hits. I'm not sure why, but during the beta test, books started appearing in the topic list as they rebuilt them. [*-)]