New collections explained & Syntax examples

here is one example of making a Mac collection of bible studies...

Really it's not very painful at all....I even left in all of the mistyping...and it was still painless...

two commands and one ANDNOT and it was over....

NOTE: I realize that title:"Macarthur Bible studies" would have done it but it was for illustrative purposes...

PS: I'm not a coder nor have I used "syntax" before to any great extent....I learned it on this forum....

http://www.screencast.com/users/rpavich123/folders/Jing/media/7ae99f0c-c459-407e-a900-3e65572d4e98

You might also want to add type:magazine to the search string.  There are some resources, Like discipleship Journal that are tagged differently.

Just a thought here, but isn't the whole point of Logos v. 4 to be easier to use? Seamless? No 'geek-ness' necessary? But as I look through this thread (and thankyou, by the way) it appears as though now I need to learn programming in order to adequately set up collections and searches in this new user friendly Logos!

Seriously??

Peter and Joan...

I believe that what Logos was saying was that it's very usable to the AVERAGE USER right out of the box...

Being that this forum is filled with Geeks...then we are into customizing...we aren't the target audience...

Robert Pavich said:

Being that this forum is filled with Geeks...then we are into customizing...we aren't the target audience...

I am reasonably bright, witty, and charming.  [8-)] But I must confess that thinking thru all of the variables for "strings" to opitmize my system is beyond my level of patience.  Here's an idea: why doesn't someone on these boards put together a comprehensive list of strings with a brief description of what each one does and then sell it?  Of course Protor will eventually do that but, my impatience is shing thru, who wants to wait that long? 

Andrew:

I had the same problem, and I get to a response: "lang", "type" and so on are CASE sensitve.  If I try "Lang:Spanish" it doesn't work.  It must be  "lang:Spanish".

Martin J Webster said:

How can a collection be deleted that has been created incorrectly?

This raises a major concern I have with the version 4 user interface. Any changes you make to Collections, Syntax Searches, Visual Filters, custom Guides etc. all are automatically saved immediately. I would like to be able to abandon the changes and revert back to the original settings. Sometimes you really screw these things up the best way is to go back to where it was when you started modifying them. At the very least there should be a Revert option so you can go back to what the settings where when you started.

I also don't like that when you go into collections it automatically takes you to editing the last one. It  is too easy to mess up a working collection inadvertantly. Since there are new and open options, perhaps that is where to start or there should  be a list of collections to select from with a New button.

I also don't like that an empty Collection, Syntax Search, Visual Filter, etc. is saved. I find myself deleted untitled things often.

I also think the File menu is too cluttered with user created things. If you want visual filters, it should only list them. If you want reading guides, it should only list the. Potentially this could become a big rat's nest  of user created files. Perhaps you could click on Visual Filters, and it would bring up the list. Then there could be a link called New Visual Filter (or whatever) that you would click on to create one. This is basically how the Guides menu is set up and it.

Thomas Black said:

Robert Pavich said:

Being that this forum is filled with Geeks...then we are into customizing...we aren't the target audience...

I lost count of how many times we were told this during the beta. 

After laying down my modest fee to upgrade my Logos 3 Scholors et al installation, and kicking around in Logos 4 for awhile, I was driven to this forum to find out where my wonderfully arranged collections went.  Nothing fancy, just started out with a standard structure from someplace (Morris Proctor, maybe?), and tweaked it to my satisfaction.  Wondered about parallel resource associations and a bibliography, too.

After reading this thread (and some others), I have come to a conclusion:  Apparently, Logos has labored for years to produce a somewhat more robust version of .  . . WORDsearch. 

Sorry guys, but it looks to me like you took an incredibly powerful  tool famous for its ability to be many things to many people, and turned it into what the folks at WORDsearch have been doing very well for years - intuitive, fast, with tabbed windows, desktops, etc. - and not much more. 

Now I understand that it can be argued that the command line-like structure gives some access to stuff - but I didn't have to do that before, and I'm really not interested in doing it now.

I don't get why at least what us not-so-geeky types used before with great satisfaction wasn't preserved.

I'm not saying it's not an amazing product - i think it is. It's visualy stunning, it's got some amazing features, andI know it's represents a ton of effort by lots and lots of talented people.  My hat's off to you folks for all your hard work.  It's just (apparently) not what it used to be.  That's kind of disappointing.

Just my thoughts, YMMV.

Jim D.

Robert Pavich said:

JimDunne said:

Now I understand that it can be argued that the command line-like structure gives some access to stuff - but I didn't have to do that before, and I'm really not interested in doing it now.

I don't get why at least what us not-so-geeky types used before with great satisfaction wasn't preserved.

And

 

[quote]I'm not saying it's not an amazing product - i think it is. It's visualy stunning, it's got some amazing features, andI know it's represents a ton of effort by lots and lots of talented people.  My hat's off to you folks for all your hard work.  It's just (apparently) not what it used to be.  That's kind of disappointing.

Jim,

don't take this the wrong way....I'm not blindly defending Logos but can you do something for me?

Can you be specific about what v3 did and what v4 doesn't do right?

Very specific?

that would help people understand exactly what you're saying...

Hi Robert,

This is not a right/wrong thing - and I tried to be very careful not to say anything in that context.  This a a corporate product decision, I think.  I'm not crazy about some of the apparent design choices, that's all. 

Logos 3 was incredibly feature-rich.  Did I personally use all those features?  Nope.  In fact, in discussing the product with others, I would often say that Logos 3 provided tools that answered questions where, not only did I not understand the answers provided, I couldn't understand the questions.  But that was awesome, because there were others who DID understand the questions, and really needed the tools to answer those questions.  Was there a downside?  Yeah, there was.  I could see how, for someone interested in basic Bible study, Logos 3 could seem a bit intimidating, although the Passage Guide really went a long way to helping resolve that, IMHO.

With what I've seen of Logos 4, and admittedly I haven't had time to dig in in depth, it just seems to me that Logos has made serious and successful efforts to make the basic product more accessible to a larger group of people.  Now, no question, that's absolutely AWESOME.  But there used to be a sort of middle ground, I think, where lots of us lived quite happily.  Not the group of power-users who continually pushed the product to the limits, God bless 'em, but who went just a step or two beyond the defaults. 

I used collections a lot, even downloading the wonderful Collections Management user-developed addin that allowed for nested collections.    That was great.  What seems to have replaced it (dynamic collections) is, I think awkward and a bit unwieldly.  The idea of providing a text-based(!), boolean-logic-based tool to create basic groups of books seems akin to giving a 10-year-old would-be fisherman a fully equipped commerical fishing boat, with limited instructions on how to use it.  So in this case, those of us in that "middle ground"  that I mentioned, actually lost some ease of use.

(Side note: I'm skeptical that dynamic collections are going to work the way they're explained in the instruction video.  While the idea of having the software add new books to existing collections based on existing rules sounds great, I think that unless the user-created rules are logically solid, some unwanted entries are going to occur regardless.  Even in the video example of "counseling resources", the first time that rule is applied to evaluate a new group of non-counseling resources, it's probably going to suck in a bunch of unwanted stuff just like it did the first time.  The basic rule is too broad, with no exceptions built in.  But the basic question is - why should the user have to be worried about constructing logically solid rules, just to make sure books get inserted in the right lists?)

Same way with parallel resource associations.  Not the easiest thing to understand, perhaps, but once you figured it out, it was quite useful.

And as far as the lack of being able to list resources and create bibliographies, I'm just baffled.  That seems like the first thing every single 3.x user would reach for:  "What did I have before, and do I still have it now?"  And the comment from Logos mentioned elsewhere, "trust us to get it right" is frankly ridiculous.  Not that I don't trust the good folks at Logos  (I do), but these are my resources, I paid for them, and I want to be able to list them out, count them, and make sure I got everything that I paid for.  I could do it easily before, and I can't do it at all (apparently) now.

Blessings,

Jim D.

Philip Spitzer said:

Daniel DeVilder said:

(HERE IS WHERE I NEED SPITZER to GENERATE a GRAPHICAL PICTURE of my IDEA!

I think this is what your driving for. This would be what appears when you click the "i" button on a resource pane.

I would most definitely like to see this...

Philip,

You've got a really good handle on collections, would you mind making a FAQ page out of some of this?

http://wiki.logos.com/Collections

Robert Pavich said:

Jim,

Thanks for being somewhat specific..

It seemed like you are just more unhappy over change but not in any real specific way; 

Example:

"V3 was feature rich but V4 isn't" 

VS a specific statement like:

"I used to accomplish this by doing this this and this and now it's done this way and this is why it's worse to me"

Can you see how one statement is a vague, vacuous statement that really says nothing and the other is a specific statement that can be analyzed and answered?

The one thing you did mention specifically was the sorting of collections however. I was a little shocked at your comparison..."a 10 year old fisherman a commercially equipped fishing boat?"...really?

Although I can imagine how you feel however...when i got V3 and learned what I had to do just to get it to keylink and open the proper resource in the different languages correctly I said the same thing....WHAT THE??

I couldn't believe that they had such a convoluted scheme that I had to learn via buried video on their site to do this thing that was so basic to the operation of the software!!

That's nuts! (I said)

But...I lived with it...and apparently, so did everyone else...

 

I don't see anything that nuts in V4...do you?

 

For example; let's use collections since that was the one specific thing you mentioned:

V3...I was forced to use collections in v3 why? Because it was so slow when searching any large volume of resources that nobody wanted to! Remember the forums? Constant complaining about how collections are necessary due to it's sluggishness.

Remember how collections are made in V3? Trying to sort by author, trying to remember what you have....dragging and dropping...and when you bought a new resource...you had to remember to add it to your collections or it was buried; never to be used! (because there couldn't be an "all library" search due to the slowness.

When V4 came along...I looked at how the collections are sorted...I gave it a shot a few times...and in the space of say 5-10 minutes...I learned the philosophy behind it and see that it's a major improvement.

You also mentioned that you doubt dynamic collections won't  work like the video?: (just a vague paranormal feeling or did you give it a try?)

I can say...from actual practical experience that Yes...they do...

Example: I created a collection of systematic theologies. When I bought a new one, I went to the collections to make sure that it was now included (as I used to have to do in v3) and it was already there...nice.

PS: V4 allows for multiple nested collections that you don't have to download a kluge workaround to accomplish...that's a plus right?

And though I'm no programmer...I was able to understand the concept of sorting like:

"title:"Systematic Theology"

So it seems that that the knowledge gap isn't as wide as "10 year old getting a commercial fishing boat"...do you really?

I guess if that's the only specific thing you had mentioned  that is sub-v3, then frankly...it seems like a bit of puffing without any real substance...

 

Nobody likes change...myself included...but change is necessary and I'm not faulting Logos for not staying like V1....there are still users who refuse to go to v3 because it changed.

 

I do however agree that the parallel resource associations were nice and they are returning...good to know.

 

Anything else specific you can think of?

 

Robert -

OK, your comments are reasonable, for the most part (VACUOUS?  PUFFING!?)  .  I joined the Logos family of customers just at the outset of v3.  So I didn't go through the last culture shock/shift.  And I actually I do have a background in I/T, so boolean logic is not foreign to me - nor is living with (or imposing) change.  It's pretty much what I do every day.

And yes, I agree that natively supported nested collections are nice - although I don't think it's doing justice to the developer of the old "Collections Management" addin to call it a kludge.  (And yes, I am old enough to know what a kludge is.)

So, OK, let's give this a shot:

I decided to go with building a Theology collection.  I started simply with "theology"Here's the string I ended up with:

theology ANDNOT type:commentary ANDNOT type:dictionary ANDNOT ("Evangelical Review of Theology" OR "Leadership Library" OR "Classical Pastoral Care").

Note that I had to add each of the items above to flush unwanted stuff out of the collection, so they all need to be there.

Oh yea - and I had to exclude 44 books manually, including such diverse entries as "Christian Cyberspace Companion" and "The Star Book for Ministers".

Did this accomplish what I needed it to do?  Yes, I think so.  Was it painless - yes, relatively so for me.  Although a comprehensive list of syntax and types, tags, etc. would be very useful.  Maybe it's in a Help file somplace, but I couldn't track it down, so I guessed my way through it.

Was it simple and intuitive?  NOT.  My opinion is unchanged - this is awkward, overly complicated and fussy, and desparately needs to to graphically-based. 

Will it maintain itself CORRECTLY in the future as I add resources?   I seriously doubt it.  (Doubt as in skepticism based on experience, not paranormal feeling.)  Here's why.

Unfortunately, there's a basic flaw In your example above.  You only tried adding something that you knew would land exactly where you expected it.  I'm sure that adding a new systematic theology text, and having it show up in your existing systematic theologies collection,  worked fine.    

But go out and buy a new multi-volume commentary set, or reference collection, etc., and I'll just bet that you'll find that your systematic theologies collection is now polluted with all sorts of interesting stuff you never expected.  Simply because there's probably nothing in the filter that will intelligently EXCLUDE things that don't fit your expectations. 

The collections filter tool leans toward logical inclusion - start by including everything that matches parameter x, and then lift out (exclude) only those things that meet the following specific criteria.  Unfortunately, those "specific criteria" are only valid at the time of creation - add new data that matches the initial inclusive parameter, but not any of the initial exlusive parameters, and the resulting filtered data will no longer meet expectations.

A couple of suggestions for Team Logos here:

1.  When you're building the collection by dragging volumes into the "Exclude" section, the main list window below should stay at the same point, instead of redisplaying from the top.  The constant scrolling back down to where you left off is very tedious.

2.  As the text-based filter is developed during the creation of the collection, it would be helpful if volumes already in the "Exclude" section were automatically removed as the filter encompasses them.  It will keep things a bit cleaner.  Sometimes you don't necessarily see patterns (series, multi-volume sets, etc.) until you've dragged a few volumes into the exclude box.

So that's my take now that I've played with it a bit.  Will I stay with 3.x?  No, of course not.  I'm just going to keep hoping that someone comes up with a more elegant way to handle collections.

Blessings,

Jim D.     

Jim,

I took a look at your query and I see why you think what you do about how unreliable this system is...it's because your query was very broad flawed at the start that you manually excluded tons of things to make up for it.

I took your query and changed it...click the link to see what happened. (and I'll take your bet that if I buy a commentary collection it won't show up in this group...)

I started with a jumble of 46 unrelated things...but by targeting the title "theology" then I narrowed it down and just had to dump one or two things...nothing had to be dragged at all.

This could have been done 20 different ways but this was a pretty robust way to do it.

http://www.screencast.com/users/rpavich123/folders/Jing/media/ff585998-5ad0-4ed0-a62d-06c72d2caf8e

Library Size:2251 Collection Size: 81 Title: Theologies Rule: title:doctrine, title:theology, dogmatics ANDNOT type:journal Items included: Fundamentals, God, Revelation, and Authority, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms, What We Believe Items Excluded: Biographical Entries from Evangelical..., Semeia 43

philip this is the best, clearest most helpful instruction yet, esp on nested collections.

BUT it still shows the 'wierdness' of this way of doing things.

I put in the above theology rule. My results DO NOT include Carl Henry's "God, Revelation & Authority" nor any of the IVP POCKET dictionaries.

Steve

ps. I did learn from you that " " must (sometime) be included WHEN WHY? (besides the fact that was the only way you could get it too work.)

I strongly agree with our other brother's complaint that this is not intuitve, I would love to know how many Bible Study folks know how to make multi-bracketted rules. Itseems to me we have traded one "kludge" for another?

Steve

ps. Philip, thank you again for your clear examples, whether I can get them to work or not.

[edit: Are you saying you then DRAGGED "Henry" & "Pockets" in and dragged Semeia 43 out?]