ISSUES & SUGG: Windows 8 Touch - Program Settings
ISSUES
- Can't swipe up/down to scroll the view.
- Help text is inaccessible. It only displays on hover. Suggest it also pop up when tapped.
SUGGESTIONS
- ??? On initial installation, it might provide a better user experience to set the default scaling a little higher for smaller displays. On my tablet, 11.6" screen at 1920x1080, scaling to 120% is closer (but still a bit smaller) compared to 100% scaling on a 22" screen at 1920x1080. Of course, users can change it, but for new users it's a little nudge toward a better initial out of the box experience.
Comments
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Randy W. Sims (Shayne) said:
??? On initial installation, it might provide a better user experience to set the default scaling a little higher for smaller displays. On my tablet, 11.6" screen at 1920x1080, scaling to 120% is closer (but still a bit smaller) compared to 100% scaling on a 22" screen at 1920x1080. Of course, users can change it, but for new users it's a little nudge toward a better initial out of the box experience.
[:$] I wasn't aware of the Windows settings in "Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Display" that should be the preferred method for users to set the size of windows components. I withdraw the above suggestion. Logos should default to 100%.
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??? I wonder if adding a setting that reduced the number of resources opened by Logos would allow for running on slower processors. IOW, allowing only one bible to be open at a time (by default) so that anytime the user opens a bible it opens in the previous window containing a bible if one is already opened. Same for commentaries, passage lists, searches, etc. A menu item could be added to the resource menu to open another window of the same type so that the user can explicitly override the setting on a case by case basis. An additional limitation might be to have a few canned layouts with no option for floating windows. In particular, I wonder if limiting the resources as above would work on the lower end (non-RT) tablets. This would be a definite limitation as far as workspace, but all the power would be there within those confines and on a cheaper tablet device. Definitely much more powerful than the iOS & Android setup. ???
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Randy W. Sims (Shayne) said:
I wonder if adding a setting that reduced the number of resources opened by Logos would allow for running on slower processors. IOW, allowing only one bible to be open at a time (by default) so that anytime the user opens a bible it opens in the previous window containing a bible if one is already opened. Same for commentaries, passage lists, searches, etc.
You can already do this with resources (Bible, Commentaries), just use left and right arrow keys to change resource
NO from me about any restriction, or limitations on usage and no to a case by case toggel
Never Deprive Anyone of Hope.. It Might Be ALL They Have
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Randy W. Sims (Shayne) said:
I wasn't aware of the Windows settings in "Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Display" that should be the preferred method for users to set the size of windows components. I withdraw the above suggestion. Logos should default to 100%.
The Control Panel >> Display setting might cause truncation of text in window headers. A better option (in the Display window) is to set a Custom Text Size (DPI) as this can be set to any value. But don't forget that "modern apps" are designed for touch at the standard setting, so it might be better to use/request similar options within Logos.
Randy W. Sims (Shayne) said:I wonder if adding a setting that reduced the number of resources opened by Logos would allow for running on slower processors.
If you mean a tablet running desktop Logos on the full Windows 8 OS on processors like Intel Atom with only 2 GB RAM, then I think the user, having made that choice, should manage their own layouts. A tablet with Core i5 processor & more memory should be quite capable, but not as fast as a PC running an i5 with a higher thermal output.
Randy W. Sims (Shayne) said:In particular, I wonder if limiting the resources as above would work on the lower end (non-RT) tablets.
If you included "higher end" tablets in the "slower processors" category above, it wasn't clear. The "lower end" would be the 2 GB Intel Atom tablets which you shouldn't consider anyway if running a library with more than 1000 resources because of indexing time and hard drive size!
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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Correct, I was referring to the possibility of desktop Logos on Atom based tablets. The suggestion was based on initial comments observed in the thread: http://community.logos.com/forums/t/65924.aspx. It's all purely speculative on my part, but it looks like it could be workable to some degree, if not now then on the next iteration or two of those tablets. If it is workable it would seem a highly desirable platform for Logos-a tablet in the price range of an iPad with the complete Logos experience. I imagine that it would be a great selling point.
The suggestion for limiting open resources (as a default setting only, not a fixed limitation) was aimed at making it easier for users to have a good experience out-of-the-box. Again, that's based on observations made by others in the thread above where they noted Logos was more responsive with fewer resources open. Many users wouldn't necessarily have the knowledge to recognize the need to actively manage resource usage (nor should they be required to) and it doesn't seem overly burdensome for Logos to add a setting to limit concurrent open resources of the same resource type.
Actually, it's not a bad suggestion for all tablets where, aside from memory/speed issues, there is less screen area for a large number windows/tabs that normally are not being referenced concurrently. I don't really need 10 commentaries open at once if I can quickly and easily switch between them. I can see myself working in this mode on my tablet where Logos helps manage my screen space for me by reusing windows.
I don't know. You have more experience with Logos and it's requirements than I do. I'm just speculating and throwing out ideas, trusting in people with more sense to weed out the bad ones.
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Randy W. Sims (Shayne) said:
The suggestion for limiting open resources (as a default setting only, not a fixed limitation) was aimed at making it easier for users to have a good experience out-of-the-box.
Out of the box, Logos does not have a default layout and allows you to populate panels/tabs within the tile options you might choose in Layouts. An option to re-use any panel would prevent a proliferation of open panels e.g. if you have 3 tiles with one re-usable panel in each, the next resource you open from the Command box or Library (or a Guide) will use one of those panels. As long as one panel is re-usable all new resources/guides/documents will open there.
The number of resources in Library limits one's choice of any tablet with a 64 GB drive (30 GB free). 128 GB is better (with 70-80 GB free) but a 180 - 256 GB drive is desirable. But I still wouldn't choose an Atom processor with 2 GB RAM unless Logos would allow me to load a subset of Library (a few hundred resources).
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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I haven't had much chance to think more about this today, but it did occur to me there could be a few gotchas with regard to re-using panels. It could constitute surprising behavior for users to have a guide or search replaced by another unless there's a warning dialog (which Logos seems to avoid for some reason?) or a very good 'back' function. But it still feels like an ideal solution for tablets, as an optional setting.
Storage is a definite limitation. Even without that limitation, library management seems to be on a lot of people's wish list. It would be sweet to use the features of the library (collections, filters, etc) to selectively download/remove resources. All of our installations could be fine tuned and see significant size/speed differences if we were able to remove the resources we don't have immediate use for until we do need them. I don't see a downside for providing this functionality on the desktop the way it is now on mobile devices.
Regarding indexing on Atom based devices (or on any device), I'm curious why the indexer isn't throttled back, using a lower process priority? I rebuilt my index twice today on my Samsung ATIV tablet: once normal, and once setting the process priority to "Below Normal" using Task Manager. Both rebuilds finished in roughly the same time, within just a couple minutes of each other. That's not surprising since a lower priority process still runs at full speed as long as there are no higher priority processes vying for processor time. BUT the tablet and Logos appear MUCH more responsive and useful when the indexer was run at lower priority. My test was very superficial as I wasn't constantly using the device for significant periods of time during the rebuilds (day job), but I did use them long enough at several intervals during the process to notice an obvious difference. Is there a reason why the indexer is running at normal priority? Is there a significant downside? This wouldn't lower the length of time it took to index on lower powered devices, but it might make the devices usable while indexing.
Long day. I'm not sure I'm adding much to the conversation today, but I appreciate the dialogue.
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Randy W. Sims (Shayne) said:
Regarding indexing on Atom based devices (or on any device), I'm curious why the indexer isn't throttled back, using a lower process priority?
The biggest impact is the use of processors, as the Indexer will drive each multi-core unit (maximum 4) at near 100%, which taxes the cooling system. If the operating system needs to do anything it has the priority to do so but it's pointless trying to do other work even if the Indexer has lower priority. If the hardware can't cope you can limit the amount of processors it may use, but it will double the time for indexing.
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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Randy W. Sims (Shayne) said:
Is there a reason why the indexer is running at normal priority?
The indexing threads run at lowest priority (within the normal priority process). On Windows, a "lowest" thread in a "normal" process has the same effective priority as a "normal" thread in a "below normal" process (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms685100.aspx).
I don't know offhand how I/O priorities (Windows Vista and later) fit into this scheme; I believe they are lowered for "Below Normal" processes, but I haven't found official documentation on that yet. I/O contention is probably going to be the dominating factor in making other processes feel sluggish. We experimented early on with using background I/O processing mode, but found that it ran far too slowly. (Other processes, like virus scanners, that should have been using background I/O were not, and the I/O conflict made the indexer run several times slower: potentially days instead of hours.)
Setting the process priority to Below Normal might strike a good balance between the slow I/O of background processing mode and the I/O contention (with other programs) of normal priority; we can look into this more.
Thanks for bringing the issue to our attention.
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Thanks Dave and Bradley for taking time explain. Although I've bumped down the priority a number of times when indexing was getting in the way of my other work to good effect, I had never measured it except the once mentioned, so I doubted my results after reading your post. In particular I was curious of any differences due to ssd vs hdd, or i5 vs i7 (the i7 very very rarely reaches >60%), so I took the time to run a couple more times on my tablet and also on my desktop to verify. I also set up perfmon with counters for processor, memory, read, write, queue. The profiles look pretty much the same for normal vs below-normal runs on the tablet and for runs on the desktop as expected. The runs on the tablet (ssd-i5) show a different profile from the desktop (hdd-i7), but there is no major time difference on the same system by changing the process priority (max: <30 mins, ~11%).
That's a best case scenario with both systems sitting completely idle for the duration of the test, though I left all background processes (incl Norton 360, Malwarebytes, etc) running on both systems except my nightly backup (True Image) on my Desktop. I don't know yet how they would perform indexing while under constant use, although, most normal use by most people should not typically be heavy enough to change that drastically. There is also a great deal of variation out there: older processors, slower drives, background tasks, etc. Hopefully, I haven't missed it and it's not a goose chase, but FWIW, I've noticed better usability in my small pool here when trying it.
Thanks.
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