BUG, or "When did this change?" PG Commentaries now shows section name.

Todd Phillips
Todd Phillips Member Posts: 6,735 ✭✭✭

I was staring at my passage guide trying to figure out what I was looking at when I realized that the PG commentaries section no longer just displays the resource title.  Now it also displays the section name--is this new in 5.1 or have I just been non-observant?

I don't like it because it makes it hard to identify resources.  Often the section name will take up the entire line and it completely hides the resource title.  I like that the mouseover on the section name does provide a content preview pop-up that people have asked for, but I think it makes it more difficult to use.

I like to use the passage guide in a narrow window like below, and the change makes it near impossible to tell which resource is which:

It even hides the "star", which (although I never use it) shouldn't disappear for proper interface design.

Even if I have the window wider, it is still a problem in some instances.  And the fact that the resource names are after the section names makes it hard to scan to find a particular series.

Could the resource name be put first? Please? That would be my preference--it is more important than the section name.

I can see a similar problem occurring when the resource name is too long, but maybe the short name could be used in those instances (or all instances, if necessary).

I realize this is the way that the Collections section has acted since the beginning, but since I use it less than the Commentaries section, I haven't been bothered until now.  I would prefer that the Collections section also put the resource title first as well. 

Section names are pretty useless in general, and especially in commentaries, as can be seen from the examples.

MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540

«13

Comments

  • JT (alabama24)
    JT (alabama24) MVP Posts: 36,512

    Section names are pretty useless in general.

    +1

    macOS, iOS & iPadOS |Logs| Install
    truth over tribe

  • kelly.flones
    kelly.flones Member Posts: 253

    I am able to reproduce this and will send a case to Development for investigation.

  • kelly.flones
    kelly.flones Member Posts: 253

    It even hides the "star", which (although I never use it) shouldn't disappear for proper interface design.

    I am able to reproduce this issue and will create a case for Development.

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    I think it changed with 5.1. It certainly was never like this when L5 launched - and it's a horrible change. It's changed in the Cross References section too, where it's just as inappropriate. It's OK to do this in the Collections section, but not in the Commentaries or Cross References sections (which are look-ups not searches, and will therefore only return one result per resource, and therefore the resource name is what matters).

    Just try finding the commentary you need at a glance in this lot:

    This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!

  • Todd Phillips
    Todd Phillips Member Posts: 6,735 ✭✭✭

    It's changed in the Cross References section too, where it's just as inappropriate.

    Thanks for pointing that out. I wouldn't have noticed that since there's always the same two resources listed there.  I agree.

    That's quite the screenshot you posted.

    MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 35,777

    Totally agree with Todd and Mark. Please revert to 5.0b format.

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • Graham Criddle
    Graham Criddle MVP Posts: 32,639

    Totally agree with Todd and Mark. Please revert to 5.0b format.

    Agreed

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,440

    Totally agree with Todd and Mark. Please revert to 5.0b format.

    Agreed

    agreed

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Jack Caviness
    Jack Caviness MVP Posts: 13,514

    I like to use the passage guide in a narrow window like below, and the change makes it near impossible to tell which resource is which:

    Is this a Windows bug? Don't see it in 5.1 Beta 8 Mac

    If a Windows bug, please keep it from spreading. This would be a really poor design choice. 

  • tom
    tom Member Posts: 3,213 ✭✭✭

    It's OK to do this in the Collections section

    I just wanted to voice my opnion.  I disagree for the same reason for the same reason for the commentaries. 

    I do understand that collections display more than one result from a book (and that is a good thing).  I believe that the resource should be listed first, and the user should be able to expanded to list the various hits within the resource. 

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    tom said:

    I do understand that collections display more than one result from a book (and that is a good thing).  I believe that the resource should be listed first, and the user should be able to expanded to list the various hits within the resource. 

    I agree with this, and have said so elsewhere. It would be best if the collections section mimicked a basic search (which is all it is) and provided ranked, By Title and By Count options, rather than just ranked as it is at the moment.,

    This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!

  • Andrew Batishko
    Andrew Batishko Member, Administrator, Community Manager, Logos Employee Posts: 5,395

    Thanks for reporting this! In case you are wondering why Logos could have released something so shockingly terrible [;)] read on:

    Our intent was to fix the formatting of the Collections section that is available in the Topic Guide. It's supposed to look just like the Collections section that is found in the Passage Guide. It turns out that due to a similarity in the way the results are generated, the Topic Guide's Collections section is really a "rebranded" Commentaries section. We do a similar "rebranding" for the Apparatus and Visualizations sections. Well, that means that fixing up the formatting for the one section changed the formatting for all the other Commentaries sections.

    This should be fixed up again for the next release.

    Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer

  • JT (alabama24)
    JT (alabama24) MVP Posts: 36,512

    macOS, iOS & iPadOS |Logs| Install
    truth over tribe

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    Our intent was to fix the formatting of the Collections section that is available in the Topic Guide.

    I've never understood the Collections section in the Topic Guide, for two reasons:

    1. It should give the same results as the definitions section, but it gives far fewer results.*
    2. It has the same name as the Collections section in the PG, but an entirely different function (i.e. it's a lookup, not a search). That's confusing, I think. You'd be better off calling it Definitions.

    * For example, on the topic of Resurrection, the collections section misses the articles from AYBD, DPL, DLNT, DNTB, LBD, EDBT and Easton's.

    This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!

  • Andrew Batishko
    Andrew Batishko Member, Administrator, Community Manager, Logos Employee Posts: 5,395

    Fortunately, Mike, I just recently finished reworking the results in the Definition and Collections section. Now the Definition section includes more results than it used to (should match the topics list in a basic search result but without the results from concordance resources), while the Collections section contains even more results than that (including those from concordances).

    I just did a quick check on the Topic Guide Collections section for Resurrection, and was seeing results for DPL, DLNT, DNTB, LBD, and Easton's. I don't have AYBD in library I'm currently using, but I"m pretty sure that one will show as well.

    I don't recall whether or not that change made it into beta 8, but if not it'll be in beta 9 along with (hopefully) some changes to the Collections section in the Sermon Starter Guide that cause it to return many more results that are not just the same as what's found in the Preaching Resources section.

    Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    Thanks for the response.

    It would be helpful if you could you briefly explain the relationship between the Topic section of Basic Search, the Definition section of the Topic Guide, the Collections section of the Topic Guide and how they all relate to the LCV (Logos Controlled Vocabulary). If I've understood things correctly, you're saying that:

    • If you search for a word/phrase in the LCV, the topic section of basic search lists all the encyclopedia and concordance articles tagged with that word/phrase.
    • That each entry from LCV can be used in a topic guide.
    • That the definition section excludes concordances, whilst the collections section includes them.

    While you're testing this, you might want to check whether the entry on Resurrection includes entries from the following resources (they're currently missing from the definition section of Topic Guide, but appear in search):

    • Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels
    • Dictionary of Biblical Imagery
    • Eerdmans Bible Dictionary
    • Harpers Bible Dictionary
    • Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary
    • Dictionary of Biblical Prophecy and End Times
    • Nelson's New Illustrate Bible Dictionary

    There's also a bug in topics in search whereby some entries are duplicated or triplicated (e.g. Harper-Collins on Resurrection). It might be worth checking this bug hasn't come over into the TG as well.

    This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton MVP Posts: 35,777

    Fortunately, Mike, I just recently finished reworking the results in the Definition and Collections section. Now the Definition section includes more results than it used to (should match the topics list in a basic search result but without the results from concordance resources), while the Collections section contains even more results than that (including those from concordances).

    I find it to be entirely artificial that resources I have prioritised for Basic Search topics have been excluded from the Defintions section, including Concordances:

    • Encylopedias - New Unger's, Eerdman's,  (which I had also commented on in Beta 5)
    • Concordances - Dictionary of Bible Themes, Collins Thesaurus

    In fact nothing has changed since Beta 5, so hopefully those claims have yet to be implemented for us beta testers.

    The Collections section is/will become next to useless, except as a glorified more> section to the 6 Definitions.

    So please rethink the need for a Collections section and allow all my prioritised resources, including Concordances, to be in Definitions with a genuine expansion via more>

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

  • tom
    tom Member Posts: 3,213 ✭✭✭

    allow all my prioritised resources

    [Y]I agree 110%.  The results (for searches, lookups, etc... for pg, sg, topics, collections, definitions, etc...) should always be based on our prioritized list.
  • tom
    tom Member Posts: 3,213 ✭✭✭

    Thanks for reporting this! In case you are wondering why Logos could have released something so shockingly terrible

     unfortunately, i stopped wondering about this a long time ago.
  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    In fact nothing has changed since Beta 5, so hopefully those claims have yet to be implemented for us beta testers.

    Andrew said they'd be implemented in beta 9.

    So please rethink the need for a Collections section and allow all my prioritised resources, including Concordances, to be in Definitions

    Please don't do that. The concordances have too many entries to be relevant, and they're not Definitions. If the Collections section will support Concordances, then those who want them can create a collection for them.

    This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    tom said:

    The results (for searches, lookups, etc... for pg, sg, topics, collections, definitions, etc...) should always be based on our prioritized list.

    Yes, for everything except searches where it makes no sense at all. But that's exactly what already happens. So I'm not sure what you're suggesting.

    tom said:

    Thanks for reporting this! In case you are wondering why Logos could have released something so shockingly terrible

     unfortunately, i stopped wondering about this a long time ago.

    Be fair. It wasn't "released". It was a beta.

    This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!

  • Andrew Batishko
    Andrew Batishko Member, Administrator, Community Manager, Logos Employee Posts: 5,395

    It would be helpful if you could you briefly explain the relationship between the Topic section of Basic Search, the Definition section of the Topic Guide, the Collections section of the Topic Guide and how they all relate to the LCV (Logos Controlled Vocabulary). If I've understood things correctly, you're saying that:

    • If you search for a word/phrase in the LCV, the topic section of basic search lists all the encyclopedia and concordance articles tagged with that word/phrase.
    • That each entry from LCV can be used in a topic guide.
    • That the definition section excludes concordances, whilst the collections section includes them.

    So, the first thing to understand is that for purposes of this particular issue, the LCV data is used in two different ways. First, each entry in the LCV resource contains a hand generated list of references to articles that are are about that entry. Second, individual resources (dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc) are tagged with specific LCV entries at appropriate locations. In theory this is the same data, but in practice the LCV resource is released more frequently, so the data contained there is likely to be more complete.

    The Topics section in Basic Search is generated by attempting to retrieve a matching entry from the LCV resource and displaying all the references from that LCV entry.

    The key used from the Topic Guide (TG) is always one of the entries in the LCV. In fact, you can't even run a TG on a word that isn't in the LCV. The drop-down list for the key matches against all entries in the LCV.

    The definition section now (for you guys apparently in the next beta) uses the same mechanism as the Topics section in Basic Search to retrieve a list of resources, and then filters that list to only show results from Dictionaries, Lexicons, and Encyclopedias, since those give the best results that match the idea of a "definition".

    The TG > Collections section is a little more complicated. It's meant to be much broader than the results that show in the Definition section. Therefore it only filters results against the list of resources in your selected collection. It looks in all those resources to find locations where either an article is tagged with the TG's concept, or if the resource is not LCV tagged, then it looks for articles that match the name of the LCV entry. This helps return broader results that have not been hand selected for the LCV, but still include the hand selected results you would expect to see.

    While you're testing this, you might want to check whether the entry on Resurrection includes entries from the following resources (they're currently missing from the definition section of Topic Guide, but appear in search):

    • Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels
    • Dictionary of Biblical Imagery
    • Eerdmans Bible Dictionary
    • Harpers Bible Dictionary
    • Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary
    • Dictionary of Biblical Prophecy and End Times
    • Nelson's New Illustrate Bible Dictionary

    There's also a bug in topics in search whereby some entries are duplicated or triplicated (e.g. Harper-Collins on Resurrection). It might be worth checking this bug hasn't come over into the TG as well.

    Those results are included in the Definition section. Actually, the last don't show up in my test because those resources are not in my current testing library. I would be very surprised if they do not show up.

    I haven't seen any duplication in the Definition section or the PG > Collections section.

    Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer

  • Andrew Batishko
    Andrew Batishko Member, Administrator, Community Manager, Logos Employee Posts: 5,395

    tom said:

    The results (for searches, lookups, etc... for pg, sg, topics, collections, definitions, etc...) should always be based on our prioritized list.

    The Definition and Passage Guide > Collections section do list their results in priority order.

    Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer

  • Andrew Batishko
    Andrew Batishko Member, Administrator, Community Manager, Logos Employee Posts: 5,395

    Dave, I hope my other recent answers on this thread covered your concerns. Please ask if you need more clarification.

    Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    Passage Guide > Collections section do list their results in priority order.

    Passage Guide > Collections doesn't (and shouldn't IMO) list its results in priority order (Because it's a basic search for <Bible ~ Ref>). Topic Guide > Collections does list its results in priority order (because it's essentially a lookup). That difference (and the confusion that could come about) is one of the reasons why I suggested that you should rename the Collections section in Topic Guide to something else.

    This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    So, the first thing to understand… but still include the hand selected results you would expect to see.

    Thanks for all this info. Better understanding the architecture, not only helps us use Logos more productively, but also helps us properly explain it to others. The logic you're implemented seems to make a great deal of sense, too.

    Is is true to say that the Collections section in Topic Guide will use all resources with English headwords, regardless of what type they are, whereas the definitions section will only use resources that are LCV tagged, and of type dictionary, encyclopedia and lexicon?

    This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!

  • Brisa Davis
    Brisa Davis Member Posts: 891

    I was staring at my passage guide trying to figure out what I was looking at when I realized that the PG commentaries section no longer just displays the resource title.  Now it also displays the section name--is this new in 5.1 or have I just been non-observant?

    It even hides the "star", which (although I never use it) shouldn't disappear for proper interface design.

    Both of these issues will be fixed in 5.1 Beta 9.

  • Andrew Batishko
    Andrew Batishko Member, Administrator, Community Manager, Logos Employee Posts: 5,395

    Passage Guide > Collections section do list their results in priority order.

    Passage Guide > Collections doesn't (and shouldn't IMO) list its results in priority order (Because it's a basic search for <Bible ~ Ref>). Topic Guide > Collections does list its results in priority order (because it's essentially a lookup). That difference (and the confusion that could come about) is one of the reasons why I suggested that you should rename the Collections section in Topic Guide to something else.

    I'm sorry. I meant to say Topic Guide > Collections list their results in priority order. Too many guides and sections!

    Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer

  • Andrew Batishko
    Andrew Batishko Member, Administrator, Community Manager, Logos Employee Posts: 5,395

    Is is true to say that the Collections section in Topic Guide will use all resources with English headwords, regardless of what type they are, whereas the definitions section will only use resources that are LCV tagged, and of type dictionary, encyclopedia and lexicon?

    The first part of that is correct. Topic Guide > Collections uses all resources with headwords, giving preference in searching to LCV tags that have been added to resources.

    The second part is more or less correct. The Definition section will use data in the LCV resource, not in your individual resources. This is a subtle distinction. If your LCV resource is updated with new references, but no other resources get updated, then you could still see new results coming back in the section. Beyond that, yes. Definition only returns results in resources of those types.

    You have the key point though that Definition operates on LCV data, while Collections more or less operates on headword data. This gives us a distinction between focused, hand-crafted results in Definition and general, potentially noisy results in Collections.

    Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭

    The Definition section will use data in the LCV resource, not in your individual resources. This is a subtle distinction. If your LCV resource is updated with new references, but no other resources get updated, then you could still see new results coming back in the section. Beyond that, yes. Definition only returns results in resources of those types.

    Thanks again for all the info. It's appreciated. But can you help us understand this subtle distinction?

    I'd presumed that the LCV 'resource' (by which I presume you mean LCV.lbslcv) essentially mapped friendly topic names to LCV ids (so "Lord's Supper", "the Lord's Supper", "Holy Communion", "Communion" and "Eucharist" all get mapped to LordsSupper). Then individual articles within dictionaries would be tagged with topicid:LordsSupper. But judging from your reply, and from the size of the LCV.lbslcv file, that's obviously not the case.

    Are you saying that instead, the LCV.lbslcv file matches LCV ids to individual resources and headwords (so there's no LCV tagging within the encyclopedia resource, but instead a lookup table in the LCV resource)?

    So that when you're doing the Collections section, the query (in pseudo-SQL) is something like: SELECT SectionTitle, ResourceName FROM HeadwordIndex WHERE Headword IN (SELECT DISTINCT Headword FROM lcv WHERE lcvid='Resurrection'). In other words, to generate the Collections section you're going get a list of all the headwords used in dictionaries for that LCV topic, then return all the articles that match (or partially match?) those headwords?

    This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!