I was wondering if there were a way to integrate Bible.org into the passage guide in the same manner as sermonaudio.com and other online sites?
If Logos doesn't do it, am I able to do so?
It's a really good suggestion Jason, Lots of websites out there would be great for inclusion in some way.
From a programatic perspective I can see how this would be a nightmare, you'd have to be able to search the site in a specific way. As a suggestion I could see using the reference as a search term and then searching against google's site tag such as: Luke 1:5-25 site:bible.org
I wonder if it could be done through the Custom Passage Guide. A block where the user posted the URL. But I can see that since the code for each site is different, this could be tough.
Not really that different Joe. If I simply put www.bible.org into a forum, Logos could easily set up a google search <term> site:www.bible.org
Do you think it could be set up, too, to bring in search terms e.g. a library search on "synoptic problem"?
It would be better for Logos to publish an accepted format to request and accept search results so that sites such as Bible.org could create an interface for Logos if they chose. That way Logos only has to do the work once. Actually, they've done the work already, for the existing sites. I reckon a bible.org programmer could write a script to integrate with Logos in just a morning. If Logos opened the interface, of course.
Mark,
I agree that would be nice - but it puts the onus on the site holder. To be honest I'm not sure that I could figure out how to implement it on stilltruth.com if I wanted to. But Google is a one time implementation as well. All we'd have to do is add the url to "sites to search".
I don't know programming. Neither do I know a lot of Logos, though I've used 3 for a year, and am now in 4. (I do have training videos on the way, though.)
Seeing that Logos reps check out the forums, I think we could expect some sort of response, perhaps. They are very accommodating, so who knows????
Maybe a better idea would be the top 5 (?) Bible study sites per their stats. Then the user could choose which ones to use.
The best of both worlds. I might not get Bible.org, but would get great stuff.
Looking at the communication between Logos and the sites in question, this is exactly what Logos does at the moment. Two files are sent to your computer: an XML file containing the data (which comes from the site and changes according to the query) and an XSLT file containing the formatting (which comes from Logos and rarely changes).
It means that Logos have built this to make it relatively easy to add new sites to, but it looks like they've also built it so they control which sites can take part, by providing the XSLT file themselves.
What I will say is that it would definately be fairly easy for a site programmer to send Logos 4 the data needed to generate these reports. They do NOT require XML files in a particular format but rely on the XSLT transformation to do the heavy lifting.
While I don't know the specifics of the L4 programming interface here, i'd guess it's engineered to be extensible to other sites. To my knowledge, however, we don't include sections in the passage guide for external sites unless we've made some agreement with them about doing so. But i think we'd be open to adding other sites provided they were in agreement, and it made sense for the product.
But i think we'd be open to adding other sites provided they were in agreement, and it made sense for the product.
Just remember the repeated requests for Text This Week. And I can honestly say they weren't all from me although I might have egged others on just a bit.
Whilst the Logos engine is free, and therefore you need to make money from publishers, I would argue that opening this interface out, to allow users to enter their own URLs from compatible sites would be worth your while. You could still charge publishers to be part of the default install.
I appreciate this respect for other companies. I would hope they would have the same respect for Logos.
