New Tutorial Video - Prioritising
At long last, I'm glad to announce a new tutorial video on prioritising. As most of you know, prioritising is one of the easiest and most important customisations you'll make to your Logos installation.
In the video I first cover the basics: why prioritizing is so useful, and how to prioritize
very easily. From there I suggest three rules to help you know which
resources to prioritize, and three hints to make prioritization work in
the way you want. We also cover prioritizing series and/or individual
volumes. Finally we finish by looking at advanced prioritization, which
allows us to restrict our prioritization to particular types, ranges or
resources. If you want to skip the basics, start watching at 11:28.
I've used different software to create this video, so I've managed to increase the volume which I know had been a problem for some. The download is now also a .mp4 rather than a .mov, which may help Windows users without (I hope) causing a problem for Mac users. The download will be available within 30 minutes (I'm uploading it now).
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!
Comments
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Excellent video (and much needed)!
One thing you didn't mention that I use prioritization for is when I find a pop-up for a datatype is particularly slow. If I put the resource that is indexed for that datatype high in the priority list, then the pop-ups for that datatype work much faster. For example I prioritized the Lexham HDNT Glossary near the top because it made the LHDNT pop-ups so much better.
MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540
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Great, Mark. Thanks again! I was missing getting new videos from you.
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Mark or anyone else, are you willing to post your exact prioritization list that you really do use? When it comes to the dictionaries and Encyclopedias I really don't know what I've got. (or is this not in good form?)
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Todd Phillips said:
One thing you didn't mention that I use prioritization for is when I find a pop-up for a datatype is particularly slow. If I put the resource that is indexed for that datatype high in the priority list, then the pop-ups for that datatype work much faster.
That shouldn't make a difference. There's only one resource with that datatype, so Logos should find it almost immediately using keylink.db. But as well as this, when the datatype isn't in the prioritisation list, Logos spends about 2 seconds looking through catalog.db, which makes no sense to me.
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!
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Paul Newsome said:
Mark or anyone else, are you willing to post your exact prioritization list that you really do use? When it comes to the dictionaries and Encyclopedias I really don't know what I've got.
I feel I need to justify my prioritisation, which is perhaps more involved than I would recommend! It started out simpler than this, but as I use Logos, I will (for example) find a good dictionary or commentary set, and at that point it gets added into the prioritisation list. I didn't sit down one afternoon and plan all this.
In order I have:
- Yellow: Version-specific Bibles (see this post)
- Blue:English-language Bibles (I find the defaults work very well for me in Greek/Hebrew)
- Green: Apocrypha
- Orange: Bible Dictionaries
- Purple: Commentaries
- Grey: Greek lexicons
- Red: Hebrew Lexicons
- Yellow: Various non-Bible ancient texts
- Purple: Devotionals
- Green: Church Fathers
- Blue: English Dictionaries
The ICC entry is wrong, the range got lost at some point and I didn't notice.
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!
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Thanks Mark.. especially on the advanced prioritization.. I've seen it but never knew what it was used for.
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Mark
Thanks for the video. Very helpful!
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Thanks Mark for another great tutorial video! I have found myself thinking this week about the eventual, MUST HAVE, Mark Barnes Unofficial Logos Tutorial Video on PBB!
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Mark Barnes said:Todd Phillips said:
One thing you didn't mention that I use prioritization for is when I find a pop-up for a datatype is particularly slow. If I put the resource that is indexed for that datatype high in the priority list, then the pop-ups for that datatype work much faster.
That shouldn't make a difference. There's only one resource with that datatype, so Logos should find it almost immediately using keylink.db. But as well as this, when the datatype isn't in the prioritisation list, Logos spends about 2 seconds looking through catalog.db, which makes no sense to me.
Well, 1-2 seconds difference is what I 'm seeing now. It was more significant last year when I originally added it.
MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540
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Thanks, Mark! Looking forward to watching it. Your videos have been so helpful. I have missed you doing them and was hoping that you would "start up again"![:)]
Charlene
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Mark this is awesome thank you!
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Dominick Sela said:
Thanks Mark for another great tutorial video! I have found myself thinking this week about the eventual, MUST HAVE, Mark Barnes Unofficial Logos Tutorial Video on PBB!
The thought had crossed my mind, too...
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!
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Thank you very much for the excellent video, the example of your own prioritization, and the explanation of why we need to prioritize our English Bibles twice.
Following your tutorials really makes the software and Bible study come to life for this amateur [:)]
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Thank you, Mark.
Prioritizing is crucial.
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Mark Barnes said:
The download is now also a .mp4 rather than a .mov, which may help Windows users without (I hope) causing a problem for Mac users.
Apple's QuickTime Player can play .mp4 file, which looks and sounds great. [:D]
Observation: on Mac, dragging a commentary to Library priorities prioritizes series (appears command keyboard option to prioritize individual resource not implemented). PC control key often becomes command key on Mac. On Mac, control click is same as right click (for contextual pop-up menu).
Keep Smiling [:)]
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Mark Barnes said:
Mark, this prioritization list is tremendously helpful, but I bet you have changed it greatly since 2011. Would you be willing to post an updated list?
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David Sloan said:
Mark, this prioritization list is tremendously helpful, but I bet you have changed it greatly since 2011. Would you be willing to post an updated list?
Hi David,
I don't think I've changed it much, actually. These are the changes I remember:
- Obviously, I've added some new resources, and moved around a few things as my tastes change.
- I'm taking advantage of custom series in a few places (so my GNT and Hebrew Bible will switch from one to the other, and to prioritize new and old ICC volumes separately, for example).
- I've added Greek and Hebrew texts. Not sure how they got missed last time.
- I've re-done the Pseudepigrapha and Septuagint.
- I moved the Apostolic Fathers section before the Commentaries section, so that the commentaries on the Fathers weren't prioritised above the Fathers themselves.
- I've added sections for the Mishnah/Talmud and Calvin's Institutes.
- I've added a few bits of advanced prioritisation to try and stop the glossaries in commentaries from ranking too highly.
The colour coding is:
- Red: Version-specific Bibles (see this post)
- Yellow: English-language Bibles
- Green: Greek/Hebrew Bibles
- Cyan: Septuagint/Apocrypha/Pseudepigrapha
- Blue: Encyclopedias
- Slate: Apostolic Fathers
- Lilac: Commentaries
- Lavender: Special Lexicons
- Rose: Greek lexicons
- Mustard: Hebrew lexicons
- Yellow: Dead Sea Scrolls
- Green: Josephus
- Cyan: Philo
- Purple: Mishnah/Talmud
- Blue: Devotionals
- Green: Calvin's Institutes
- Orange: Dictionaries
The actual prioritisation is slightly arbitrary, particularly in the larger sections. Those at the top are definately more useful to me than those at the bottom, but whether the Baker NT commentary should be 43rd or 47th, who knows?!
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!
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Thanks. This is very helpful! There are a lot of changes to your 2011 post just because of new resources that have come out. I am trying to decide how to prioritize all my encyclopedias right now. I'm surprised you don't have the IVP black dictionaries higher. I put them at the top, followed by Anchor, ISBE, your Dictionary of Christianity and the Bible, Encyclopedia of Christianity, and then the shorter volumes (NBD, BEB, NDT, DBI, NDBT, EDB, etc.). I'm really not sure on the order of the one-volume dictionaries. I suppose you have a reason for putting some of them above the multi-volume dictionaries. I'm not sure what that is.
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David Sloan said:
I'm surprised you don't have the IVP black dictionaries higher. I put them at the top, followed by Anchor, ISBE, your Dictionary of Christianity and the Bible, Encyclopedia of Christianity, and then the shorter volumes (NBD, BEB, NDT, DBI, NDBT, EDB, etc.). I'm really not sure on the order of the one-volume dictionaries. I suppose you have a reason for putting some of them above the multi-volume dictionaries. I'm not sure what that is.
When I prioritise I don't just put the best at the top and the worst at the bottom. It's a bit more nuanced than that.
I very frequently type lookup [topic] in the command box, or double-click on words to look them up in dictionaries. If I do that, I'm very unlikely to want one of the black IVP dictionaries show up, because they're too specific. If I'm looking up "Mount of Olives", I wouldn't want to read the article in DJG to show up, because my interest is very likely to spread beyond the gospels. So I move those dictionaries down the list.
To me, the first five dictionaries are the most important, because those are the ones that will show up in right-click menus. You can get to those dictionaries in two clicks. I don't therefore have the specific dictionaries in those slots. And having a big dictionary (AYBD) and a smaller dictionary (NBD) in the top two slots means that I can easily choose NBD when I don't have time to read a longer article.
As for the Encyclopedia of Christianity, it's poor on Biblical and Theological topics, so I place it below Biblical/Theological dictionaries. But it's the highest ranked of my non-biblical/theological dictionaries. That should mean it will rank highly for non-biblical/theological topics (such as "prelate"), but it won't rank highly for biblical/theological topics (such as "Purity"). That's exactly what I want.
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!
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Thanks. This has all been really helpful.
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This is a great thread! Hunting around the inter-web for some detailed advice on prioritizing and I think this may still be the best even after all these years!
I sure would love a faster prioritization set up by Logos though. Maybe a default that would make stock prioritizations based on bestcommentaries.com or something. I've done a bit of a poor job at it since owning the software and I'm now realizing just how much work it's going to be to enter all of these in and set the advanced settings as well on many of them.
Having said all that, thank you Mark for the good set up list! Looks like the old unofficial tutorial videos have been moved or deleted. Alas!
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