Why "Rework notes function" is completed
The “Rework notes function” suggestion is over 3½ years old. When it was created, Logos 4.2a was the latest version of the software. Since then, we’ve released two major versions of Logos and dozens of minor updates (“one or multiple phases”? 
) containing thousands of improvements. Many of those improvements have been in Notes.
Now that a lot of the individual items have been implemented, the “rework notes" suggestion has served its purpose: we know (and won’t forget) that Notes are important to many customers. But with 60+ individual items in this suggestion (and more in its comments!), we don’t actually know what’s most important to you. We need to prioritise what we work on, and we need you to prioritise your votes for the features that are most important to you.
I’m “Completing” the suggestion so that your votes are returned and you can use them to vote for the specific features you really want.
Below I’ve categorized the individual suggestions (that I saw) into four main groups:
- Completed in Logos 6 — these features have already been implemented in Logos 6 (or an earlier release); reminder: the free Logos 6 engine will be available to all customers on 3 February 2015.
- Already Have Suggestions — these already have suggestions on UserVoice; you can add votes to the existing items.
- Could Be Created As New Suggestions — I couldn’t find an existing suggestion for this; you’re welcome to create a new one. Please create one UserVoice item per suggestion so that 1 vote = 1 idea.
- Need More Detail — I’m really not sure what this suggestion means. If you create a new suggestion for it, we’ll need more detail to understand it. (Or it might already have been implemented.)
Finally, there are existing UserVoice suggestions that weren’t already covered; I’ve provided some links at the bottom.
Note: In the future, “bag of ideas” UserVoice suggestions for Notes are likely to be closed with a link to this post. It’s better overall if there’s a single idea per UserVoice suggestion so that 1 vote = 1 idea.
Completed in Logos 6
- allow a note to be attached to multiple passages - with the note icon appearing on each passage
- allow links to the web
- permit notes to be attached to a lemma
- permit notes to be attached to a liturgical date
- allow colored text in Notes
- allow underlined text in Notes
- sort sequences: canon
- sort sequences: created date
- sort sequences: last modified date
- sort sequences: user note title
- permit more note icon colors (at least match L3)
- allow tags on all notes and a search on those tags
- allow table of contents similar to L3
- Implement parity for Mac version
- include spell checker in notes
- improve the performance: keyboard entry, long notes and note files
- allow the sharing of notes between users
- use right click rather than red x for delete
- It is far too easy to click the red circle "Deletion" X's for individual notes
- When right click on a Highlighted word, please add Edit Annotation and Open Annotation while keeping Remove Annotation. Open Annotation would position note file to annotation plus open note file, if needed.
- allow links to other notes — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/3739329-allow-links-directly-to-individual-notes
- allow attachments of local files — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/3739031-notes-support-file-attachments
- additional formatting: highlighting — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/6738231-allow-for-highlighting-underlining-inside-of-not
- allow tables in Notes — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/3739034-notes-table-editing
- allow images in Notes — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/613917-please-make-importing-pictures-in-notes-available
- permit notes to be made from templates — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/3531831-note-template
- add linkset functionality to notes (requires appropriate sort sequences) [this allows My Commentary; added to clippings it allows "My Catena”] — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/563589-add-linkset-functionality-to-notes
- allow notes and note files to be merged or split — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/1189515-make-it-possible-to-merge-or-split-notes-files
- pop-up window (especially notes & references in notes) to be as large as the note requires with the ability to be pinned and scrolled. — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/4621001-allow-note-to-be-seen-when-hovering-over-icon-in-b
- allow creation of new file and opening of any existing file via right-click (notes, clippings, etc.) — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/6363315-make-add-a-note-to-a-drop-down-box
- integrate with third-party software — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/1012485-import-export-notes-to-from-evernote http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/3156449-notes-and-quotes-reference-manager-integration
- Please add highlighting style option for by reference notes so can highlight verse(s) in all Bibles. — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/6719007-allow-highlights-to-be-displayed-applied-to-multip
- allow a search specifically on notes (or my content) with result search terms highlighted in automatically expanded notes — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/3739208-highlight-my-content-search-results-in-notes
- allow default note icon color to be set at the file level — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/990225--allow-default-color-to-be-set-for-a-note-file-fr
- allow links to Logos 6 documents (sentence diagrams, vocabulary lists, etc.)
- allow links to local files (PDF, MP3, PowerPoint, etc.)
- permit notes to be attached to a search string
- sort sequences: highlighting
- sort sequences: remember sequence function (allow temporary)
- sort sequences: set priority for sort ket values (example: liturgical year)
- integrate a journaling feature - a note file that automatically includes date in the title and automatically sorts on date
- layout should remember position in a note file (specific note)
- permit drag and drop on multiple notes
- retain "deleted" notes (and other user content) for a period of time - permitting a restore function
- allow prioritization of files (especially notes) in "My Content" section
- allow searching of My Content by heading
- allow the saving of a BWS either into a Clipping or a Note
- The ability to show at the top of the note the content highlighted or marked up when the note was made. This would make view notes in "Full" much better. Thus rather than seeing, "God's chief end...his mercy." we would see, "God's chief end in creation and redemption is to display for the benefit of his elect the fulness of his glory, especially his mercy." That to us is "full" view.
- For note titles, please add choice to show abbreviated or complete highlighted selection.
- Should also provide options for users to view Scriptures only, Comments only, or Both.
- Users should be able to export the full (!?!) scripture text from Notes, as well as their references/comments ... or better yet be able to choose either or both to export. In addition, the "export Notes to raw Text Document" functionality needs to format the output better: The individual Notes in the text file should be separated by a line of "enough/obvious" dashes (i.e. "------------------") and perhaps an empty line before/after, unlike now where there are only 3 dashes or, with the "Save as Passage List" functionality, where there is no separation, not even an empty line. This improved export functionality will help me to view the raw text output files in my Kindle.
- Within the note/highlight document, if the marked up content icon (far left) would default to the markup type used to make the note, that would make visually searching a notes file easier.
- Add a specialized note function that allows one to "fill in" the answers in the various study guides - with the ability to toggle whether or not the answers are shown and to copy (for export or printing) with or without the answers.
- the attachment of notes to entire resources as well, for the writing of personal reviews / comments / thoughts about the resource as a whole
- Please add Note indicator customization options. e.g. letter(s), which could use capabilities of Logos display engine on all platforms, including superscript and subscript.
- In Notes file, please add miniature of style used for that entry
- Please add ability to highlight footnote text.
- tags: standardized smart tags (which would auto-fill as you type, like library tags)
- tags: universally rename-able (Also like Library tags)
- tags: filter-able, With the ability to create passage lists from those filters
- tags: visible when you hover your cursor (so you can see which tags are applied without opening the note)
- tags: editable from mobile apps (create on mobile UserVoice)
- Show "title" in popup (in addition to the note itself and the file in which it is contained) when hovering over icon that is attached to the text. Since a note can be either "by selection" or "by reference" there must be a flag for each note as to which it is. Seems like that flag could be used to have the pop up display content based upon the type of note.
- Be able to do a wholesale reset on all the icons and/or color for a given note file. —
- add a reporting feature which pulls all notes on a given pericope into a printable, exportable file
Need More Detail
- allow user selection of highlight style to indicate attached note/selected text - include suppressing highlighting or show only on mouse over
- improve input window (more like L3)
- sequence multiple note icons on a text by standard Prioritization
- additional formating: fine control of font size
- ability to add notes to collections
- automatic linking of Bible references to handle double punctuation and all standard citation abbreviations
- Make it possible to export notes to Word — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/566661-make-it-possible-to-export-notes-to-word
- Export full highlighting notes not only links to Word — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/2765891-export-full-highlighting-notes-not-only-link-to-wo
- Enable links within Notes to be selected like in footnotes — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/1189697-enable-links-within-notes-to-be-selected-like-in-f
- Cross referenced verses in note files — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/3924571-cross-referenced-verses-in-note-files
- Have a special note file for a personal commentary — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/3924562-have-a-special-note-file-for-a-personal-commentary
- Display popup for Bible references in notes — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/3922109-logos-4-mac-hyperlinks-from-note-files-viewed-in
- Full text justification — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/4529144-full-text-justification-on-notes
- Add an underline button — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/990237--add-the-underline-button-on-the-notes-formatting
- Allow us to change all formatting with a single click — http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/6712837-allow-us-to-change-all-formatting-in-a-notes-docum
Comments
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Thanks for putting this together ... and thanks for making notes truly useful.
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."
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Wow Bradley, this represents a lot of work. It is amazing to see what has been done over the past 3 1/2 years. Once a new feature is introduced it is easy to forget what it was like before.
Thanks for all your work but why are you working on Thanksgiving? Go have some turkey!
Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God
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Thanks, Bradley. That's an impressive list. I need to spend some time exploring several of these.
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l like the new Notes in L6. Well done...
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Thanks Bradley for pointing this out.
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Thank you Bradley, for the extensive work you've done here and for pre-empting discussion about why the request has been marked as completed!
Running Logos 6 Platinum and Logos Now on Surface Pro 4, 8 GB RAM, 256GB SSD, i5
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Thank you, Bradley, for taking the time to document all of that. And thank you for implementing so many of our requests.
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Not having L6 yet, I can't say for certain, but if they can't do this...
...they aren't there yet. I don't ever expect them to arrive.
ASUS ProArt x570s Creator, AMD R9 5950x, HyperX 64gb 3600 RAM, ASUS Strix RTX 2080 ti
"The Unbelievable Work...believe it or not." Little children...Biblical prophecy is not Christianity's friend.
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Mr Paul. Forum guidelines prohibit advertising or otherwise displaying competitor products in a manner not overwhelmingly positive to Logos (or its parent company Faithlife, aka Faithline). Please control yourself. (Yes, yes ... it's Libby!!).
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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Denise said:
Mr Paul. Forum guidelines prohibit advertising or otherwise displaying competitor products in a manner not overwhelmingly positive to Logos (or its parent company Faithlife, aka Faithline). Please control yourself. (Yes, yes ... it's Libby!!).
It's not a product that's available for sale anymore, so it can't possibly cannibalize L6 sales. [:P]
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Where's the dedicated "underline" button?
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Thanks Bradley
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my
David Paul said:Not having L6 yet, I can't say for certain, but if they can't do this...
...they aren't there yet. I don't ever expect them to arrive.
L6 can't format it in that manner but it is able to do that in a slightly different manner and do more - considerably more. So Libby - bye, bye ... don't eat the dust. [:P] [;)]
Yes, I do miss Libby timelines. [:'(]
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."
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David Paul said:
if they can't do this...
You can vote for "Allow note to be seen when hovering over icon in Bible (not just a preview)" http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/4621001-allow-note-to-be-seen-when-hovering-over-icon-in-b
It's got 1 vote already, only needs... a lot more.
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mike said:
Where's the dedicated "underline" button?
Vote for "Add the Underline button on the Notes formatting toolbar" if you would like to see this: http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/990237--add-the-underline-button-on-the-notes-formatting
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I just added a Uservoice Suggestion for sorting notes according to the book's page numbers, or the location in the book.
Sorting by reference only works on portions of a book with reference information. For example, I'm reading through the The Apostolic Fathers from the Fathers of the Church series and taking notes. Some of my notes are from the Introductory material written by the translators, and when I use the Sort by Reference option, it places any note in the Introduction section at the end of the note file.
Could this be a useful feature, or am I just not using the sort functions correctly or missing something?
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mike said:
Where's the dedicated "underline" button?
Vote for "Add the Underline button on the Notes formatting toolbar" if you would like to see this: http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/990237--add-the-underline-button-on-the-notes-formatting
why do we need to vote for this?? shouldn't this be standard in everything?
are you implying that the notes was released under-powered on purpose so we can vote??
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Be able to set icon/color default for a given note file (would save me a ton of mouse clicking)
Bradley, can you please explain how this works? Using L6, when I set a default note file icon/colour in a note file, it sets that globally, not for the individual note file. When I set it in one note file the default icon/colour is then applied to other note files. It's no different in my experience.
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John Duffy said:
Using L6, when I set a default note file icon/colour in a note file, it sets that globally, not for the individual note file. When I set it in one note file the default icon/colour is then applied to other note files. It's no different in my experience.
I made a mistake on this one: the preference is global, not per-document. Sorry for the confusion.
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David Paul said:
if they can't do this...
You can vote for "Allow note to be seen when hovering over icon in Bible (not just a preview)" http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/4621001-allow-note-to-be-seen-when-hovering-over-icon-in-b
It's got 1 vote already, only needs... a lot more.
I get the red message every time I try to post to User Voice.
ASUS ProArt x570s Creator, AMD R9 5950x, HyperX 64gb 3600 RAM, ASUS Strix RTX 2080 ti
"The Unbelievable Work...believe it or not." Little children...Biblical prophecy is not Christianity's friend.
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David Paul said:
I get the red message every time I try to post to User Voice.
You'll probably need to contact UserVoice support about this; it's a third-party site. (Have you tried using a different browser?)
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It is far too easy to click the red circle "Deletion" X's for individual notes, or the Deletion sub-menu option for entire Note Files. There needs to be a protection popup which says: "Are you sure that you want to delete this Note / Note File?". It is bad practice to not have those guards against accidental deletion of these precious Notes and Note Files. You can always provide an option in the Program Settings if you don't want this functionality on by default.... just please give us users the option.
I just tried deleting both a Note and the entire Note file, and I received no confirmation prompt. I don't see anything in Settings either that might have disabled this feature. Are you sure this is implemented?
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Don Awalt said:
It is far too easy to click the red circle "Deletion" X's for individual notes, or the Deletion sub-menu option for entire Note Files. There needs to be a protection popup which says: "Are you sure that you want to delete this Note / Note File?". It is bad practice to not have those guards against accidental deletion of these precious Notes and Note Files. You can always provide an option in the Program Settings if you don't want this functionality on by default.... just please give us users the option.
I just tried deleting both a Note and the entire Note file, and I received no confirmation prompt. I don't see anything in Settings either that might have disabled this feature. Are you sure this is implemented?
There's no "are you sure?" popup, but the red deletion X was removed (which eliminated the stated problem of clicking them too easily).
I'll edit that out of the OP.
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allow links to local files (PDF, MP3, PowerPoint, etc.)
Hi Bradley,
I'm using Logos 6.0a. How can you include these links in a note? Can't seem to be able to do it.
Thanks.
James
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Notes are very slowly getting better (thanks for what you done so far, despite the years it has been taking!), but it's still not there yet (and BY FAR the major weakness of Logos).
I've not got enough votes for all the improvements needed (which is why I was disappointed that you've swept this number one user-request under the carpet - a subtle way of ignoring user priorities??).
Are you going to 'remove' the other out-of-date user-voices!
Currently I'm voting for including images/diagrams and tables in notes as the main priority for me.
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mike said:
Where's the dedicated "underline" button?
Vote for "Add the Underline button on the Notes formatting toolbar" if you would like to see this: http://logos.uservoice.com/forums/42823-logos-bible-software-6/suggestions/990237--add-the-underline-button-on-the-notes-formatting
Absolutely ridiculous we have to vote on adding an underline button to notes, even these forums have an underline button. Notes can now add multiple attachment points but won't have an underline button if it doesn't get enough votes. No offense meant personally to you Bradley but do you developers really listen to what you are saying sometimes because from what you have posted here it sure seems like you don't listen very carefully.
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Disciple of Christ (doc) said:
Absolutely ridiculous we have to vote on adding an underline button to notes
This illustrates the point beautifully - I really don't want Logos devoting developer effort to things like an underline button (I am perfectly happy to use the keyboard shortcut - Cmd/Ctrl-u - I use in this and every other program to underline). That's why we do get votes on these things in Uservoice. I don't really use Logos notes much as part of my workflow, so for me the notes changes are not important: my priorities lie elsewhere. The difficulty for Faithlife is that we all have different priorities, and we are all crying out for different things to be added to or changed in the program that are blindingly obvious to us. Uservoice is the platform Faithlife has chosen to use to assign priorities to these requests, and the number of things recently marked as completed in Uservoice or that have been incorporated into the program in L6 indicate that the company is paying attention to these requests.
Running Logos 6 Platinum and Logos Now on Surface Pro 4, 8 GB RAM, 256GB SSD, i5
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GregW said:
I really don't want Logos devoting developer effort to things like an underline button
Greg - I agree with your comments about how User Voice should work. Those suggestions/improvements with the most votes should get the priority (and more importantly actioned!!!)
James
PS the amount of developer effort to put a button with an underline icon to act as a shortcut for an already embedded function would take a maximum of 15 mins for a novice c++ programmer (less time than reading through all options and comments on UserVoice and setting up a new option for underline button) - not really any effort at all for an easy win (ie happy customer) for doc and anyone else who wants this particular function.There's really no reason for not having this particular function.
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James Hudson said:
allow links to local files (PDF, MP3, PowerPoint, etc.)
I'm using Logos 6.0a. How can you include these links in a note? Can't seem to be able to do it.
You can use a file:/// URL; you will need to create this manually yourself but it is possible. (It's not recommended, because the links might be wrong if they're ever synced to another machine; Logos 6 won't manage your external documents.)
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James Hudson said:
PS the amount of developer effort to put a button with an underline icon to act as a shortcut for an already embedded function would take a maximum of 15 mins for a novice c++ programmer
The amount of developer effort is just a small part of the effort required to implement a feature; I'd encourage you to read "How many Microsoft employees does it take to change a lightbulb?" (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2003/10/28/how-many-microsoft-employees-does-it-take-to-change-a-lightbulb.aspx) and note that Eric doesn't even mention Mac or mobile applications!
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OK thanks. Will try this out.
Actually, it is not an ideal solution and only just worthy of signing off as 'complete' (probably this solution is not what was envisioned by the original user voice), but yes it does admitedly - at least in 'law' but not necessarily in the 'spirit' of the request - exist!
Thanks, though, for at least making it possible in principle.
Any improvement in the notes function is always welcomed, and we really do appreciate all you and the development team do in providing great Bible software.
Just hope that developers and customers can continue to 'work' together (customers providing a never-ending list of suggestions, desires, wishes and improvements while the developers do the real hard work of bringing them to fruition) to create the ultimate piece of software.
Thanks for all you do.
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Disciple of Christ (doc) said:
Absolutely ridiculous we have to vote on adding an underline button to notes
I'm going to argue for not having an Underline button (not as the official position of Faithlife, but just to show that there are reasons not to implement it):
- Underlining already exists and can be toggled with Ctrl+U/Cmd+U; most people typing into Notes probably are already using the keyboard and are extremely likely to already be familiar with this keyboard shortcut from all popular word processors
- This problem has a simple workaround; there are other bugs we could work on instead that don't have any workarounds at all and are affecting more users
- Adding a new icon will push out the length of the toolbar and force it to wrap earlier on small screens
- Screen real estate is even more precious on mobile devices; will they need to support the Underline button too?
- Underlining as a form of emphasis (particularly in digital typography) is discouraged by most style guides, e.g., http://practicaltypography.com/underlining.html http://fl.vu/n2HRr
- Training videos may already have been shot and would need to be recreated
- Until yesterday, the UserVoice suggestion had 0 votes; maybe even the person who created the suggestion thought that at least ten other things were more important?
Disciple of Christ (doc) said:No offense meant personally to you Bradley but do you developers really listen to what you are saying sometimes because from what you have posted here it sure seems like you don't listen very carefully.
Huh?
[;)]
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James Hudson said:
Actually, it is not an ideal solution and only just worthy of signing off as 'complete' (probably this solution is not what was envisioned by the original user voice), but yes it does admitedly - at least in 'law' but not necessarily in the 'spirit' of the request - exist!
Good point; I was being a little too aggressive in marking it as done. The suggester was probably envisioning a dialog to pick the file, documentation, etc. I'll move it.
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; I'd encourage you to read "How many Microsoft employees does it take to change a lightbulb?" (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2003/10/28/how-many-microsoft-employees-does-it-take-to-change-a-lightbulb.aspx) and note that Eric doesn't even mention Mac or mobile applications!
Fantastic! Made me smile. Have been there and done that and had the t-shirt![:D]
How many of these beauracratic procedures are actually in place in the Logos team. For larger issues, I completely concur. However, for the particular button in question many of these are redundant e.g. localization for an icon! - indeed at least 5 of these bullet points are not used at all as you don't write your own documentation!
- One dev to spend five minutes implementing ChangeLightBulbWindowHandleEx.
- One program manager to write the specification.
- One localization expert to review the specification for localizability issues.
- One usability expert to review the specification for accessibility and usability issues.
- At least one dev, tester and PM to brainstorm security vulnerabilities.
- One PM to add the security model to the specification.
- One tester to write the test plan.
- One test lead to update the test schedule.
- One tester to write the test cases and add them to the nightly automation.
- Three or four testers to participate in an ad hoc bug bash.
- One technical writer to write the documentation.
- One technical reviewer to proofread the documentation.
- One copy editor to proofread the documentation.
- One documentation manager to integrate the new documentation into the existing body of text, update tables of contents, indexes, etc.
- Twenty-five translators to translate the documentation and error messages into all the languages supported by Windows.The managers for the translators live in Ireland (European languages) and Japan (Asian languages), which are both severely time-shifted from Redmond, so dealing with them can be a fairly complex logistical problem.
- A team of senior managers to coordinate all these people, write the cheques, and justify the costs to their Vice President.
I take your point about Mac (and not being a mac developer I am not as confident as I am for Windows, but doesn't that use similar c++ code anyway?). As regards, the Mobile notes functionality doesn't have many of the options of the desktop software anyway so I guess wouldn't take any additional time!
Thanks for replying though. When I get more user voice votes (when the ones I've voted for are complete) I'll vote for the underline button (got to give all those people something to do! [;)]
James
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James Hudson said:
How many of these beauracratic procedures are actually in place in the Logos team.
Not all the ones Eric lists, but we have the following things to address for most features. (Not everything is implemented fully in each category, but we at least have to consider them and decide what level of support we'll implement.)
- cross-platform UI
- mobile support
- sync
- document management (Faithlife & documents.logos.com)
- Biblia.com/bible.faithlife.com support
- print/export
- localization
- testing
- documentation (help file, video tutorials)
- internal training (for CS & sales)
- (and probably more I'm forgetting right now)
Even a "simple" feature can rapidly check off multiple items on this list and become rather expensive to implement.
James Hudson said:I take your point about Mac (and not being a mac developer I am not as confident as I am for Windows, but doesn't that use similar c++ code anyway?)
It doesn't actually. The UI code on Mac is written specifically for Mac OS X using Objective C and Cocoa's UIKit. (Shhh, don't tell the people who say that Logos is a Windows program running on an emulation layer on Mac OS X and isn't written for OS X. [:)]) Any feature that has UI takes at least twice as long to implement (once on Windows, once on Mac) and usually much more than that because Windows UI (using WPF) is usually a lot quicker to develop than the corresponding Mac UI.
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Great look behind the scenes -- nothing is ever as easy as we think it should be! My college senior son, math major/CS minor, plans to get a programming job for a year or two while he evaluates grad school. I'll share this with him (even though I'll probably get a sigh and eye roll).
Dell XPS 8930/Intel Core i7-8700@3.20GHz/32GB RAM/Win10 Pro
Surface Pro 7/Intel Core i7-1065 G7@1.30GHz/16 GB RAM/Win10 Home
iPad Air/Pixel/Faithlife Connect
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Not all the ones Eric lists, but we have the following things to address for most features. (Not everything is implemented fully in each category, but we at least have to consider them and decide what level of support we'll implement.)
- cross-platform UI
- mobile support
- sync
- document management (Faithlife & documents.logos.com)
- Biblia.com/bible.faithlife.com support
- print/export
- localization
- testing
- documentation (help file, video tutorials)
- internal training (for CS & sales)
- (and probably more I'm forgetting right now)
Even a "simple" feature can rapidly check off multiple items on this list and become rather expensive to implement.
Ok. Thanks for taking time to clarify this.
We appreciate all the hard work you and your team put in (and the Mac developers too!)
Every blessing,
James
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Shhh, don't tell the people who say that Logos is a Windows program running on an emulation layer on Mac OS X and isn't written for OS X.
[:D]
Did I not read in another thread that you are on vacation?
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James Hudson said:
I've not got enough votes for all the improvements needed (which is why I was disappointed that you've swept this number one user-request under the carpet - a subtle way of ignoring user priorities??).
As the person who spearheaded this request, I would have quite willingly marked it completed. A bit of history:
- a number of user were not happy with the L4 implementation of notes
- Bob P's defense of the design implied that he envisioned a different use of notes than many users
- I sent Bob links to standard college note taking methods to illustrate why we had a different vision
- From my perspective, Logos was underestimating the number of people unsatisfied with Notes
- I collected from the forums and forum users all of their ideas for improving notes -- including ideas I personally did not agree with -- and made a uservoice entry to push in order to make the point that the people wanting changes to notes were numerous.
- Bob P. convinced me that his reasons for not allowing the entry of graphics in notes has solid technical reasons that I should accept.
- Bob P. told me that multiple attachment points and attach to everything was coming -- no he didn't tell me when or that it would be in the next version.
- Logos 6 arrived with what one user described as "almost the ultimate note taking system" - I sent the link to Bob during the early stages of the server crisis to give him something to smile about.
And thanks to the many who rallied round. Do I think there are additional things that should be done to notes? Yes. But I also think that a huge step forward has been made and that our priorities and wishes will be changed by that progress. We need to take some time to work with what we currently have and decide what we need to fully utilize it -- at the moment, I suspect the first priority will be visibility of notes on lemma, Bible facts etc.
And, no, I am not friends with Bob P. except in the "burr under his saddle" sense ... but I was willing to be the nag (Luke 18:5) [not pest or detractor] on the issue because I was convinced that it was broadly needed and cost effective.
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."
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I think Logos/Faithlife deserves a lot of credit for all the enhancements that have come out - I didn't realize the list was so long. Kudos and thank you.
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MJ. Smith said:
A bit of history
Indeed I have been there every step of the way and was a part of that history - in fact the majority of my 84 forum posts have been about the inadequacy about notes (and looking back it seems I was most vocal about this in 2010). In fact a number of the original note improvement user voice suggestions were mine back in the day, before you kindly amalgamated them. I even wrote 'an open letter' to Bob about notes as one of my posts back in 2010.
MJ. Smith said:I was willing to be the nag (Luke 18:5) [not pest or detractor] on the issue because I was convinced that it was broadly needed and cost effective.
I too felt that Bob misunderstood at the time the importance of good note-taking and was willing to be a persistant nag (although unfortunatelty I perhaps sometimes came across as negative). My motive was to encourage Bob to reconsider his approach back then, with the ulitmate goal of making Logos the best and most useful to enable people who use the software (and hence study God's Word) effectively.
As for now, many years later, I still feel notes is the achilles heel of the program (and I think because too many people have jumped ship to other note taking solutions there may be a number of requests for years to come to link to this or that program e.g. Evernote, Onenote, even Olivetree notes as I have seen recently. I feel this could have been avoided.). As for being 'the ultimate note taking system', it seems some people may have a different definition of the word 'ultimate' than I have![;)] It is still very basic!
Finally, although notes have come a long way and had some improvements over the last 4 years, I still think that marking this User Voice as 'complete' is as I have said in another post 'more a matter of the law rather than the spirit' of the requests made in it.
Other than notes, Logos is a fine piece of software that continues to impress me and I thank the team for it.
Thanks for your comments.
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James Hudson said:
As for now, many years later, I still feel notes is the achilles heel of the program
[Y]
James Hudson said:Other than notes, Logos is a fine piece of software that continues to impress me and I thank the team for it.
[Y]
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John Duffy said:James Hudson said:
As for now, many years later, I still feel notes is the achilles heel of the program
James Hudson said:Other than notes, Logos is a fine piece of software that continues to impress me and I thank the team for it.
[Y] and [Y]
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Disciple of Christ (doc) said:
Absolutely ridiculous we have to vote on adding an underline button to notes
I'm going to argue for not having an Underline button (not as the official position of Faithlife, but just to show that there are reasons not to implement it):
- Underlining already exists and can be toggled with Ctrl+U/Cmd+U; most people typing into Notes probably are already using the keyboard and are extremely likely to already be familiar with this keyboard shortcut from all popular word processors
- This problem has a simple workaround; there are other bugs we could work on instead that don't have any workarounds at all and are affecting more users
- Adding a new icon will push out the length of the toolbar and force it to wrap earlier on small screens
- Screen real estate is even more precious on mobile devices; will they need to support the Underline button too?
- Underlining as a form of emphasis (particularly in digital typography) is discouraged by most style guides, e.g., http://practicaltypography.com/underlining.html http://fl.vu/n2HRr
- Training videos may already have been shot and would need to be recreated
- Until yesterday, the UserVoice suggestion had 0 votes; maybe even the person who created the suggestion thought that at least ten other things were more important?
Nothing here to convince me that a button should only be included on the tool bar if it wins a popularity contest. It is still absolutely ridiculous and some of the arguments you are using a pretty weak - any feature change, particularly those that impact the UI, results in training videos becoming outdated so we better stop making any more changes to the UI and to be safe the software in general so training videos don't become outdated.f screen real estate is the issue maybe you should remove the bold and italic icons also because they are accessible via short-cut keys also, after all Logos prides itself on it's consistency in design. Seriously Bradley is that the best you've got [:P]
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FWIW here is a new uservoice for linking local files in notes or pb.
L2 lvl4 (...) WORDsearch, all the way through L10,
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