BUG: Cited By (resubmission)

Per MJ's suggestion I am resubmitting what I consider to be a bug in Cited By - a bug that greatly hinders usability and performance in Cited By. I call this a bug because it's virtually unusable on systems that have anything but a tiny number of collections and tags. I resubmit with the hope of reply from Faithlife, and also because the old post could not be 'bumped' as I started my complaining in Logos 5 (maybe even Logos 4), and no one looks there anymore. :-)

Cited By is a very powerful tool to automatically show links in specific collections or tagged resources as you scroll through a resource, the problem is, the Show Collections section of the dropdown panel (when CIted By is up) is totally unmanageable! On my computer it shows 6 collections - between tags, collections, and ratings, I have almost 300 Collections and almost 1000 tags. You can see 6 at a time. They are listed in some sort of random order, not organized or alphabetized, so you can't find anything without scrolling through the whole list - seeing 6 at a time.

Plus, when you add or update a collection (maybe tag too?) it automatlically adds that collection as a selected collection for the tool, and with almost 1300 entries I have to scroll through top to bottom to find the collections/tags I wish to remove from Cited By.

Even if I Float the Cited by Panel and make it full screen, it is virtually impossible to make changes in the Show Collections section, because there is so much there!

In the Cited By panel, dragging to change the order of displayed collections is impossible. Try moving/changing the order of the Collections by dragging when in my case you may be 500 collections/tags down the list - first you have to find it, then drag it to another section. Even when maximized on my screen, only 6 collections show - this just does not work well at all. It can take minutes to find the one you want to move, then more minutes to drag it - being prone to mistakes - all to drag ONE collection to the top of the list, for example.

Given that only 6 show of almost 1000, it can be very difficult to even FIND the collection I am looking for - they are not alphabetized, I don't know how the order is determined, and there are no filter or search tools - and scrolling through a huge list when only 6 show at a time is extremely problematic.

This section needs to provide much better tools to find, filter, sort, edit and change order, to keep up with libraries that are growing, along with growth in numbers of collections and tags.

Add to this the fact the newly created Collections are automatically added to the pane, so you are forced to find them and turn them off if not desired. Given that we have Faithlife groups where we can easily add others' collections, this becomes a nuisance as we may be adding Collections frequently.

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Comments

John Fidel

I agree with Don completely on this. His comments are right on target on every point.

The Cited By tool should be the gateway to the library when studying a pericope. It is an important part of the Logos framework and workflow. Being able to adjust it easily allows us to target and manage the results of our research and study.

[Y]

Anthony H

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690091#Comment_690091

[Y]

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690136#Comment_690136

Hello, all. We agree, and we are prioritizing a number of improvements to Cited By for release in coming months. (No exact date, sorry.) We've been using these threads as a guide for designing the improvements.

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690155#Comment_690155

Here's a summary of the specification:

Don't add collections by default. This is the biggest and potentially most disruptive change that we're considering is to change the default for which collections get added to Cited By. The current behavior is that new collections (including "implicit" collections based on tags and ratings) are added to the tool by default, which makes management of the collections list unmanageable if you have a lot of collections, tags, or ratings. The proposed new behavior is that collections will only appear in the Cited By tool if explicitly/manually added.
Do collection management in the tool's main view, not in the panel menu. That is: Drag/drop sections inside the main view. Include an "X" to remove a collection from the view. Add an "Add" button to the toolbar analogous to guides that lets you find and add a new collection to the view.
Add context menu commands to collection section headers: move up, move down, move to top, move to bottom.
Support ALT+up and ALT+down as keyboard-friendly ways to move sections up and down.
Change the styling to remove extra whitespace/margins introduced by the L6 stylesheet.
Make the behavior of the "more" link consistent with the rest of the application, that is: More shows more results inline (currently, it launches a search).
Provide a separate "Search" link next to the "more" link to spawn a search panel if desired.

This much is aimed at repairing the current UI for managing collections and using the tool with the current feature set. We'll be prioritizing other feature ideas -- like saved configurations (which I think is a GREAT idea) -- as a separate task, TBD.

I'm interested in feedback on any or all of this.

Don Awalt

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690158#Comment_690158

Wow this is great news, thanks Eli! I think this could really make Cited By a much more popular feature! I think the way you envision will eliminate some of the performance issues (like clicking on the arrow at the top left takes a long time).

I like your ideas. Does it include filtering the list of collections/tags? Say I am searching for a particular tag/collection to add to the Cited By pane, it would be nice if I could do some sort of search on the name to locate all matches quickly.

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690168#Comment_690168

I like your ideas. Does it include filtering the list of collections/tags? Say I am searching for a particular tag/collection to add to the Cited By pane, it would be nice if I could do some sort of search on the name to locate all matches quickly.

Yes thanks, I forgot to mention that. The popup for choosing a collection to add would be similar to the control we use in Search to choose a search collection, which has a type-in filter box at the top.

Don Awalt

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690170#Comment_690170

Awesome. Sounds like very nice improvements!!

Fr Devin Roza

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690158#Comment_690158

This much is aimed at repairing the current UI for managing collections and using the tool with the current feature set. We'll be prioritizing other feature ideas -- like saved configurations (which I think is a GREAT idea) -- as a separate task, TBD.

I'm interested in feedback on any or all of this.

Eli, this is great news, thanks so much.

Regarding the quoted text... one aspect of the Cited By tool that is frustrating is that modifying it one place modifies it everywhere, when really what you oftentimes want are different Cited By tools in different places.

I know you are aware of this, thus your text above, but let me point out a particular situation that would be good to keep in mind.

In the OOTB Liturgy Layout, that you open from the Homepage using the Liturgy Tool, there is a Cited By tool. Great. But, if you modify any Cited By tool anywhere, that then modifies the Liturgy Layout Cited By tool. Not great. So, for example, I just opened the Liturgy Layout and my Cited By tool shows me "Hebrew Grammars, Hebrew Lexicons"... not too helpful for the Liturgy Layout, but happens to be the last Cited By tool I configured!

So, I think we need "Cited By tool Layout", similar to the Custom Guides, that we can then link to specific layouts, including the default Liturgy Layout (or other default Layouts that may use the Cited By in the future). A modification of that Cited By Tool layout would then appear in any Layouts that have that Cited By tool.

Then, it would be really neat if we could on the fly switch between Cited By tool layouts, something not currently possible with the Guides, but that should be pretty simple with the Cited By tool.

Don Awalt

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690183#Comment_690183

So, I think we need "Cited By tool Layout", similar to the Custom Guides, that we can then link to specific layouts, including the default Liturgy Layout (or other default Layouts that may use the Cited By in the future). A modification of that Cited By Tool layout would then appear in any Layouts that have that Cited By tool.

Or, maybe instead of a separate/new Cited By layout, the Cited by specification (what collections/tags are defined, and anything else that is user-defined in a Cited By pane) is tied to its layout automatically. So if I click on Catholic lectionary, I get the Cited By pane that was there the last time I opened up the Catholic lectionary (a predefined layout). If I save my own new layout with a Cited By pane included, its config is saved within the layout. If I just bring up a Cited by Pane and use it without saving it in a layout, that becomes my default the next time I open it up outside of a predefined or saved layout.

Fr Devin Roza

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690185#Comment_690185

Or, maybe instead of a separate/new Cited By layout, the Cited by specification (what collections/tags are defined, and anything else that is user-defined in a Cited By pane) is tied to its layout automatically.

With the exception of the default Liturgy Layout, which always defaults to the last modified Cited By Tool anywhere, other saved layouts in Verbum/Logos already work this way. So, you can modify a Cited By Tool, save the Layout, and it will always open up the Cited By Tool in the way you last saved the Layout. I use this quite a bit.

I personally would prefer the option to save some sort of list of Cited By Tool configs and open one or another / include in a Layout at wish, as I find many of the configurations I tend to use of the Cited By Tool I also want to open up at times in other contexts, in which I'm not using a Layout or don't want it as part of the Layout. Or, that I use the same Cited By tool in multiple layouts with similar needs, and a change in one would always apply to the other as well (for example, a Cited By Tool centered on things like Greek Lexicons and Grammars would be useful in any layout that I have for NT Exegesis of specific books of the NT). As well, some people don't like using Layouts.

Eli Evans (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690193#Comment_690193

Message received. I think these are all great ideas.

John Brumett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/690199#Comment_690199

Please also include book icons in the Citied By tool.

JAL

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/737334#Comment_737334

John - I missed this thread when it first came round, thanks for bringing it back.