potential iOS grief with Tyndale vols (TOTC, TNTC)

Hi. Happy to redirected to anywhere else that may be discussing this issue.

Like many others, I was delighted with the February IVP sale and picked up the newest releases in the Tyndale commentary series (TOTC, TNTC). I'm just starting to notice, though, that some of the volumes won't open in my mobile reader app.

I wondered if it was an outdated app issue. The age of my hardware means that I'm running app version 5.2.3 under iOS 7.1.2 (same setup on two separate devices). But most of the volumes load fine, including other new – even newer – releases.

Problem volumes (to date) include Deuteronomy (Woods, 2011), Hag/Zech/Mal (Hill, 2012), revised James (Moo, 2015)...
...but I'm having no problem with Leviticus (Sklar, 2013), Psalms (Longman, 2014), Song of Songs (Duguid, 2015), Jer/Lam (Lalleman, 2013), Mark (Schnabel, 2017), revised 2 Corinthians (Kruse, 2015).

Then I considered corrupted files, except that the problematic volumes all open fine on my desktop.
The same answer applies to the query of whether there are different file formats/ages. While both desktop and mobile give the same resource ID (e.g. LLS:TOTC05DTWOODS), the mobile files are all dated 2018 while the desktop / .logos4 files are dated 2017. But the same mixture of working and non-working volumes occurs.

Has anyone else found similar problems with at least these three particular volumes?

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Comments

JT (alabama24)

I have no problems opening the resources you have troubles with. I am using the latest versions of both iOS and the app, however. Do you have the resources downloaded? If so, try opening in the cloud instead.

Bradley Grainger (Logos)

The same answer applies to the query of whether there are different file formats/ages.

There are different file formats, but they don't necessarily correspond to the date/version of the resource. We attempt to produce resources that are backwards-compatible with older versions of our apps whenever possible, but there is no guarantee that a resource that was created after an app was shipped can be opened by it.

In this case, Logos 5.2.3 (shipped 2016-05-31) can't open LLS:TOTC05DTWOODS (shipped 2017-07-21), because it has an unsupported file format, but there may be other resources shipped in 2017–2018 that it can open.

This article on support (https://www.logos.com/support/free-support) is for the desktop application, but a similar policy applies to our mobile apps: only officially-supported versions are able to open the latest resources.

Andrew Malone

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/975047#Comment_975047

We attempt to produce resources that are backwards-compatible with older versions of our apps whenever possible...

Thanks for the explanation. I don't think I've caught up with different file formats. And I've been further thrown because the newer volumes sport a range of different formats, even though they're all released within the same series.

I'm certainly grateful that backwards compatibility remains considered. Partly for shopping purposes, but mostly out of curiosity, is there a policy published somewhere about how it's determined which file format is used for different resources? And are there telltale signs I can look for to gauge which format a resource comes in? (With the Tyndale volumes, I couldn't spot anything obvious in the resource titles or their filenames.)

Andrew Malone

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/976535#Comment_976535

One more update on this topic, for any future readers of this thread.

The problem is not constrained only to newly-generated resources. It can also apply to older resources that are updated with a newer file format. For example, I can no longer read David Garland's Mark commentary in the NIVAC series. While originally published in 1996, the file was most recently updated in Feb 2018 and is no longer backwards-compatible.

A moment's thought confirms that there's nothing surprising about this scenario. But it does warn "backward" users like me not to thoughtlessly update resources.