I love reading in version 4. The tones down colors. The font, the background, the fluid resizing, and the potential that we'll have columned formats make me even more excited to purchase more resources in the future that I may otherwise have just purchased in book form.
But then as I read I inevitably try to highlight and get all frustrated. Despite all of the high-powered search, keylinking, report generating features of Libronix, the #1 thing that we do with a library is read it. The search features get me to the resource I want to read. And when I'm reading, it's just me, my pen (in digital form this is the notes and highlighter), and the Holy Spirit.
PBBs & Visual Markups
Even if a book that I was going to read significant portions of was available in PBB format, I would purchase it from Logos if available so that I could mark it up. This is why I bought the John Owen Library and the Jonathan Edwards library and am in on prepubs of numerous public domain works. Not being able to mark up books was the fatal flaw in my mind of PBB format. And now that flaw has been introduced into my entire digital library. Visual markup is the basic, bottom of the barrel kind of stuff that appeals to the broadest crowd. It has been what has hooked a great number of my friends who I recommend Logos to.
So I beg you guys, sooner than later, please bring back the rich visual markup tools that we enjoyed in v 3.
Suggestions When Markups Are Implemented
Now onto suggestions for Markups
Right-Click Menu
Keeping with the simplicity and clean feel of version 4, make the visual markup options avaialable from the right-click menu. I have wished for this functionality in version 3, and I think it would fit with version 4 very well.
Visual Markup Overlays
There are times when visual markups are desired over a text and there are times when they're not. I have invented complex markup schemes for passages or books that I have spent a lot of time studying. In version 3, these chapters are a rainbow of color and other markups. This has proven extremely helpful for me understanding a text. Yet there are times when I have wished I could click a button and those disappear.
There are other times, when I am reading big chunks of Scripture I am highlight things like "God's Grace" or "God's verbs" or "prayer". I don't always want these on my text, but I have been able to get a birds-eye view of these themes of scripture this way. I would love to be able to apply or remove a particular visual markup overlay to the text.
Finally, in case there are problems with the import of version 3 highlights, keeping all of these in a separate layer that can be applied or removed would potentially minimize annoyance if there were any resources where these overlays did not transfer. We all survived the implementation of the improved visual markups of v3 when some of our v2 markups were mangled. We will survive a few misplaced notes or misplaced markups. But please attempt to import them.
Visual Markup Sharing
If the overlay suggestion is taken, then these visual markup overlay files could be shared or submitted as homework assignments. I am faculty at our Grace Bible Institute - where Libronix is a mandatory resource - and I have given assignments involving visual markups. It would be great if these files could be "turned in." This is not as high on my list of suggestions as the previous two.