Logos 8 Wishlist

Add the ability to set Logos to load a QuickStart layout at start-up. Right now you can only load a saved layout. I would like to open my Logos to the Lectionary Reading layout for today's reading. If I save the Lectionary Reading layout as a saved layout, it will open to the day of when I saved it.

How about the ability to use a form in the documents, or create a form? I use the form from www.EveryManAWarrior.com everyday during my devotions. It would be awesome to bring in a form, or create it, and then export it to .pdf format. What would be cool is if it could be stored within my documents somehow, so that it could turn up in my searches, this way there could be hyperlinks within. 

Also, it would be great to be able to create our own guides a little easier. It is very cumbersome trying to create a usable guide and then edit it going forward. 

A fantastic (game-changing) feature would be the ability to compare ANY text with another or more. 

There is a (limited) tool like this on the Thesaurus linguae graecae website where one can browse texts side by side and ask for similarities to be highlighted. From what I have seen, this is not limited to exact matches. 

Similarities that would be useful to detect and highlight could include:

• Exact phrases
• Conjunction of several of the same lemmas (where case, for instance, may account for differences in otherwise similar phrases)
• Conjunction of several themes

Other users may have other useful ideas about what such a tool could detect and how it would be reported and/or highlighted. It's the concept that matters in the first instance although it would have to be implemented in a helpful way. 

Applications would include:

• Taking Synopses to the next level where exact matches, variants, and differences can become immediately available to the user without the tedious manual process of comparing word by word.
• Detecting potential source texts (Apocryphal, LXX, DSS passages in the NT).
• Better ability to detect intertextuality in the OT (a messy and neglected area of biblical studies).
• Detect parallels between OT and ANE, NT and Greco-Roman litt. and/or Judaica.

This needs not be limited to lemmatized and morphologically-tagged resources as there could be profit in other applications with English and other modern texts (to investigate for instance theological influence of one author on another). BTW, aside from TLG technology, plagiarism detection software algorithms could also give ideas as to how this could be implemented.  

Allow us to permanently delete our documents from the cloud. That would go a long way to building trust.

Quite highjacking drafts from Sermon Editor to build content for a paid service, and yes, simpler searches.  I have a $60 program coded by one guy that can outsearch Logos without the need to watch hours of tutorials. 

I want to like Logos so bad but I would rather not be haunted by incomplete documents floating around on the internet forever And then we’re supposed to trust you with a prayer list and personal thought journal too. 

I love the iOS app.

I would like to be able to use Reverse Interlinears on Mobile.

I would like full audio for the Hebrew Bible.

These are my BIG TWO!

Then...

I would like phrase searches to be much simpler.

I would like Lemma in Passage as a full feature, not payable as a separate subscription /dependent on the internet.

As a user in a remote location with poor /intermittent internet access I would like all videos to work offline. I would also like Logos to bear in mind that there are people working in projects in these conditions, people who need all the resources they can get but cannot rely on the internet. 

I would like to be able to select multiple resources to plus/minus from Collections - I've been struggling to remove dozens of Targums I can't read from Bible collections, but I have to remove them one by one, it seems.

I would like Notes to be simpler.

I would like resources in French and other languages to be read aloud properly . Currently the only option for French is System Narrator, but that's in English.  I could change it to French, but then my whole interface has to be in French and if I wanted to play something in English, I couldn't.  Some of us use resources in multiple languages!!

Yes, I have looked at it. I had Bible Works before Logos and there are a few things I continue to use Bible Works for that I consider it better than Logos. At some point my use of Bible Works will be discontinued and it would be good to have the best Bible Works features in Logos.

More note indicator symbols/shapes. There are currently seven. More would be great!

[Y]

Agreed. That feature would be great so that resources that are dynamic in nature (i.e. daily reading list/devotional) could stay current if desired or remain at last completed location depending on option for startup.  This would be more of a feature that would be part of opening the resource or reading plan though rather than something tied to the layout in my mind.

A new feature I would like to see is making use of the Windows Desktop MRU List on the Logos startup shortcut to select recently used Saved Layouts. The image below shows how Microsoft Visual Studio makes use of the MRU feature to allow selection of the most recently used solutions so we can pick a solution to start with instead of having to first start Visual Studio and then select the solution to work on.

For Logos layouts this would add a more fluid approach to starting Logos with a Saved Layout instead of having to statically set it in the Program Settings option: "At Startup Open to" setting. "At Startup Open to" is nice but if I have multiple layouts I'm working with it would be even nicer to be able to dynamically select them from an MRU list so that I start with the Layout I want to work with in only two button clicks (right click to bring up the MRU list and left click to select Layout).

I'm not sure if the Mac allows for MRU's but it would be useful there as well if available.

The biggest improve I'd like to see is the end of the indexing. It is an absolute bugbear and I have a 7 core processor.

I can see 2 options being presented to the user of Logos 8:

1. By default, Logos operates as Logos 3 where the search just searched books or collections and displayed results. It was not that slow.

2. Logos allows users to download a separate index file effectively giving 2 files for each book. Logos will have this separate file indexed and the indexer will search these files and display results. This is how it was with Logos 2. It would require more local hard drive storage, but with abundant storage in today's computers, this should not be a problem.

Logos is great, but indexing takes the shine away. That's my 2 cents worth. Thanks.

I agree with two of the other suggestions- improved search and easier to setup reading plans.

But in addition I have something that would make my life easier with the way I use the application.  I would like to be able to preserve all of the highlighting when I copy and paste into other documents. It is too much effort on a regular basis to use the Visual Copy editor.  I highlight as I read and study and would like to share it.  The only way I can do that is to take screenshots.

Thank you.

David McAllan said:

By default, Logos operates as Logos 3 where the search just searched books or collections and displayed results. It was not that slow.

Logos 3 used a different method of indexing. Indexing was quicker, but searching was slower. It had a separate index for every book. Search 20,000 books and it would need to search 20,000 indexes. I'm not convinced that would be an improvement, for anyone with more than a few hundreds books.

David McAllan said:

Logos allows users to download a separate index file effectively giving 2 files for each book. Logos will have this separate file indexed and the indexer will search these files and display results. This is how it was with Logos 2. It would require more local hard drive storage, but with abundant storage in today's computers, this should not be a problem

Logos 2 worked in pretty the same way as Logos 4-7. When you added a new resource, there would be a slightly delay on startup while Logos 2 "merged the global word list" or something like that. I forget the exact wording. Merging is the major part of Logos 4-7 indexing, and what takes most of the time.

The reason you probably look back fondly on the 'speed' of Logos 2 and Logos 3 is simply that you had fewer books and there was far less powerful searching. In other words, it wasn't quicker per se, there was just far, far less to index.

David McAllan said:

The biggest improve I'd like to see is the end of the indexing. It is an absolute bugbear and I have a 7 core processor.

I can see 2 options being presented to the user of Logos 8:

1. By default, Logos operates as Logos 3 where the search just searched books or collections and displayed results. It was not that slow.

2. Logos allows users to download a separate index file effectively giving 2 files for each book. Logos will have this separate file indexed and the indexer will search these files and display results. This is how it was with Logos 2. It would require more local hard drive storage, but with abundant storage in today's computers, this should not be a problem.

Logos is great, but indexing takes the shine away. That's my 2 cents worth. Thanks.

Unless I remember wrong, Logos is already using sort of a twist on your number two. It downloads the index, and then merges them all together. Searching one BIG file, is a lot faster than searching through twenty thousand individual files. Even if it does take a minute to add in the new data.

Perhaps there is a more efficient structure that could be created for merging the new data into the index, but I find that unlikely. Every suggestion I've had in this area has been met with "well ... we already do that". I don't think about it any more. My ryzen 7 handles the indexing pretty smoothly. I haven't done a full re-index in a while (probably since I built the machine).

The best investments into my own PC that I've made in regards to Logos was the Solid State drive (using an M.2. by Samsung now), and 16gb of ram.

We are using the porshe, or bmw, or mercedes of the bible software world. Gas, oil, and coolant are expensive. But necessary for a mercedes/bmw/bugati/whatever to run right. An appropriately fast computer is sort of like the gas, oil, and coolant for a car. All are neccesary for the car to work right.

I know you mentioned an i7 processor. But which generation? There are 7 now, and each is faster by a good margin than the last. If you have a 7 year old i7 that could well be part of your issue. Assuming its not, the solid state drive breathes new life into your machine. Even if you did that without increasing your Ram.

The SSD upgrade is probably 100$, depending on how much space you need it can be a lot more. Any decent computer tech can help you, or you can do it your self. Its not too hard. The worst part is reinstalling the OS if you don't have software to clone your existing drive.

I also agree on better simple search.

Most of the time I am just trying to search an open resource for specific key words or phrases.  This should be pretty straightforward and easy...but not in Logos.  

I would like to see a simple search within a resource more like what we are used to in Google/etc.  It shows the results, with a small preview, and we can click to go to that result, or back to go back to the search results.

While Logos has some impressive advanced searching tools - the simple search (which is used at least for me more often than not) is extremely user-unfriendly/non-existent.

I was trying to prioritize the NABRE bible, but only for certain Catholic resources like the Catholic Daily Readings and the Catechism. I see that I can select a resource for the NABRE to be the prioritized resource. However it looks like I can only do that for one resource from the drop down list.

Can this be changed so that you can select multiple resources from the drop down list instead of just one? I realize I can probably just drag the NABRE over multiple times and do it for each individual resource but that seems like a pain. I just want the NABRE to be my top bible for certain resources (Lectionary, Missal, and Catechism) and the NRSV to be the top bible for everything else. I would love to be able to make a special collection for these three resources that I can then select from the "prioritize only for this resource" drop down list. OR if it would let me select multiple resources from that drop down list for which the NABRE is the top bible instead of just one. I've had to drag and drop the NABRE over to the sidebar 4 times, 3 times for each individual resource for which I want it to be the top bible, and then once for where I want it prioritized among my top 5 bibles. This should be easier.