Help requested - categorizing resources and viewing list of open books

Hello,

Thanks to those who answered my last post. Could you help again? Is there a way to view a list of books in my library by category? This would be helpful if I am researching a topic and decide that I need a dictionary, commentary or theology book, and do not have a specific title or preference, but would prefer to browse the titles in that category. If this does not exist, I would like to recommend it.

Secondly, is there a way to view a list of open books. When using the search function, the user is asked whether to search the entire library or open books. How do open books work? Are books opened in the previous session still considered open? If I click "x" to close a tab, does that close the book? Are books automatically closed when I exit the software?

Thank you,

Dorothy

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Joe Newell

On the PC Version, you can right-click on the bar just below the word "View" and a menu pops up that allows you to choose the fields displayed. One of these is "Type" and, once checked on that menu, you can then sort on it.

Hope that has an intuitive Mac parallel.

Mark Barnes

Secondly, is there a way to view a list of open books. When using the search function, the user is asked whether to search the entire library or open books. How do open books work? Are books opened in the previous session still considered open? If I click "x" to close a tab, does that close the book? Are books automatically closed when I exit the software?

Open books are ones that currently have a tab that you can see in the foreground or background. So yes, if you click 'x' to close a tab, that's closed. If you just switch to another tab without clicking 'x', it's 'open'.

James R. Adams

Two more ways to browse your dictionaries:

1. In the Search field at the top left of the Library pane/window, you may enter "Type:Dictionary" (no quotes; no space). This will pull up anything listed as a dictionary. The problem is, it doesn't differentiate between English/Greek/Hebrew, Bible dictionaries, etc. So there is another way if this first way pull up to many items.

2. This takes a bit of work, but once done could be helpful. First, do #1 (above) to find all your dictionaries of every kind. Make sure the circled "i" (information) at the top is active. Then, as you click on a resource the information window gives you a description of the contents, etc. You will see some blue "add tag" text. Click on that and type whatever is helpful to you. Something like "Greek Dictionary" or whatever. When your various dictionaries are tagged in this way, you can search your library by tags. (PS - you may have to click on the Tag column header to get your tags sorted to the top of your window.

James R. Adams

So maybe I hit post too soon. In addition to seeing my typos ...

There may be a way to search by tag to produce a list of just you dictionaries, but I don't know how. Instead, what works for me is to click on the "My Tags" column header. This will at least sort your books by "My Tags." Someone else may be able to help on the search by tag issue.

Kevin Becker

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/169559#Comment_169559

So maybe I hit post too soon. In addition to seeing my typos ...

In case you didn't know, if you click on the green More button you can select an option to edit you post. You can fix typos and also add content, if you add content you might want to add a bold EDITED to draw attention to the new material for those who might have read the first "draft" of your post. The editing option goes away after a period of time.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/169559#Comment_169559

There may be a way to search by tag to produce a list of just you dictionaries, but I don't know how.

The Library filter for "My Tags" is mytag: (no 's'). So if you'd tagged your Greek dictionaries as GkDict, for example, you could see them all listed by typing mytag:GkDict.

However it's probably easier to use some of the other fields that will tell you what kind of dictionary you're likely dealing with. For example, the title will most likely mention the word "Greek" if it's a Greek dictionary. So you can see a list of all of those by typing type:dict title:greek (the Library filters are ANDed together when you place them one after the other separated by a space).

Another thing you might want to do is consider making Collections for categories of books you're going to want to look through regularly. That'll save you having to type the filter rule (which can get quite complicated sometimes, when you need to use boolean logic and omit hits that you don't want included, etc.) each time. You can read up on creating collections at http://wiki.logos.com/Collections and see some useful collection definitions at http://wiki.logos.com/Example_Collections. In some cases (e.g., Bible Dictionaries), two different people have submitted their collection rules, so you can try them both out and see which works best for your own library. You can find example collection rules there for Commentaries and Theologies (Biblical Theologies, Systematic Theologies, and just plain Theologies) as well.

Secondly, is there a way to view a list of open books.

If you have lots of books open at any given time, depending on how complex your layout is, it can be hard to see what they all are. If you've just got a few and they are simply layed out in one or two tiles with tabs at the top, just look through all the tabs and you'll see them all. When the tabs get so stacked up that there wouldn't be enough space to show the entire title, it gets abbreviated to the first letter of each capitalized word in the title. Then if the space gets even smaller it just shows a book cover icon. And if you have even more books open at one time than can fit with book cover icon tabs, a pair of scroll arrow buttons will appear to the left and right of the row of tabs for you to be able to scroll through and view them all. So you could end up with just a stack of book cover icons and have no idea what they all are. If you hover your mouse over each one, you'll see a popup that gives you the full title and a brief description.

People have requested an easier way to see a list of all the books currently open, so that you could easily select a particular book from the list and bring that book's tab to the front to work in it. But so far, that request has not been granted. However if you happen to know one of the books you've got open and just don't know where its tab is and want to find it to bring it to the top, you can type the book title (or an abbreviation of it) into the command bar, and hit Enter, and this will bring it to the top.

You can also use the tiling commands at the lower left of the Layouts menu to rearrange your layout into one with more or fewer tiles so that you might be able to better spread out all the tabs of the books you've got open if you have lots open and can't see all their tabs. Or you can just close a few of them that you aren't using right now, by clicking on the X in the upper right corner of the tile.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/169815#Comment_169815

For example, the title will most likely mention the word "Greek" if it's a Greek dictionary. So you can see a list of all of those by typing type:dict title:greek (the Library filters are ANDed together when you place them one after the other separated by a space).

Clicked Library icon, copy and pasted Rosie's suggestion - then showed column list pop-up:

Living and learning => type:com (commentary), type:di (dictionary)

Keep Smiling [:)]

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/169881#Comment_169881

Living and learning => type:com (commentary), type:di (dictionary)

Yup, you just have to type enough of the field criterion that it's uniquely matched. Of course type:co wouldn't be sufficient as it would match any type that had a 'co' in it, which would include all of these (clicked on Type column to group by this field):