These are good queries, Bob.
Currently a very important search function that I don't think is currently possible is the search for most often occurring words:
Jacob HantlaPastor/Elder, Grace Bible Church gbcaz.org
David A. Peterson: I would love to be able to query my Logos 4-built PBB's. . .
I would love to be able to query my Logos 4-built PBB's. . .
And Dave [the BAD GUY in this thread ] Asks: will the queries be local to our machine or on the CLOUD?
If on the CLOUD could we be given hints that better results would have been obtained if we had [list of five items sorted by price]
[some have asked to RENT all books - this would show us what ones we should add when query after query recommends the same ones over and over]
Here was a recent attempted search. I had little success in Logos, but powerful information through Google:
Also, and maybe I'm revealing my ignorance, I'd like to search a single book of the Bible, say Philippians, and know the greatest to least occurrence of verbs and nouns
I would benefit from the following search features:
1) The ability to compare the LXX morphology codes to the Hebrew OT. That means I would be able to ask where the lemma ανθρωπος in nominative stands against אדם for instance. Or where plural αρτος stands against לחם in the singular.
2) The ability to search and compare OT morphologies. Currently Logos has 3 morphological databases (AF, WHM, WIVU) and one is still to come. I would like to be able to search where AFAT tags a participle while WHM tags an adjective etc.
3) The ability to search vowel patterns in Hebrew.
4) The ability to search by roots especially with wildcards (I could search the geminate verbs for instance)
5) The ability for a vowel sensitive search of the Hebrew OT and to compare it with the morphological codes: לָךְ masculine for instance.
6) The ability to search the Hebrew OT without that cumbersome typing of the Dagesh and the diacritical mark of the Shin.
7) The geographical searches according to location sound nice too.
I can think of three useful searches:
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Ted Weis:Also, and maybe I'm revealing my ignorance, I'd like to search a single book of the Bible, say Philippians, and know the greatest to least occurrence of verbs and nouns
See http://community.logos.com/forums/t/27606.aspx
George Somsel:What I would like to see is a syntax search which someone with at least a PhD could manage to use.
thanks for the compliment George...I don't have a PHD but I did stay at a Holiday Inn...that must have been it.
Robert Pavich
For help go to the Wiki: http://wiki.logos.com/Table_of_Contents__
This sounds like exciting stuff. I like many of the ideas already suggested. I agree with Jacob on the ability to search for most often occurring words in both the English and original language texts. I also think Mark's suggestion of using the interlinear data better across translations.
Dominick Sela: 1. "What are some good devotional thoughts about grieving?"; "Why do bad things happen to good people"; "What does St. Augustine say about grace" are some simplistic examples. Of course there are ways to look for these now, but there is so much stuff that gets returned that is not relevant, it's hard to find the gems. It's not unusual to have these kinds of searches returning 5000 results, which means I go to specific resources or specific collections. So why do I own all these resources then? 2. Can I give an example of what I am looking for, and the search engine finds other examples of it? 3. Support for successive drill-downs - can it get more sophisticated in how I drill down into the data with successive searches? 4. Use of external sources - can it be blended into using other external search engines, for example could I use Google to do a search, and feed its results into Logos to create context for what I am looking for? 5. Search needs to incorporate content other than text better. Technology exists today where software can scan pictures and identify people if you give it a reference photo. Video and pictures should be tagged a lot more than they are. 6. Imagine running a passage guide against files of research papers, books in Logos, resources, etc., and then if you needed to write a paper or develop a sermon on a particular scripture verse(s), you could search your passage guides and see if there is a relevant topic that supports itself through this scripture ! 7. Classify the types of commentary responses my library has for <John 3:1-25> so I can see a representative type of each thought. For example, I have 34 commentaries that say some verse is a foreshadowing of the Messiah, and 1 commentary says the verse also indicates the disunity the Church will undergo. It would be nice not having to read through dozens of Commentaries to find the unique thoughts.
1. "What are some good devotional thoughts about grieving?"; "Why do bad things happen to good people"; "What does St. Augustine say about grace" are some simplistic examples. Of course there are ways to look for these now, but there is so much stuff that gets returned that is not relevant, it's hard to find the gems. It's not unusual to have these kinds of searches returning 5000 results, which means I go to specific resources or specific collections. So why do I own all these resources then?
2. Can I give an example of what I am looking for, and the search engine finds other examples of it?
3. Support for successive drill-downs - can it get more sophisticated in how I drill down into the data with successive searches?
4. Use of external sources - can it be blended into using other external search engines, for example could I use Google to do a search, and feed its results into Logos to create context for what I am looking for?
5. Search needs to incorporate content other than text better. Technology exists today where software can scan pictures and identify people if you give it a reference photo. Video and pictures should be tagged a lot more than they are.
6. Imagine running a passage guide against files of research papers, books in Logos, resources, etc., and then if you needed to write a paper or develop a sermon on a particular scripture verse(s), you could search your passage guides and see if there is a relevant topic that supports itself through this scripture !
7. Classify the types of commentary responses my library has for <John 3:1-25> so I can see a representative type of each thought. For example, I have 34 commentaries that say some verse is a foreshadowing of the Messiah, and 1 commentary says the verse also indicates the disunity the Church will undergo. It would be nice not having to read through dozens of Commentaries to find the unique thoughts.
I particularly like Dominick's ideas, especially #1, 3, 5, and 7.
On #3, if this new, sophisticated search also provide drill-down / faceted search capability (like what's available on the new Logos.com website now), that may solve the problem of having to learn a complex search syntax.
Peter
Richard DeRuiter:'ve also been asking for the ability to search in original language by stem. So I could do a single search for phileo, kataphileo, philema, philos, phile, philia (list form TDNT). I can't tell you how helpful that would be to me as I study the Bible.
All those given by Bob are intriguing, and I would probably use several of them. BUt I REALLY like this suggestion.
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These abstruse searches Bob mentions seem trivial and pointless to me.
I want this: I want Logos to do a better of job of the kind of condensed searching that Libronix used to do under the heading "Topic Browser". I want an elaborated / subheaded index of all the index pages of all the the books in my 1000 plus Logos library. It seems such a simple thing to implement, but it is so far preferred to the hundreds/thousands of undifferentiated and useless word occurence matches that pour out from any search that I do under Logos now.
Furthermore, I don't want to have to learn a highly technical system of search syntax that you can only master by attending a Morris Proctor seminar. I want Logos to do some intelligent thinking for me and offer a range of options which I can used to refine my own investigation and conceptualisation of search problem. Is this too much to ask from a libary management product that I have invested thousands of dollars in?
Sam Henderson: I want an elaborated / subheaded index of all the index pages of all the the books in my 1000 plus Logos library.
Could you expand on what you have in mind here? I agree with the need for better Topic searching, but I can't visualise what you're suggesting.
Sam Henderson: I don't want to have to learn a highly technical system of search syntax that you can only master by attending a Morris Proctor seminar.
There are two different needs for Logos users with search. Sometimes we need a search that's absolutely precise, perhaps so we can quote the number of results in an academic paper, or even a sermon. For that, we need a precise syntax. But we also need the sort of search you're talking about here, one that intelligently ranks results. This already happens to a certain extent (and is being improved in 4.2a through a new sort option) but there is definitely room for improvement.
That said, it would be unfair to expect Logos to do all of our thinking for us. Creating custom collections and learning a few search operators significantly improves the relevancy of results.
Sam's post triggered a thought.
It would be nice to be able to search for an words in combination with section headings. For example searching for phileo that was somewhere under a heading that contained the word love. This type of search would likely help replace the calls for the Libronix topic browser.
Prov. 15:23
How to ask for Help
Just looking at Bob's examples, it seems obvious he has a series of highly populated databases that could be quite powerful, if you knew what direction the users wanted to go. In the simplest instance, one thing I REALLY would like is to be able to search on a GPS lat/long and have Logos find everything it knows nearby. Judging from the database now, no new information would be needed. So for example, I'd like to know all the references / discussions surrounding the area around the river separating Egypt and Palestine.
The other search-type I'd like addressed is what Sam has sorted of hinted at, and that is a better way to bridge that gap between sophisticated search users (which do need sophisticated tools) and the rest of the world. I have some of that capability on my other software, and so for example I can enter a verse, phrase or paragraph and it will locate the closest syntactical, morph and vocabulary matches, and summarize by source. Excluding vocabulary, it can also cross languages (heb/grk/aramaic). THAT would really be powerful in Logos.
"God will save his fallen angels and their broken wings He'll mend."
I know you can find names now if you already KNOW them but I'd like to just say, "Show me the names for God in the OT or NT or both".
Kaye
"But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry." 2 Timothy 4:5 (NASB)
Kevin Becker: It would be nice to be able to search for an words in combination with section headings. For example searching for phileo that was somewhere under a heading that contained the word love. This type of search would likely help replace the calls for the Libronix topic browser.
This is the best suggestion I've seen yet.
Donnie
2 questions I've struggled with recently:
distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem. (Eventually found it when not looking for it!)
Why Christians don't need to be circumcised. (eventually satisfied the enquirer by telling of the great commission, which doesn't mention circumcision _ this solution arose from wandering thoughts during Bible Study!)
I'm hopeless on searches. Am now praying the airports will be working in February so I can get to Morris Proctor in London!
Kaye Anderson:I know you can find names now if you already KNOW them but I'd like to just say, "Show me the names for God in the OT or NT or both".
Hi Kaye
This helped me articulate a question I had been thinking about since seeing this request from Bob.
While a cross-database search engine sounds very useful there are already resources available in Logos which will help with some of these types of questions. In the specific cases you refer to there would be things such as:
I don't know if these are complete - I very much doubt it - and it isn't causing us to do our own study but relying on what others have done (at least as a starting point) but I think there needs to be some clarity over what makes sense to try and do in a search and what makes sense to find by looking at work which has already been done.
Kaye, I'm not suggesting that your suggestions aren't good ones - I like them - but just using them to raise the question!
Graham
For me, the more important kind of search is not a more specific search. I often wished that searching in Logos would be similar to searching the Internet with Google: I just type a search and get the right results.
Armin
Graham,
I have two of the same concerns I think you touched on. Will this searching keep me from doing my own searching, which is probably the most profitable way to learn? And, will people rely on this tagging which will be done by imperfect humans with doctrinal differences so that the results might not show what I think they show.
Bob did ask if there were no limits what I would want at my fingertips directly from scripture so I put down what immediately came to mind. :-)