Wishlist

I have just recently purchases Logos 4 after using another product for a long time. There are many things that I love about the product, and many of the tools are really great. Of course we always want more so here is my list of things I would like to see. By the way my perspective is of a non seminary trained teacher who uses it for personal study and weekly teaching prep.

note syncing to mobile app (I know it's on list, but just agreeing it's at the top of my list). I love the syncronization between laptop and my desktop and am very much looking forward to this one.
Layout customization. Ability to set up general look of layout as default (right now layout is bound ot specific reference and materials which is valuable, but a different concept)
Commentary default. In the commentary panel BKC is always default, but I would like to set a default for several serires where if that series has a commentary on this passage it automatically loads in the commentary pane like BKC.
Prioritize collections. I'm still struggling to learn value of collections, but it seems highest use for me would be able to proritize on a collection as well as individual resources.
Ability to hide resources. I'm a non technical user, and in order to get certain commentaries I ended up with a package that has many very technical resources that I will never use unless I go to seminary. It would be great to be able to set a hide flag on all these resources I will never use so that finding things is easier.
Personal books. Ability to easily create personal books as a byproduct of your study, similar to way you can create notes. Right now it is a highly technical process to bring the material in from an outside source and I agree that is a valuable thing.

One other suggestion that is not really a product feature. I would like to see some documentation on how to set up mobile app. Memory limitatins obviously mean that you can't download every resource so have the plane type feature to select certain items is really terrific. Where I'm stuck is figuring out what to download. Some items are obvious like certain bibles or commentaries, but other things are not. For example I still can't figure what if anything to download to get a simple word search to work offline. So something that helps outline the download strategy would be very helpful.

It's a terrific product, thanks for the work that went into it. It is obvious that the people who design it must also use it. I always wondered about that with the previoius software I used, but there are many really good features in this product.

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Comments

Mark Smith

Dale, some of the things you want are in Logos already. I'd suggest that you look at some articles on the wiki and some of the official and unofficial videos to make some further discoveries. Custom layouts, prioritization, and hiding resources are three that you should check right away from your comments.

PBs are not that hard to create as long as you don't need a lot of custom tagging.

See http://wiki.logos.com/Table_of_Contents__ and http://wiki.logos.com/Logos_4_Video_Tutorials

Dale Garman

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/285351#Comment_285351

I can only find custom layouts that are tied to specific scriptures and resources. If there is a general custom layout I would be very interested but can't find anything.

I have tired prioritzation and cannot find that collections are available as a resource to be proritized, maybe I'm missing something.

Thanks for the point to the tutorials on hidding resources I had missed this one.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/285361#Comment_285361

Wiki has => Getting Started with Logos with links and Tips.

Personally use many layouts; keep open resource(s) for current study focus. When changing focus, update layout, and switch. Logos 4 is more responsive with less open (plus know how to open stuff quickly).

I have tired prioritzation and cannot find that collections are available as a resource to be proritized, maybe I'm missing something.

In Logos Library, can prioritize resources (including commentary series). Within commentary sections (e.g. Passage Guide), resources within a collection for the commentary section are displayed in Library prioritized order (if not prioritized, Logos 4 chooses display order). Passage Guide can be customized to have many commentary sections (using different collections so one resource could be displayed in several sections if resource included in those collections).

Personal books. Ability to easily create personal books as a byproduct of your study, similar to way you can create notes. Right now it is a highly technical process to bring the material in from an outside source and I agree that is a valuable thing.

Personally finding Personal Book (PB) easy to create by keeping Word document for study open, copy and paste from Logos 4 (or outside source), add tagging (if desired), save document, then rebuild in Logos 4. Thankful for Logos hyperlinks in PB, useful for pop-up and click.

For Personal Books, wiki has => Personal Books

Keep Smiling [:)]

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/285365#Comment_285365

Passage Guide can be customized to have many commentary sections (using different collections so one resource could be displayed in several sections if resource included in those collections).

Just to be clear, you cannot prioritize Collections, only resources or a Series of resources, but the use of Collections in the Collections/Commentaries section of Passage Guide can possibly achieve what you want. See http://wiki.logos.com/Customizing_the_Passage_and_Exegetical_Guides

Dale Garman

Thanks for the various suggestions, but I think my original wish list still stands. They are really all ease of use issues.

Hidding resources is really time consuming and difficult vs. the simplicty of format for marking resources for downloading on the mobile app for example.
Default commentary series again is another ease of user interface suggestion. Yes they can be manually added for specific passages in a number of views, but not way to have a particular series load by default.
Personal books is also another ease of use suggestion. Yes you can manually create the books, it's just harder, more steps etc.
Always good to be able to do things in groups instead of one by one. Hidding is one by one instead of groups for example. Prioritization is one by one instead of a logical group like a collection (this one clutters up the list, as well as requires a lot of manual work).

NB.Mick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/285448#Comment_285448

Dale,

I don't know what other program you are accustomed to, but it seems an expected outcome that usability is a little impaired in the beginning.

Your last bullet

Always good to be able to do things in groups instead of one by one. Hidding is one by one instead of groups for example. Prioritization is one by one instead of a logical group like a collection (this one clutters up the list, as well as requires a lot of manual work).

should get Logos' attention, since I think it is worthwile thinking over it. That's what many different software solutions do: have the ability to mark/select a number of objects and perform an action on all of these as oposed to forcing the user to manually go through a select/perform loop. However, it's not as bad as you think since prioritization is performed on a group level if the group is known to be a series (such as a commentary series).

Also I think given this point, your first one about Hiding is a duplicate. But even with single object activity: when you open the settings dialog in a panel and the library in another next to it, it's simple drag&drop - I don't see how this could be made much less difficult. The same with PBs - you just give a title and select a docx-file, the rest works by itself. I don't see how Logos could reduce the steps much further. You can e.g. go to a blog or other website, just copy all the text from the screen and paste it into an empty word document. Check the outline view if you want to have nice headings for the TOC, save it - and in Logos add book, select it, build => bingo.

I'd have to look again into you initial post in order to understand the remaining bullet regarding default commentaries - for my purposes, priorization does what I need very well.

Regarding usabilty issues you should be aware of the distinction between activities you do everyday in using the software and those you do once or rather infrequent as they serve "customizing" your environment. Usability is key for the everyday things. Hiding resources and prioritizing commentaries etc belong to the customizing activities. I learnt about prioritizing in the wiki (found out that I didn't even need to watch all these helpful videos) and did it, then I forgot about most of it and just when I buy a new commentary that I want to prioritize do so - again it's drag&drop.

My 2c

Mick

rksaw

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/285460#Comment_285460

Well since we're looking at just 101 shopping days 'til Christmas, and since Costco has had Christmas lights and decorations up for three weeks already (rushing things just a bit, aren't we?!?), a Christmas wishlist isn't a bad idea. I wish that Logos would give us (or at least have a contest give-away for) the following:

1) a scholarship to Camp Logos (for third place?)

2) an upgrade to the next level of Logos (for second place?)

and/or

3) a free iPad (for first place?)

Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful for all the items that Logos provides (Perseus Project anyone?), and absolutely love the program, I'm just looking forward to Christmas!!!

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/285448#Comment_285448

Default commentary series again is another ease of user interface suggestion. Yes they can be manually added for specific passages in a number of views, but not way to have a particular series load by default.

Are you talking about Passage Guide? If so:

PG immediately shows 6 commentaries in the Commentaries section. BKC will always load because it is a 1 volume commentary (covering all bible passages). Other commentaries will show only when they have the passage in question. So put these in different collections and have multiple Commentaries sections in PG, say 3. Then you have up to 18 commentaries visible for a passage. Use Prioritization where necessary and remember that you can have one entry for a Series (right click one in the Library window and you will see the option).

If not PG, what "views" do you mean?

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/285448#Comment_285448

Prioritization is one by one instead of a logical group like a collection (this one clutters up the list, as well as requires a lot of manual work).

You can have one entry for a commentary Series as described above. But a Collection is not a "logical" group for Prioritization because you don't know the order of individual resources within that Collection and only the top 5 or 6 will show immediately in any "view".

GregW

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/285460#Comment_285460

Always good to be able to do things in groups instead of one by one. Hidding is one by one instead of groups for example. Prioritization is one by one instead of a logical group like a collection (this one clutters up the list, as well as requires a lot of manual work

You can actually prioritise a commentary series - this post from Morris Proctor a few weeks ago on the Logos Blog tells you how to do it with the UBS Handbooks, but it applies to any commentary series.

http://blog.logos.com/2011/08/logos-4-quickly-access-the-ubs-handbooks/

Prioritising by collection isn't really logical, as not all the resources in a collection are necessarily of the same type so different resources in a collection will need to appear in different places in the prioritisation "pecking order".