BUG, or "When did this change?" PG Commentaries now shows section name.

I am able to reproduce this and will send a case to Development for investigation.

I think it changed with 5.1. It certainly was never like this when L5 launched - and it's a horrible change. It's changed in the Cross References section too, where it's just as inappropriate. It's OK to do this in the Collections section, but not in the Commentaries or Cross References sections (which are look-ups not searches, and will therefore only return one result per resource, and therefore the resource name is what matters).

Just try finding the commentary you need at a glance in this lot:

Mark Barnes said:

It's OK to do this in the Collections section

I do understand that collections display more than one result from a book (and that is a good thing).  I believe that the resource should be listed first, and the user should be able to expanded to list the various hits within the resource. 

Andrew Batishko (Logos) said:

Our intent was to fix the formatting of the Collections section that is available in the Topic Guide.

I've never understood the Collections section in the Topic Guide, for two reasons:

1. It should give the same results as the definitions section, but it gives far fewer results.*
2. It has the same name as the Collections section in the PG, but an entirely different function (i.e. it's a lookup, not a search). That's confusing, I think. You'd be better off calling it Definitions.

* For example, on the topic of Resurrection, the collections section misses the articles from AYBD, DPL, DLNT, DNTB, LBD, EDBT and Easton's.

Thanks for the response.

It would be helpful if you could you briefly explain the relationship between the Topic section of Basic Search, the Definition section of the Topic Guide, the Collections section of the Topic Guide and how they all relate to the LCV (Logos Controlled Vocabulary). If I've understood things correctly, you're saying that:

• If you search for a word/phrase in the LCV, the topic section of basic search lists all the encyclopedia and concordance articles tagged with that word/phrase.
• That each entry from LCV can be used in a topic guide.
• That the definition section excludes concordances, whilst the collections section includes them.

While you're testing this, you might want to check whether the entry on Resurrection includes entries from the following resources (they're currently missing from the definition section of Topic Guide, but appear in search):

• Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels
• Dictionary of Biblical Imagery
• Eerdmans Bible Dictionary
• Harpers Bible Dictionary
• Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary
• Dictionary of Biblical Prophecy and End Times
• Nelson's New Illustrate Bible Dictionary

There's also a bug in topics in search whereby some entries are duplicated or triplicated (e.g. Harper-Collins on Resurrection). It might be worth checking this bug hasn't come over into the TG as well.

Dave Hooton said:

allow all my prioritised resources

Dave Hooton said:

In fact nothing has changed since Beta 5, so hopefully those claims have yet to be implemented for us beta testers.

Andrew said they'd be implemented in beta 9.

Dave Hooton said:

So please rethink the need for a Collections section and allow all my prioritised resources, including Concordances, to be in Definitions

Please don't do that. The concordances have too many entries to be relevant, and they're not Definitions. If the Collections section will support Concordances, then those who want them can create a collection for them.

Andrew Batishko (Logos) said:

So, the first thing to understand… but still include the hand selected results you would expect to see.

Thanks for all this info. Better understanding the architecture, not only helps us use Logos more productively, but also helps us properly explain it to others. The logic you're implemented seems to make a great deal of sense, too.

Is is true to say that the Collections section in Topic Guide will use all resources with English headwords, regardless of what type they are, whereas the definitions section will only use resources that are LCV tagged, and of type dictionary, encyclopedia and lexicon?

Andrew Batishko (Logos) said:

The Definition section will use data in the LCV resource, not in your individual resources. This is a subtle distinction. If your LCV resource is updated with new references, but no other resources get updated, then you could still see new results coming back in the section. Beyond that, yes. Definition only returns results in resources of those types.

Thanks again for all the info. It's appreciated. But can you help us understand this subtle distinction?

I'd presumed that the LCV 'resource' (by which I presume you mean LCV.lbslcv) essentially mapped friendly topic names to LCV ids (so "Lord's Supper", "the Lord's Supper", "Holy Communion", "Communion" and "Eucharist" all get mapped to LordsSupper). Then individual articles within dictionaries would be tagged with topicid:LordsSupper. But judging from your reply, and from the size of the LCV.lbslcv file, that's obviously not the case.

Are you saying that instead, the LCV.lbslcv file matches LCV ids to individual resources and headwords (so there's no LCV tagging within the encyclopedia resource, but instead a lookup table in the LCV resource)?

So that when you're doing the Collections section, the query (in pseudo-SQL) is something like: SELECT SectionTitle, ResourceName FROM HeadwordIndex WHERE Headword IN (SELECT DISTINCT Headword FROM lcv WHERE lcvid='Resurrection'). In other words, to generate the Collections section you're going get a list of all the headwords used in dictionaries for that LCV topic, then return all the articles that match (or partially match?) those headwords?

Thanks for the info, Andrew. That really helps.

Dave Hooton said:

Mark, this is a matter of choice. By not allowing Concordances my choices are being restricted arbitrarily. This would be analogous to not allowing Bible Notes in the Commentaries section of PG (you don't have to include concordances in your collection).

I don't agree. By definition, the definitions section is for, well, definitions. Concordances don't supply that, so they're not relevant. It sounds to me as though you're trying to use a section for something it's not intended for when there's a custom section (Collections) that you can use instead.

Andrew Batishko (Logos) said:

I'm sorry. I meant to say Topic Guide > Collections list their results in priority order. Too many guides and sections!

tom said:

Mark, I disagree.  Just because it is a basic search for bible~ref does not imply that it should not be sorted by my priority.  I am more interested in reading something if the reference is in one of my references that I have also prioritized than not.

If that's the case, then you're prioritizing things you shouldn't be, and using prioritization in a way that it's not been designed for. I suspect that in reality, it's only partially true, and therefore it's not something that can be taken into consideration.

Prioritization is designed to prioritize the order in which look-ups happen. So it's for commentaries (looking up a Bible reference), dictionaries (looking up a headword), lexicons (looking up a lemma), and even for specific things like the church fathers (looking up a reference). Consequently you shouldn't be prioritising the vast majority of your resource (i.e. most monographs) because you can't look things up in them. Resources where the only index is a page  index shouldn't be prioritised under Logos' current design. That's most of your resources.

So if you're performing a search, and prioritisation is being taken into account, that means almost all of your monographs are going to end up being relegated to the bottom of your search list, even though they might be much more relevant to most queries than your Bibles, lexicons, copies of the church fathers and daily devotionals that you have prioritised. That's no good to anyone.

tom said:

Mark Barnes said:

That's most of your resources.

This is clearly not true for me! I stay away from most of Logos' monographs like the plague because I feel most of them are full of junk theology, and I want them to be at the bottom of the list.

It's certainly most of most users' resources. There's no easy way of calculating how many resources you have that ought not be prioritised, but type:monograph, type:journal, type:magazine, type:manual will give a rough estimate. For me that's 60.48%, which I'd expect to be lower than most users (as like you, I tend to avoid monographs). What's your percentage, out of interest?

tom said:

The monographs that I have prioritised (like JBL), I want to come to the top.

Which demonstrates my point - you're not using prioritisation in the way that it's been designed. JBL is a journal, not a monograph, by the way, but regardless of that, there is absolutely no point at all in prioritising JBL. It will have absolutely no effect on anything that Logos does. That's because prioritisation change the order in which things are looked up, it does not (and will not) change the order in which things are searched.

Prioritising monographs or journals (unless they're indexed by headword or some other reference), never has any effect at all.

Mark Barnes said:

hat's your percentage, out of interest?

Mark Barnes said:

prioritisation change the order in which things are looked up, it does not (and will not) change the order in which things are searched.

When I am searching my Bibles, my prioritized Bibles are listed first.

When I am searching my commentaries, my prioritized commentaries are listed first.

When I am looking something in the lexicons, my prioritized lexicons are listed first.

When I search my journals/monographs, my prioritized journals/monographs should be listed first in my collections.  Right now, they are listed by some random sequence (based on how often the word appears in the journal/monograph.)

tom said:

When I am searching, I am looking something up.  When I am looking something up, I am searching.

No, you're not, and that's the fundamental point. Searching and "looking up" are two different functions in Logos. We use both functions in different circumstances, depending on the resources we're looking in and the information we're looking for.

If you search a commentary for Matthew 22:41, you'll get a list of all the times that verse in mentioned in the commentary. If you look up Matthew 22:41 you'll be taken to the one place in the commentary where that verse is discussed. It's the difference between looking up the verse in a Scripture Index in the back of the book, to turning to the comments on that verse.

tom said:

When I am searching my Bibles, my prioritized Bibles are listed first.

This is true in Grid, Verses and Aligned View in Bible Search. It's not true in Analysis Search. That's a special tweak of Bible Search, and makes sense as obviously all Bibles contains basically the same information in a different format, and all use the same reference type. But that's the exception, not the rule.

tom said:

When I am searching my commentaries, my prioritized commentaries are listed first.

No they don't. Try it. Do a search of a collection of commentaries. You won't ever get your prioritized commentaries first. On the other hand, if you do a look up of commentaries (through Power Lookup, for example, or through the Commentaries Section of the Passage Guide), then you'll get the prioritized.

tom said:

When I am looking something in the lexicons, my prioritized lexicons are listed first.

If you're looking up something, then yes they'll be prioritized. That's my point. But if you're searching, they won't be. Try it. Search your lectionaries.

tom said:

Right now, they are listed by some random sequence (based on how often the word appears in the journal/monograph.)

If it's based on how often the word appears it's not random. In a ranked search, they're listed by the frequency of the word in the article. I agree that that's not very intelligent, and that other factors ought to be taken into consideration as well (perhaps including prioritisation, but also rating, frequency of word use across the whole resource). But just prioritisation? Not if you're using prioritisation properly.

The only other exception is the Topic Section of a basic search. In that section results are in prioritised order, whilst in the Results section they're not. But if you look closely you'll see that the Topic section begins with the heading "Look it up" - although it appears in the search panel, it's actually performing a look-up, which is why the resources are in prioritisation order.

Mark Barnes said:

No, you're not, and that's the fundamental point. Searching and "looking up" are two different functions in Logos. We use both functions in different circumstances, depending on the resources we're looking in and the information we're looking for.

This could by why Logos has such a huge learning curve.  Trying to make a distinction between looking something up and searching is like trying to split a hair, and all you have after attempting to split a hair is split-ends.

As a user, I do not care how a resource is tagged/marked-up.  What I care about is how the results are displayed.  This is because it makes it easier for me to see what I want to read and what I do not want to read.

I use a custom passage guide to do 90% of my research.  I have a special collection for the commentaries that I want to see in the PG, and my prioritized commentaries are listed first.   I also have a collection for my journals.  And the JBL journals should be listed before all of my other journals because I have JBL prioritized.  

As a user, the reason I put resources on the prioritized list is to tell L5 that these resources are the ones that I really really really like, and I want them to be listed first.  

I do not care how resources are tagged/marked up or any of the other behind the scene things that Logos has to do.  I simply want to read what I need/want to read.