Logos Atlas vs. Accordance

Joseph Turner said:

I am not a big fan of Accordance.  I bought a basic package so that I could purchase their atlas/map system and the Sacred Bridge atlas.  Other than that, at least for my use, Logos is way above and beyond Accordance.  With that said, the atlas situation really bothers me.  Maybe I just haven't used the Logos atlas feature enough, but it doesn't seem to do much.  

For instance, I can't figure out a way to show sites in Sumer, such as Uruk, Eridu, and Ur, without searching one at a time, and then I just get a red dot.  Am I missing something?  

Also, in Accordance, I can right click on a place and select look up in map, and it will take me right to it.  Does Logos offer something like this?  I don't see it in the Look up menu.  

I really want Logos' atlas feature to be great, as I am a visual learner, and I need to see places mentioned in relation to other places.  This is my biggest issue with L6.  Is it just another example of a feature that is not yet finished?

I am getting this message. I keep retrying and the map never comes up.  

Wish I had known about that Ctrl+F thing a long time ago.  Prolly did, and forgot.  I rarely used Logos atlases, but that will all change now!  

Thanks!

Rick said:

In this particular instance, Haran was not shown as one of the default locations on the map but by using CTRL + F, I was able to find it.

I have an issue with this too. There is only a selective set of information showing in the atlas. If Haran is there, why doesn't it show? Or why is there not a way to show more information, maybe by layers? My reaction is similar to others. I find the feature useless because I don't see what I'm looking for. I therefore hardly use it.

Joseph Turner said:

For instance, I can't figure out a way to show sites in Sumer, such as Uruk, Eridu, and Ur, without searching one at a time, and then I just get a red dot.  Am I missing something?  

Also, in Accordance, I can right click on a place and select look up in map, and it will take me right to it.  Does Logos offer something like this?  I don't see it in the Look up menu.  

Selecting all ancient or iron age sites brings up all of those at once.

-Dan

Jack Caviness said:

Rick said:

Did you know that you can also use CTRL + F to find cities on a map? In this particular instance, Haran was not shown as one of the default locations on the map but by using CTRL + F, I was able to find it.

Is this a Windows only feature?

In the Mac version, I displayed the map Troas to Philippi. The map shows the barest minimum of place names. Cmd-F did not find any surrounding locale. When I began typing Thess, the find box went red indicating that no such location existed. The same thing happened when I attempted to find Berea. Same with Athens and Corinth.

It would seem the maps are pretty picky. I can find Haran in the patriarchal map, but I see the same behavior as you describe above if I try the same search with any other map.  

Rick Ausdahl said:

One frustration I have in general with the maps, is keeping track of which maps/map tools require internet connections and which don't, which I suppose is just the result of a more basic frustration that an internet connection is required to access any maps at all. 

Just the maps accessible through the Atlas tool. Everything else is accessible offline.

Rick Ausdahl said:

I expect (hope) that any map resource I can access via my library is totally independent of an internet connection

That's correct.

Rick Ausdahl said:

Another general frustration is how often the location I'm interested in does not show up as a place that can be viewed on a map when right-clicking on the location in a resource or using the "Find" option within a map/map resource.

Most of the maps in Logos only show a subset of places. If you want to search across every map in both the Atlas Tool and your library, you should use Search Everything, or Factbook.

Rick Ausdahl said:

But beyond the general frustrations noted above, I find the maps to be inconsistent in terms of what I can expect from them, even within a specific resource such as the Biblical Places Maps.  For example, within that resource, I can zoom in and out of some of the maps, but not others.

You can zoom all of them, but there's a minor bug that sometimes prevents zooming. If you find you can't zoom, just move the map slightly by grabbing it with the mouse, and you should find that zooming then works with the mousewheel.

I have learned some things reading this thread and decided to put it to use in today's study. I was wondering where Geliloth was in Joshua 22.10. Am I to assume it is not tagged as a place?

The old Logos Atlas, which was a separate program back in 2.0 days, was an excellent Atlas. You could layer the maps, select which cities you desired, even select which biblical time periods would show. I loved the 3-D maps that you could view from different angles, rotate, and see elevation gain/loss. I still have the atlas loaded on a Windows 7 machine running as an XP program. It will not work with Windows 8. Perhaps I can get it to work on Windows 10.

I went ahead and bought the ESV Atlas in hardback http://www.amazon.com/Crossway-Bible-Atlas-John-Currid/dp/1433501929 . In it there is a CD that you load on your computer and it will search for the maps online that they have in the book. The maps are very good. You can search by keyword or reference and there are other options as well. It works for me. 

I, too am not impressed with Logos maps. I am a very avid map fan and would love to see this improved.

I really wish FaithLife would rethink the user interface for the maps. Keystrokes are great for a user who does the same tasks repeatedly day after day. For them, a CONTROL+F  or CONTROL+click is quick, easy and convenient. For the average user, though, they are a barrier. Several comments weren't aware of the features mentioned (me included), which means FaithLife put development resources into features that many users aren't benefiting from (or giving them credit for). This reminds me of some of the PC software from the 80s and 90s. You could do everything through keystrokes, but every program had its own set of keystroke commands. It was great for power users who worked with a single program all day every day, but the learning curve was very steep and many users were never able to make full use of their software.

My wish list would be for FaithLife to:

• Keep the keystroke commands for power users;
• Add an easily accessible menu tree for the rest of us mortals so we can find what's available when we don't know or remember the keystroke commands;
• Provide a single "on-ramp" for the Atlas and Biblical Places tool so that users can always go to the same place to search for map information. The goal would to provide one-stop shopping, so to speak, so users can find what's available to them without having to worry about which tool to use.

Sean Boisen said:

We try our best to have it both ways: keyboard shortcuts for the power user, and menus or other obvious features for others. The challenge is making the feature you want right now more visible, without making it cluttered for other people who want different features (right now).

The Panel menu has "Find (In This Panel)", which is our compromise between making this findable feature but not adding clutter. For drawing distances, I'll raise this with Eli to see what he thinks.

In our view, the single "on-ramp" is Factbook, for maps as well as other general information about places and other subjects.

Sean, thanks for your prompt response. Please don't take me wrong - I do understand how difficult it is to develop an intuitive user interface that works well for customers with very different needs and experience levels. If find it interesting that the Factbook is intended to be the single "on-ramp" for maps. Perhaps I was too focused on the name, but that wasn't obvious to me. Thanks for clarifying that.

Keep in mind that the L6 Atlas is very new and only been out recently and the Accordance Atlas has been out for a LONG time. I agree that the Accordance Atlas is more powerful and feature filled, although the L6 Atlas has a more "fresh" design to it. I believe as time goes on, the L6 Atlas will improve. In the meantime, I use both depending on what I'm needing to do. If I need more customization, 3D, etc., I go with Accordance Atlas. If I want a quick, fresh, clean atlas image, I go with L6.

Fr Devin Roza said:

Each "story map" from the current system, for example, could simply be a layer, that combines relevant cities, arrows, etc. and just adds them to the map. But you could also have many other types of layers that people have mentioned in this thread (elevation, modern day cities and boundaries, etc., etc.), permit building custom maps. Just combine layers, cities, etc. as you need! 

That's exactly what I'd like to see.

Some L4/5 maps were a tiny bit like that (place names were effectively added as layers at least on the Biblical World Map), and I was surprised to see a move away from that in L6.

Fr Devin Roza said:

Thanks for jumping in, Sean!

What I would hope to see is that eventually what Faithlife currently offers as lots and lots of completely separate maps eventually becomes a single map (or as close to a single map as can be.. the earth itself hasn't changed much over 4000 years) with lots of different optional layers, that users can combine however they want.

Each "story map" from the current system, for example, could simply be a layer, that combines relevant cities, arrows, etc. and just adds them to the map. But you could also have many other types of layers that people have mentioned in this thread (elevation, modern day cities and boundaries, etc., etc.), permit building custom maps. Just combine layers, cities, etc. as you need! 

That type of solution just seems so much simpler, probably much cheaper to develop and maintain (especially long term), and much, much more powerful for the end user.

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