4.5 Beta 2 - Deleting Notes and Erasing Highlights Observations

Andrew McKenzie said:

I agree and saying select the option 'dont' use internet' does not cut it as a solution.

Logos has consistently told us that we would be able to create work groups, keep things private or make them public (how public I don't recall them saying - I assumed "all Logos users" was the outer limit of public.)

DominicM said:

This is a killer for me, they need to add logic to say if there is content DO NOT delete note, if not I have no problem with auto deleting it if its empty, but object to it thinking my notes are no longer required.

One can look at this two ways - either of which could be argued as the more "proper" user view:

1 Notes and Highlights differ only in that Notes have Logos defined markers in the text while Highlights may have Logos or user defined markers. Following this thought leads one to have both or neither marking/note.

2.Note marking and Highlight marking differ only in the Note requiring associated text and Highlighting only permitting associated text. Following this thought leads to the ability to delete a highlight note without deleting the highlighting.

I prefer the first method because I would like to see the highlighting note automatically built with the palette and style name. This would result in notes being the generic item and highlights being a specific item i.e. using Logos defaults I would expect to have my notes in a very specific classification. Whereas if I used a personal palette I would expect it to be tightly classified e.g. Berlin's parallelism type or the gender, number and case of Greek nouns.

I think this would be the easiest pattern of system behavior. We wouldn't get the appearance, after the fact, of unpredictable behavior - the "why, I didn't delete it" syndrome, the Logos 4 did this to me syndrome. I wouldn't object to a hidden note - then when I heard the I didn't do it routine, I could point them to the hidden feature (sound familiar? something like the I didn't hide the book?) Preferable to hiding to me would be to optionally sort all blank notes to the end.

DominicM said:

anything with custom/user inputted text should never autodelete, thats my 2c and we may just have to agree to disagree

It is my experience that orphans create more problems than auto-deletes. Unfortunately, I no longer have the luxury of a lab to watch user behavior. Well, to be honest, I only had that luxury once - implementing the first administrative web app.

DominicM said:

yes but removing the highlighting from the "NEW FORMAT" note, should not delete any user note content, there is no orphan being created, the link should still there to the reference, the only thing that should be removed is the highight portion of the record, and not the whole record as it is currently doing..

What you want to see is a function that converts a highlight note to a standard note i.e. removing the highlight would do one of 3 things:

1. create a note as if it was added through "add note" (no links)
2. create a note linked to the reference with reference highlighting
3. create a note linked to the selection with selection highlighting

I'd prefer to see this as a specific convert function rather than a delete.

DominicM said:

MJ - I think you may sitll have a mind set of these two things being different as in 4.3, in 4.3 there were 2 distinct records in the table, in 4.5 there is now 1 combined record containing both these features, there is no convert possible, as we only are working on one record,

You still misunderstand me - the conversion is in the type of link. At the moment if you create a note on reference when you intended to create a note on selection there is no way to repair the problem. You must delete one note and create another. This is a functionality I would like to have. Logically, the highlight note is currently identical to the selection note in terms of behavior. If the behavior performs as you would like - and it may be how users' as a whole want - deleting a highlight would result in another new beastie - an unmarked selection note.

The basic question is, in IT terms, whether in the inheritance structure one sees the highlight as a child or sibling of the selection note. You apparently see it as a sibling; I prefer seeing it as a child. Physical implementation is not important.

MJ. Smith said:

Highlighting to behave like a selection note with the highlighting being removable only by the removal of the note.
Ability to correct the linkage of any note between reference, selection and highlight (something I've wanted for some time)
Ability to change the style of the highlight
Ability to open the correct note (file AND note) by clicking on the note icon or highlight.

Quite succinct.

But you can change the style of the Highlight via the Note icon drop-down  (and make it No highlight, No indicator and completely unmarked in the resource!).

I would add to your first need that Erase behaviour (removing everything except a reference Note) is the cause for concern.