Search features that are most needed in Logos

Logos search is (mostly) fantastic, but there are a few really important features that are missing. I've tried to collect them into one post so that I can create a specific UserVoice request that you all can vote on if you agree with me. Bob understandably doesn't like multiple requests rolled up into one UserVoice post, as it makes it difficult to tell which of the requests people actually want. So if you vote, please can you use the comments on UserVoice to also make it clear which requests of those below would be most useful to you:

Click here to vote on UserVoice
(and forgive the very annoying typo when you get there)

An IN keyword (to restrict searches to parts of resources that deal with specific references)
e.g. prophecy IN <bible ~ 1 Cor 12-14>
This example would return results containing the word 'prophecy', but only if it appeared in a commentary or other resource that specifically dealt with 1 Corinthians 12-14.

When you're searching, particularly in commentaries, it would often be very useful to restrict your search to those parts of the commentaries that deal with part of the Bible. Although you can create collections to help, this doesn't solve most of the problems because (a) The range you want to restrict the search to is often smaller than the range a resource covers, and (b) Creating collections for each Bible book is very time consuming.

A LINK reference type (to search for resources that link to other resources)

e.g. <LINK = NBD:Page 470>

This example would return all resources that link to page 470 of the New Bible Dictionary.

When you come across a useful section in a resource, you'll want to know what other resources link to it. A simple search criteria (which could be automatically generated from the right-click menu) is essential. At the moment we can only search for reference types, not links. The cited by tool should handle this feature, of course.

Remove the restriction that NEAR results have to be in the same article


When you use the NEAR or WITHIN xx WORDS keywords, Logos insists that the matching words also have to be in the same article (in Bible searches this means the same Bible verse). This is an arbitrary restriction, which does not meet users' expectations — particularly when several resources have article divisions placed at random points just to make them shorter. NEAR should mean NEAR.

Add a TOPIC keyword



Currently, the only way to search for a topic is to search your entire library and use the topic section. If you know you're only interested in topics, this can make the search slow. There ought to be a way of just searching topics, without having to search the whole library. (Bob has said this is planned already.)

Allow users to search for highlighting

e.g. <HIGHLIGHTING = "Red Background">
This example would return all those places you'd highlighted with the red background highlighter.

Whilst we can currently search IN highlighting, we can't search FOR highlighting. The two workarounds are very unsatisfactory (they're use the * wildcard, which is horribly slow and gives OOM errors; or use the up/down arrows which only works if you know what resource to look in).

An an indicator that clearly shows whether you're doing a strict-match or case-sensitive search


It's great to be able to run these searches, but because the setting 'sticks', it's really easy to forget the setting is turned on, and end up wasting lots of time getting bad results. These settings should be visible in the search results, not just on the dropdown menu.