Ability to Copy & Paste from anywhere in L4 (when?)

Hello,

I've been using Logos 4 now for a month or so. I love it. And I
haven't had too many of the seemingly major problems others have described in this
forum, but there is one feature that I think must be addressed ASAP,
and that is the ability to copy and paste from anywhere in L4.

This
is the only feature that I can't live without right now.

I would very
much like to be able to take information from literally anywhere in L4
(i.e.; populated passage guide/exegetical guide, and certain other windows) and use in a lesson or sermon. After all, being able to actually use all the info in L4 is why I bought the program.

So, I was just wondering if anyone (Logos employees maybe?) knows when this will be addressed and fixed. I notice that it isn't even mentioned as one of the missing features that will be fixed soon on the page that lists missing features.

Thanks,

sdahlinghwa

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Comments

Rosie Perera

+1 [Y]

Yeah, I've been wanting this for a while too. I don't know when it will be added back in. As you pointed out, it's not on the list of missing features coming soon, but I'm sure it's on their internal list. Bob Pritchett wrote somewhere on this forum (can't find it anymore) that they've got a list of 100+ planned features coming (or maybe he said 1000+?)

I have not noticed that "missing features" list being edited at all, but I know they've been talking internally about adding back in some things that they didn't think many users were using (such as parallel resource associations) once they heard the outcry about it. They are very responsive to feedback on this forum, and this request has been raised a number of times already. So I would expect it will be addressed within the timeframe that some of the other "missing features coming soon" are.

Stein Dahl

Thanks for the response,

And I sure do hope you're right because I really do actually NEED this feature.

sdahlinghwa

J. Morris

+1 [Y]

Steven L. Spencer

[Y] I give a hearty "amen" to this!

Bob Pritchett

In Logos 3 we used Internet Explorer to display reports, so copying text was "free". In Logos 4 we essentially "paint" the reports onto the screen (you'll notice they're also much more graphical) and it's a lot of work to implement copying here. Moreover, there are lots of fuzzy issues -- what happens when you try to copy from inside one Passage Guide section across a header into another? Do you want the header copied? What about a paragraph that's clipped with a "more..." button at the end? Copy the "more..." text or the theoretical whole article below?

(The only "free" selection and copy functionality is in edit boxes or formatted text flows -- used in notes and the Home Page, respectively. But each of these is MUCH slower to display on screen.)

It would help us if you could give examples of what you need to copy and in what context. Do you need character-level selection granularity? Do you just want to copy the contents of a section in a guide, or text reported in a tool?

Thanks!

John Fugh, Jr.

It would help us if you could give examples of what you need to copy and in what context. Do you need character-level selection granularity? Do you just want to copy the contents of a section in a guide, or text reported in a tool?

I think that the ability to select text and graphics in reports and be able to copy them to Word Processors would be a great start. For me, the ability to copy is greatly used to print.

Thanks.

MJ. Smith

My uses are:

1) for web site: copy & paste into and from WordPress blog software - includes graphics

2) for moving research into "production" database: copy & paste into and from XML documents edited in Stylus Studio and stored in eXist

3) for handouts for classes and/or PDF creation for web and/or rough draft revisions: copy & paste into a text editor (ConText) or word processor (MSWord or OpenOffice) - includes graphics

My choice for how it would work:

- In Guides, Notes and other segmented objects, I would like to go across sections with the header treated as a section header.

- For clipped paragraphs, if I include "more" in the selection, I want the entire article. If my selection ends before the "more" I would expect to copy only up to the end of my selection

- I would be satisfied with granularity at the word level ... on the rare occasions that I might need letter level, I am willing to do the manual editing.

- I want to be able to copy header and contents (to end of selection) or a selected portion of the contents; I would not expect to divide a graphic.

My hope is that through the use of links in notes and favorites, I can consolidate all my Bible study materials into Logos in the sense of finding them in a search not in the sense of them being Logos documents.

J. Morris

I'd like to be able to copy/paste a lot of information from the guides, but especially the Exegetical Guide (all/any of it)

Anonymous

In Logos 3 we used Internet Explorer to display reports, so copying text was "free". In Logos 4 we essentially "paint" the reports onto the screen (you'll notice they're also much more graphical) and it's a lot of work to implement copying here. Moreover, there are lots of fuzzy issues -- what happens when you try to copy from inside one Passage Guide section across a header into another? Do you want the header copied? What about a paragraph that's clipped with a "more..." button at the end? Copy the "more..." text or the theoretical whole article below?

(The only "free" selection and copy functionality is in edit boxes or formatted text flows -- used in notes and the Home Page, respectively. But each of these is MUCH slower to display on screen.)

It would help us if you could give examples of what you need to copy and in what context. Do you need character-level selection granularity? Do you just want to copy the contents of a section in a guide, or text reported in a tool?

Thanks!

I desparately want to get text from Guides out of Logos and into a real note taking app like OneNote (*Complete with hyperlinks*) so I can get down to the business of actually organizing and analyzing the data. Not being able to do so without taking screen shots is a serious impediment.

I would also like to add that I believe this "paint" approach to text is a major drawback to Logos4. Since I often access Logos4 through remote desktop connection, this has seriously impacted my ability to use it. It makes such use extremely slow and I suspect it is one of the (or maybe even THE) major reasons Logos 4 is so sluggish even on a native computer. It also means I have to use it sparingly so that Verizon doesn't get upset about me using too much bandwidth (they cancel your account and ban you if you go over 5GB/month). An hour session of just reading a book can easily go over 100MB. Except for search, going backand using Logos 3, especially for just reading a resource through, is like a breath of fresh air.

Back when we were complaining about the performance of Logos 3 over Logos 2, you made a comment about Logos designing its software for the heardware of tomorrow. The problem is that means it will never work well on the hardware of today. I honestly think I'd be happier with the Logos 3 user interface with the fast searching added on. At least with the searches taking forever, I knew to kick it off and go work on something else for a while, so I didn't really waste much time with it. With everything running so slugishly in Logos4, I end up wasting a lot of time sitting there waiting for a button to respond, wondering if I should click on it again, or worse yet, staring at a black window with a title bar saying [not responding] for tens of seconds before Logos4 finally starts responding again.

Russ Quinn

What if the the Copy function on a right click menu had a fly out submenu that changed depending on its context to offer multiple copy options for the available data?

Most of the time you would copy and paste elements from a report and reformat them into a graphic for a presentation or a sentence for notes or papers. What if the copy function did that work for you.

Some of the options I can think of might include:

verse lists for verses
hits for number of hits
citations for lists of reference works
lemmas for lists of words
definitions for lexicons
the various graphical representations for a presentation

For instance, consider the Biblical Places section of the Passage Guide below

I want to right click on any of the available graphics and copy a jpg to the clipboard so I can paste it into a document or presentation.

I want to click on Samaria and have the choice to copy a variety of things: 1) the simple definition that is available upon hover; 2) a list of formatted citations of the available articles in my library (these show up in the left part of the right click menu when you select Place on the right side of the menu); 3) a formatted citation of any one of those articles; or 4) the actual content of a selected article with the appropriate citation. It would be very handy to be able to copy any of this directly from the passage guide without having to navigate to individual articles.

I want to right click on the any of the list of verse and copy: 1) the entire list of verses formatted in canonical order with the book abbreviations customizable to whatever citation style I need at the moment (Turabian, SBTS style manual, SBL, etc.); or 2) the verses themselves.

I'm sure there are lots of things that could be included. May main point is that a Copy options could change contextually not to copy the actual content of the guide but to copy the information formatted in ways that would be most usable.

See my suggestion for some possibilities of how this could work with the Analysis View here: http://community.logos.com/forums/t/9068.aspx.

Rosie Perera

I think character level granularity is needed. If you're writing a sermon or article you might want to make reference to a definition of a Hebrew word that was mentioned in the Word by Word section of the Exegetical Guide, for example, or something from the Lemma or Grammatical Relationships section of the BWS Guide, or a pithy line from a sermon (if you're in a hurry and don't have time to click through to the sources of those things to read them in context and copy from there).

Also, the ability to right-click on any word in a guide, so as to be able to look it up in a dictionary or lexicon, would be pretty important. Literary Typing might mention some term you're not familiar with, for example. Or you might come across some Hebrew text in the Exegetical Guide that you want to get the Info Window up on.

Everybody else has already done a good job of mentioning the other points I would have made: I want to be able to copy pictures via a right-click menu, etc.

Russ Quinn

Sorry to go on, but I am on a roll here.

Consider the Translation Ring from a BWS.

Right clicking on the ring itself provides only one option that should be copyable. That is the graphic itself. This is good. I could see wanting to use it in a document or presentation. There should be other options though. Right clicking on any word or associated segment should allow several copy options: 1) the lemma alone; 2) the lemma with a gloss from your highest prioritize lexicon with a properly formatted citation; 3) a list of all references where the lemma occurs (John 4:14; Acts 3:8; 4:10); 4) a list of references where the lemma is translated by the word you are right clicking on (i.e. "welling" or "leaping"); 5) the actual verses where the lemma occurs; 6) the actual verses where the lemma is translated by the word you are right clicking on; 7) a list of the lemmas that are also translated by the word you are right clicking on (these appear in a hover graphic that pops up when you click a segment of the ring); 8) a list of those lemmas with glosses; 9) a list of those lemmas with glosses and the references of its occurrences. I'm sure there are more possibilities and a few of the ones I've named might be negotiable but hopefully this makes sense of what I am trying to say.

Right clicking on the hits graphic in the top right currently allows you to save, export to powerpoint, or print the graphic. Not trying to be harsh here but I really can't imagine any scenario where I would want to do any of those things with that little graphic. A bigger version, perhaps, but I have not found a way to do that. What I really would like to copy based on this is: 1) a list of references for all the occurrences in all books represented in the graphics; 2) a list of references for each individual book clicked on in the graphic; 3) the actual verses of all the occurrences in all the books represented in the graphic; and 4) the actual verses for each individual book clicked on in the graphic.