Summary of Search Improvements and Syntax in Logos/Verbum 6

In this post I hope to summarize the new search syntax and options for Verbum and Logos 6.

Hopefully this can be helpful as a sort of hub. I'm probably missing things so feel free to complete or correct if it were the case (This is a sort of double post, but given that post is in the General forum, I wanted to repost here in Logos 6, with a more specific title as well, to make it easier to find and reference).

Where do I learn when to use {} and when to use <>?

There isn't much documentation available, but let me try to summarize how these differ.

The <> is used to indicate a datatype. An introduction to datatypes is here. A relatively complete list of datatypes is here. When you search for a datatype, you are searching for a "reference". The most common type is the <Bible> datatype, where a search like <Bible John 3:16> will find all "references" to John 3:16, regardless of whether they are in a Bible, a commentary, or even if they are within a larger reference, like John 3:10-20. Datatypes also allow for prioritizing resources, so a single datatype reference can open many different resources to the correct place, and show each person the resource they have highest prioritized.

The {} is used for what I like to call "search extensions" (not an official name, BTW, but the best I've found so far, and I don't think there's an official name yet). Each {searchextension} "extends" the functionality of search. Let me try to explain what I mean.

Each "search extension" can have its own search syntax, and can do something entirely different. They are actually analogous to "search tabs", like the Basic, Bible, Morph, Clause, etc. search tab. For example, when you go to the Morph Search tab, when you type g:logos and then @, you will see a dropdown menu with all the morph options. If you do the same thing on the Basic tab, it won't work the same - no morph dropdowns! And the search syntax between the two tabs changes. Each search tab has different functionality, different search syntax, etc.

Well, the {search extensions} offer all of that power - each one can have an entirely different syntax, drop down options, etc. So, instead of creating a lot of new search tabs - one search tab for searching Milestone, another for Speaker, another for Passage Lists, etc. - Faithlife created a new type of search syntax, the {searchextension}.

The great thing about this is that it allows us to use lots of different {searchextensions} together. So we can do great things like search for {Speaker <Person Jesus>} WITHIN {Section <LiteraryType Quotation, Old Testament>} to find all the instances in which Jesus quotes the Old Testament.

What options are available besides <Person Jesus>

<Person Jesus> - Factbook tagging of persons.

<Place Jerusalem> - Factbook tagging of places

<Thing dog> - Factbook tagging of things

<Event The Israelites cross the Red Sea> - Factbook tagging of events

{Section <Event The Israelites cross the Red Sea>} - Returns a different selection of texts... I'm not sure if the difference between these two is by design.

<Sense knowledge> - Returns words in the BIble that are tagged with a certain "sense". The senses can be found in the Bible Sense Lexicon. NOTE: <Sense = knowledge> returns words that have exactly the sense of "knowledge" (1654 hits in my library), while <Sense knowledge> (without the will return all "child" senses as well (171,636 hits in my library). See the child senses here.

What options are available besides speaker?

{Speaker <Person Jesus>} - Texts where Jesus is the speaker. cf. https://community.logos.com/forums/t/92764.aspx

{Milestone <John 3:16>} - Will find texts where the milestone is John 3:16. This is particularly powerful combined with the WITHIN operator. So, you can search all your commentaries on the Gospel of John, but ONLY in the parts of the commentaries that comment on John 3:16. For example:

[quote]faith WITHIN {Milestone <John 3:16>}

will search your commentaries for the word faith within the sections of the commentaries that deal with John 3:16.

cf. https://community.logos.com/forums/t/92761.aspx

{Label} - Will search within labels. This is quite broad, and can be applied to the Sermon labels, Journal article labels, etc. that Faithlife has applied, or to user made labels as well. cf. https://community.logos.com/forums/t/92700.aspx and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M26fXiGd_Sw

{PassageList} - Searches your library for articles or sections of books that have a high number of hits to the references contained in the Passage List. cf. https://community.logos.com/forums/t/92765.aspx

{Highlight HighlighterName} - Will find texts that have the highlighter applied. This feature has not officially shipped yet, so results may not always be reliable!

{Section <Culture XXXX>} - Will find the Culture tagging. These tags are listed in the Lexham Cultural Ontology Glossary.

{Section <LiteraryType XXXX>} - Finds literary type tagging. cf. https://community.logos.com/forums/p/94023/654255.aspx#654255 and https://community.logos.com/forums/p/94264/658635.aspx#658635

What options are available for <literaryType>

In theory anything that is in the Lexham Glossary of Literary Types can by searched using the {Section <LiteraryType XXXXX>} search extension.

And... finally, for those who want a good intro to search... this has not yet been updated for Logos and Verbum 6, but everything in this Wiki page is still valid - https://wiki.logos.com/Detailed_Search_Help.

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Comments

MJ. Smith

thank you.

Jack Caviness

Thanks, this is quite useful.

Tim Hensler

Hopefully this can be helpful

It is. I've been hoping/waiting for someone who understand it would share some insights.

Thank you Fr. Devin.

Anthony H

Thank you Fr. Devin +[Y] [:D]

David Knoll

Thank you!

Bruce Dunning

What a great summary. Thanks for sharing the work you did.

Anthony H

Does the syntax {Section <????? XXXX>} work for all sections? As in every section in a Passage Guide or Factbook, etc.?

Thinking

I hope to summarize the new search syntax and options for Verbum and Logos 6

Can this summary be put on the wiki? I have made this into a one-page Personal Books to have easy access to the different sites and info.

Fr Devin Roza

Does the syntax {Section <????? XXXX>} work for all sections? As in every section in a Passage Guide or Factbook, etc.?

No. The word "section" is meant to be a very generic term to refer to a section of text, to data, etc. This search extension was actually originally named {Data}, but during the beta testing process the name was changed to {Section}.

But either way, the idea is just to refer to a generic name that can be used to search different types of tagging of texts, similar to the {Label} markup, but prepackaged and optimized by Faithlife (for example, so that it works on all Bibles). I imagine in the future we will see more types of {Section} searches added. Lots of different types of tagging could in theory fit within the concept of what this search extension is designed to do.

There are some more of these! I'll post more below here in just a moment.

Fr Devin Roza

Here are two more <Factbook> searches (cf. here), and one more {Section} search (which I think up to now may have gone undocumented):

<PreachingTheme God: Love> - Returns non-Biblical texts which are tagged with the Preaching Theme of "God: Love". At least for the moment this seems to generally corresponds to the texts that the Sermon Starter Guide and the Factbook return in the "Preaching Resources" section, as well as Media and Illustrations as well:

Now, notice that there are no hits for the Scripture! And yet, if we run a Sermon Starter Guide on the topic of "God: Love", there are Scripture hits in the "Passages" section. How can we search for those? Like this:

{Section <PreachingTheme God: Love>} - This search will return the Bible texts that have been marked up for this PreachingTheme. Nice! Here is a photo. Notice that while there seems to be fewer hits in the "Passages" section of the Sermon Starter Guide, the SSG is counting the pericopes, while the search is counting the number of verses.

Here is another type of search:

<Topic Marriage> - This will search for texts marked up according to a certain Topic. Like the <PreachingTheme> search, this seems to be mainly focused on tagging up media, illustrations, and preaching resources. The results of this search appear in the Factbook entry at the end. For more detailed markup of texts, especially in the Bible and the ANE texts, the {Section <Culture Marriage>} search is used.

Note how for different types of data, Faithlife is using different types of markup. In some cases, even for the same topics, Faithlife is using one type of markup for illustrations, media, preaching resources, etc., and another type for Scripture and ANE, etc!

This helps to illustrate why tools like the Factbook now become so important, as it draws together all the different types of markup related to a certain theme or topic, without the enduser having to know exactly what searches are being run, or what type of markup is being used for each topic. I personally still want to know what is going on behind the scenes, and hope this helps you do the same!

Fr Devin Roza

I hope to summarize the new search syntax and options for Verbum and Logos 6

Can this summary be put on the wiki? I have made this into a one-page Personal Books to have easy access to the different sites and info.

Feel free to put it up on the wiki. I don't have the time to do it right now, but if someone does so I will gladly help a little with adding examples, improving the style, filling it out, etc.

EDIT: Looks like MJ may have something already in the works... https://community.logos.com/forums/p/94705/660580.aspx#660580. I would suggest waiting until she can confirm if this is for the Wiki, so as to not duplicate work, plus I'm sure she will do a great job.

Anthony H

Thanks Fr Devin Roza [:D]