Thursday, November 15, 2007

Logos 3: Always something more...

The Logos Blog recently posted a notice about some new training videos they have posted online. I find these to be well done and quite helpful. They also have been a good way for me to discover more of Logos' capabilities. So, after looking at some of the videos and the Top 20 New Features of Logos 3, I have some observations:
  • I had not been aware of the History (Go > History) feature. That is very helpful for tracking my work.
  • I've been working with the visual markups. I like how easy the Visual Markup Palettes are to customize. While highlighting text in a variety of ways is great, the main reason I have to use it is to work through Synoptic parallels. One would think, however, that this would work best using one of the Parallel Passages and Harmonies resources like the Aland Synopsis, but markup is not allowed in that resource. That's a problem that I hope Logos addresses.
  • The Bibliography tool (Tools > Library Management > Bibliography) is great. I also appreciate that one of the formatting options is the SBL Handbook of Style. I also really like the Remote Library Search (File > New > Remote Library Search). Yes, there are other ways to Google and find books and zotero has become a great tool for me, but this is a nice way to search a variety of national and especially theological libraries and then generate an exportable bibliography.
  • I do regularly use the Lectionary Viewer. It's a great way to pull together the texts for an upcoming liturgical day. If you know some XML, it is also very nice to be able to create one's own lectionary schedule. (There is actually a lot one can do in Logos with some XML knowledge, such as the Jackson's Synopsis Tables.) One major problem, however, one that has been lamented on the Logos newsgroup, is that the Lectionary addin does not come with the Original Language Library, and it can't even be purchased as an addin.
  • Some things that have sped up my work in Logos: The GO bar (= Quick Navigate Bar: right click on the top tool bar to enable it), the quick Find (CTRL-F in a resources), the Reference Browser (CTRL-R), and the Bible Speed Search.
Enough for now...


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