Monday, November 2, 2009

Logos 4

Drumroll please…



Logos 4 has arrived!

Today after much waiting Logos 4 goes live. There are some great new features you will want to check out. First and foremost the whole look of Logos has been redesigned. Most notably the fonts have been hugely improved. The difference between v3 and v4 is night and day in terms of readability. Logos 4 now has opentype support of old style numerals, small caps and even ligatures. If that doesn’t make you excited I don’t know what will. These improvements translate tangibly into a superior reading experience in v4.


As you work your layouts are snapshoted which makes saving layouts a cinch.


























I rarely ever used layouts in v3, but now I find myself using them regularly thanks to this vast improvement. You can also reorganize a layout into two columns or three vertical just with the click of a button. There are a number of subtle layout improvements you may not notice first starting. Like resources will open up in the same pane. So for example if you have Louw Nida open and then open up BDAG it will automatically open in the same pane as Louw Nida. Or if you want to drag it from your library a helpful blue snap hint allows you to precisely place your books.


There are a number of cool new ways to visualize the Biblical text. The word tree visualization shown here is very impressive.



















Syntax searching underwent a huge visual overhaul. Now there are a number of presents to help get you started searching.































The new reading plan feature is amazing! You can set up a reading plan for any book in your library and the days reading is helpfully marked off for you.

















































Don’t like having the reading plan marked? Open up the visual filter control button and turn it off. You can also turn on and off your markups, or highlighting from notes.
























If you’re working on two computers notes, reading plans, layouts, just about everything is sync’d between your two machines. This saves so many headaches it isn’t even funny!


One of my favorite new features is the ability to save passage guide, exegetical guides, and word studies. Run a passage guide on Romans 1.1 – 17 and type in a title and some notes. Then later on down the road run a passage guide on Roman 1 and the guide will alert you to the presence of the guide you ran on Romans 1.1 – 17. This is perhaps my favorite feature of all of the new features! It will be an incredible time saver over the years!

The list of all the new features and improvements could go on and on. Some things didn’t make this release. Right now there is no sentence diagramming feature, this is scheduled for a major overhaul from what I understand. And a number of other features didn’t make the initial release but will be rolled out. Right now notes can’t be imported from v.3, but Bob and the crew have that as a top priority following the release of Logos 4.

2 comments:

Mike Fiechtner said...

Glad you're enjoying Logos 4! Soon they'll come out with Logos 5 and it will have hermaneutics!

Chris said...

Thanks for the great review on Logos 4! It's superbbb!

I didn't really want to post this here since it'd sound like advertising, but I couldn't find your contact, so here goes..

Would you be willing to do an interview/review with Voxbiblia? We're hosting a monthly Biblio blogterview series, and I thought you'd be perfect for it! We've just started up, and we're undergoing a lot of revamps, so we'd really appreciate your comments! Do drop me an email at chris [at] voxbiblia.com if so!

Would love to hear from you!