B. B. Warfield Collection on Logos Pre-Pub

Broadus · #1 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008, 10:04 PM

The B. B. Warfield Collection has been listed on Logos pre-pub for $100.

Bill

DMcFadden · #2 (**permalink**) 05-30-2008, 12:11 AM

Having bought one or two too many downloads lately, I think I'll stick with my Ages version (still only $14.95) and my PBB (free) version for Libronix.

Broadus · #3 (**permalink**) 05-30-2008, 09:15 AM

Dennis,

Understandable. With your knowledge of Logos, what would be the practical difference in having the Libronix version vs. the PBB version (besides the ability to buy 25 more gallons of gasoline

)?

Bill

mshingler · #4 (**permalink**) 05-30-2008, 10:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DMcFadden

Having bought one or two too many downloads lately, I think I'll stick with my Ages version (still only $14.95) and my PBB (free) version for Libronix.

May I ask where you got the PBB?

CovenantalBaptist · #5 (**permalink**) 05-30-2008, 10:41 AM

Download the PBB updater and you'll get it free (if you have a full license copy of Libronix).

I just wish it included the Selected Shorter Writings - his piece on Hosea 6:7 is very helpful.

DMcFadden · #6 (**permalink**) 05-30-2008, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Broadus

Dennis,

Understandable. With your knowledge of Logos, what would be the practical difference in having the Libronix version vs. the PBB version (besides the ability to buy 25 more gallons of gasoline

)?

Bill

Bill, you and I are both too ignorant here. They tell me that my Complete Works of Van Til are hyperlinked to Barth's Church Dogmatics in over 6,000 places. That would seem to be of some advantage if I wanted to instantly jump from Van Til to Barth. However, if my goal is simply to read a person, for example, Warfield, using either Ages or the PBB version for Libronix would work.

Searches in Libronix include the PBB books in your library and seem to work as quickly as they do on regular Logos produced books. A "passage search," however, however will not automatically include a PBB commentary in its search.

The key is to include your PBB resources in one of your "collections." That way you can search the collection to effectively access your material. For example, I got John Flavel for free from Still the Truth. It included a half dozen or so of his books. These appear both in my John Flavel collection and my Puritan Collection. I am able to search either collection to find Puritan (or John Flavel) hits. In fact, Libronix took less than a second to produce 211 hits on "wisdom" in the half dozen books in my Flavel Collection.

Kenneth_Murphy · #7 (**permalink**) 05-30-2008, 01:47 PM

Regarding the difference between PBB resources and ones produced by LOGOS, I don't have first hand experience, but if I understand it correctly here is what happens. The most basic resource would simply contain the raw text of the author put into Libronix format so the software can load it. This will allow you to read the book with the Logos software and allow for general word searching. For anything else to work someone has to go in and "tag" everything for it to function. So for example, if I have a latin dictionary in Logos I would expect my Logos commentaries etc to allow me to see the definition of the latin word via my latin dictionary. I would assume in the free PBB books that similar tagging has not taken place so I wouldn't be able to seemlessly access the dictionary. Same with scripture references, greek language features and quotes from other authors you may have in your collections. So if you are choosing between "Free" and a logos version it probably comes down to how much value you place on these internal links vs simple "text search". This is how I understand it to work, though I could be way off.

DMcFadden · #8 (**permalink**) 05-30-2008, 01:52 PM

Kenneth,

That is exactly how it works including: the advantages of a tagged work and the price advantage of a free resource. You said it much better than I, however. Thanks.

Broadus · #9 (**permalink**) 05-30-2008, 02:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DMcFadden

Quote:

Originally Posted by Broadus

Dennis,

Understandable. With your knowledge of Logos, what would be the practical difference in having the Libronix version vs. the PBB version (besides the ability to buy 25 more gallons of gasoline

)?

Bill

Bill, you and I are both too ignorant here. They tell me that my Complete Works of Van Til are hyperlinked to Barth's Church Dogmatics in over 6,000 places. That would seem to be of some advantage if I wanted to instantly jump from Van Til to Barth. However, if my goal is simply to read a person, for example, Warfield, using either Ages or the PBB version for Libronix would work.

Searches in Libronix include the PBB books in your library and seem to work as quickly as they do on regular Logos produced books. A "passage search," however, however will not automatically include a PBB commentary in its search.

The key is to include your PBB resources in one of your "collections." That way you can search the collection to effectively access your material. For example, I got John Flavel for free from Still the Truth. It included a half dozen or so of his books. These appear both in my John Flavel collection and my Puritan Collection. I am able to search either collection to find Puritan (or John Flavel) hits. In fact, Libronix took less than a second to produce 211 hits on "wisdom" in the half dozen books in my Flavel Collection.

"We are both too ignorant" about matters in general or concerning the advantage of Logos Libronix over PPB Libronix books or that we've purchased Logos books that are out in PBB?

Thanks to Chris P. and the PBB updater link, I have almost finished downloading half a GB of PBB materials. Dennis, if I understand you correctly, having the Logos Libronix books would not be greatly more beneficial than having the PBB books.

It would be interesting to compare both versions of the same source to determine just what one practically gives up with PBB's. Of course, many PBB's are not out in the Logos version, but that's different. What I would like answered is this: For someone not involved in academia (because Logos has a good documentation feature, as I understand it) why buy the Logos version of, say, Owen, Edwards, Kuyper, or Warfield, if you can download the PBB for free?

BTW (OT): What's the secret to getting instant e-mail notification to work? I have no problem on other forums, and I have it set up in my User CP, but I do not receive them.

Bill

Kenneth_Murphy · #10 (**permalink**) 05-30-2008, 02:28 PM

WoW, I can't wait to get my Logos sofware in the mail if there is that many PBB books out there. Half a GB? WoW!

Pratically speaking, I'm planning to put my electronic resources into the following buckets.

Bucket 1: Logos Fully Tagged
Fully tagged libronix works. These will be the expensive ones. The question I plan to ask myself is do I need the special linking features for this particular work? Will I ever be doing a study on say Romans 1:6 and want to know for certain if that particular work has a reference to the verse in it. If I have to rely on "free text" searching I may miss a reference if it's abreviated differently or otherwise not worded well enough for me to find it. Does the work have so much Latin/Greek/Hebrew/Bible Verse citations that I feel I will save a lot of time having those quick linked to my dictionaries/lexicons etc. If the work isn't important enough for the above it can go into the second bucket.

Bucket 2: Free/Cheap no tagging
Free/Public/Cheapest version PBB etc that can be loaded successfully into Logos. This will let me still read the book cover to cover and to probably use the english dictionary and to find sections using keyword searching. So still better than print for finding that quote etc.

Bucket 3: PDF or Non Libronix
I'm going to try and find some system for organising a mass of PDF resources like downloaded Google Books. Then at least I can free text search across these with Google's search or others. Maybe I can find a way to script in Logos so it can reach out to see these as well. I'll have to read up on their scripting features to see what can be done. I have a strong programming background so if it can do it, hopefully I can find a way.

Bucket 4: Print book
I'm going to assume that within five years logos will decide to allow us to download works into portable ebook readers that use the new e-ink technology like sony reader or amazon's reader. So, I'm going to avoid buying print books unless it's the last option.

Broadus · #11 (**permalink**) 05-30-2008, 11:24 PM

Kenneth,

Those are good points. I would add another, alluded to above. Download Bible Explorer 4 and then add freebies to it, as well as any non-free CROSS-formatted books which are much cheaper than their Libronix counterparts. The one striking example thus far is the Tozer Electronic Library for $35. Or, you can save up for the Libronix Tozer for a cool $400.

To be fair, I've often seen Libronix and CROSS titles for close to the same price. I just can't get over the difference in the Tozer editions. I've got to be missing something.

Back to the Libronix PBB's. My initial works with some reveal that verses in your preferred translation will pop-up when you place the cursor on the Scripture reference, so that's a nice plus. Footnotes, though, have to be accessed manually by scrolling to the end of the document. I suspect we're out of luck when it comes to translating other languages as the regular Libronix works do. BTW, it seems that what I download was almost 700 MB, and there were some things I didn't download. Some folks have done a lot of work to make that treasure trove available.

It's hard to beat free when funds are tight. I saw that Thomas Goodwin (12 vols.) has been placed on pre-pub for $180 at the present. I should have more seriously considered the church with the million dollar budget instead of the one with the $150K budget.

Bill

Kenneth_Murphy · #12 (**permalink**) 05-31-2008, 12:21 AM

Bill, I agree that for now it could be useful to have one or more alternate platforms like bible explorer 4 to allow for more works. Also, you might have one for general ebooks. Hundreds of standard classics are available as free ebooks.

I was looking at the stilltruth site at some information on PBB construction. It's all XML based which is great. They are starting a project to convert open office documents into PBB. One of the projects I worked on at a previous job for 4 years was designing their XML based catalog publishing system for all of Sigma/Aldrich/Fluka chemical catalogs. So I have some background there so I maybe able to even help their project along if I can find some time. Soon it should become very possible to convert standard ebooks and other format books into libronix untagged format or even convert some pre-existing tagging. A java program could be written to do a reasonable job of scanning through text and building in libronix tagging for footnotes, language, and verse references if they were marked up consistently in the text. So I think that over the next couple of years we should see a flood of books into libronix format through automated format conversion. I just need to find a way to OCR google book type scanned pdfs into XML starting markup so they could be converted. If the open office converter project takes off it will allow easy conversion of peoples research papers, thesis and sermons etc into PBB format.

If I manage the time to program anything useful or figure out anything helpful tip wise, I'll post it on puritan board or contribute it over at stilltruth.com so other people can take advantage.

Broadus · #13 (**permalink**) 05-31-2008, 05:12 PM

I queried someone at Logos who has put in a good word about PBBs on his blog:

"PBBs are great for someone on a low budget who wants to accomplish very basic stuff like reading and basic searching. Here are some of the things that PBBs lack:

1. Advanced tagging and linking to other resources.
2. Careful proofreading and testing for errors.
3. The ability to function as a Bible, commentary, etc.
4. The ability to change the English font.
5. The ability to highlight text and add notes.

Personally, I have very little use for PBBs, but I know that some people just love them and don't own much else. That's fine; we all have our different purposes, likes and dislikes, and budgets!

My advice to you would be to download the PBBs and try them out. See if they meet your needs. Then purchase something from Logos that you already have in PBB and compare their quality, functionality, etc. That should help you make a decision on whether the extra cost is worth it."

Sounds like good advice to me, but I would love to hear for Logos users who've used both versions---Logos and PBBs.

Bill

DMcFadden · #14 (**permalink**) 06-01-2008, 01:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Broadus

I queried someone at Logos who has put in a good word about PBBs on his blog:

"PBBs are great for someone on a low budget who wants to accomplish very basic stuff like reading and basic searching. Here are some of the things that PBBs lack:

1. Advanced tagging and linking to other resources.
2. Careful proofreading and testing for errors.
3. The ability to function as a Bible, commentary, etc.
4. The ability to change the English font.
5. The ability to highlight text and add notes.

Personally, I have very little use for PBBs, but I know that some people just love them and don't own much else. That's fine; we all have our different purposes, likes and dislikes, and budgets!

My advice to you would be to download the PBBs and try them out. See if they meet your needs. Then purchase something from Logos that you already have in PBB and compare their quality, functionality, etc. That should help you make a decision on whether the extra cost is worth it."

Sounds like good advice to me, but I would love to hear for Logos users who've used both versions---Logos and PBBs.

Bill

I think that the advice was accurate and to the point. In my mind it is ALL about $$$ vs. functionality. If it is something I REALLY want, it is worth paying the extra. If it is a matter of giving me access to a book (more than a commentary or Bible) that would add to my breadth of coverage, than PBB is just fine by me.