Any plans to update journal functions?

Hey Guys!

I know we have the journal function in the LDS account. Do we have enough people using the journal function in order to update the functionality of the journal section?

Some user stories I would like to see (feature request)
- As a user, I want to be able to mass update my tags all at once, so I can add / delete multiple at a time.
- As a user, I want to be able to select multiple entries at a time, so I can organize my notes better.


The idea and functionality is pulling from the word press idea of managing tags and our content.

Just a thought, Thanks guys !!!

Welcome to the forum! This is primarily a user-to-user support tool, although we sometimes get participation from people who actually work for (or volunteer for) the church.

One of the church service volunteers who frequents this forum indicated that she has heard the notes/journal is due for an update. We don't know what that update might be or when it might occur (it could be next week or it could be 5 years from now). The church rarely lets us know about its plans in advance.

There is a "Feedback" link at the bottom of most pages on lds.org. I suggest you submit your suggestion using that link. It is the official method to communicate with the church.

As a minimum, I'm sure they will be updating the page to fit in with the new LDS.org layout and allow it to work on small screens. Beyond that, I'm not getting my hopes up too much yet.

A couple of other common-sense changes that are overdue with the LDS.org study tools would be:
– Bringing functionality that already exists in Gospel Library to the web (for example, adding links).
– Supporting highlighting, etc. in languages other than English.

I have been plugging along and making notes on the Book of Mormon verse by verse for five years or so. Recently, one of my inactive children had a DUI and decided to start reading the scriptures for the first time in his life. I offered him my scripture journal of the BoM so I could "read it along with him" by availing him of my notes. But it didn't print out a journal that I could readily share. The notes weren't available chapter by chapter starting with 1 Nephi 1. In fact the notebook was backwards, starting with the most recent scripture I annotated, much later in the BoM.

I would like to make the journal more usable/shareable. Sequence is one thing. Also, textual sophistication so that I can format the notes, differentiating between paragraphs in an entry, fonts, text style like italics, underline, bolds, colors, working links, inserted images, and any copy and paste that enhances the writing. Suppose I wanted to provide a volume of notes for just the BoM or the O.T.? How to make it well organized and appealing as a missionary tool, so to speak?

Consensus1,

Good ideas. I also like the idea of a shareable export, where things are in the same order as the books of scripture (with a reference, the highlighted text, my tags, and my notes - if any).

In the meantime, you might try downloading the notebook, with highlights, journal entries, and details, as an XML file ("Backup (XML)"), then opening that in MS Excel, and once in there, you can sort it - though it may be a little tricky since alphabetical order wouldn't give you the books in sequence, and there's nothing to indicate the sequence of books in scripture. But I would think you could use some simple logic to make your own such sequence field. (Not the ideal, perhaps, but better than nothing.)

FWIW,

Liz
PS: Sorry about the DUI, but glad it's leading to good changes.

There are many things you can highlight besides the scriptures, so maybe it needs a general ordering mechanism, but I'm not certain what that would be?

MEvans,

I would think ordering the same way the content is ordered would work:

In the "Scriptures" collection, the books appear in a certain order; within each book, the sub-books appear in a certain order; within each sub-book, the chapters appear in certain order.

In the "General Conference" collection, each conference appears in a certain order, within each conference, the talks appear in a certain order.

In "Teachings of Presidents", each book appears in a certain order, in each book, the chapters are in a certain order.

...you get the idea - if my highlights followed that order, it would be expected and better than random. Even if the collections appear in random order, but the books / volumes were in the expected order (1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, then Jacob, not 3 Nephi), that would be better than how it is now.

(If I were at home, I'd open the database and look, but I have to believe this sort order / sequence is already a part of the database, we just need it to be part of the export from the Notes tool, too.)

FWIW,

Liz

Maybe someone could invent a highlighter robot that turns pages in a physical Book of Mormon and holds a set of highlighters to mark passages based on what it reads from the database.

sbradshaw wrote:Maybe someone could invent a highlighter robot that turns pages in a physical Book of Mormon and holds a set of highlighters to mark passages based on what it reads from the database.

Or maybe the church can introduce custom-printed scriptures. You can order a set and it comes with everything highlighted from your LDS Account with all the notes you typed being printed in the margins.

mevans wrote:Or maybe the church can introduce custom-printed scriptures. You can order a set and it comes with everything highlighted from your LDS Account with all the notes you typed being printed in the margins.

Now I like that. Trouble is, every time I go through the Scriptures, I highlight different things.

sbradshaw wrote:Maybe someone could invent a highlighter robot that turns pages in a physical Book of Mormon and holds a set of highlighters to mark passages based on what it reads from the database.

It's meant to be funny, but with Facebook/oculus VR we're moving into the real possibility of VR layers that could perform nearly what you've described here. Man, the future is sooo bright... I gotta wear shades!

lajackson wrote:

mevans wrote:Or maybe the church can introduce custom-printed scriptures. You can order a set and it comes with everything highlighted from your LDS Account with all the notes you typed being printed in the margins.

Now I like that. Trouble is, every time I go through the Scriptures, I highlight different things.

Then you can print a different set for each time you go through.

One thing I really wish the note taking feature had was the concept of a notebook for my annotations. When I'm studying, I could choose which notebook's highlights I wanted to see. This is a different concept than what they call a notebook now. It would be just a way to group highlights together. Then if I'm preparing a talk, I could make a notebook for highlights for the talk and I'd only see those highlights and annotations when I set it to the specified notebook.

mevans wrote:One thing I really wish the note taking feature had was the concept of a notebook for my annotations. When I'm studying, I could choose which notebook's highlights I wanted to see. This is a different concept than what they call a notebook now. It would be just a way to group highlights together. Then if I'm preparing a talk, I could make a notebook for highlights for the talk and I'd only see those highlights and annotations when I set it to the specified notebook.

I don't understand; that's exactly how notebooks now work. In fact, I've used journal entries and highlights, all placed into a since notebook, then sorted in the order I needed, to give a fireside talk. Then I actually scrolled through it all on my Android Gospel Library to give the talk. But I'm looking at it right now, and it all shows up correctly in the Notes tool. What's more, when the RS president asked for a copy of the talk, I just "shared" the Notebook with her via email, and it sent her the entire thing, in order, with full text of highlighted verses and their annotations.

If that's not what you meant, maybe you could rephrase? Oh, wait, I just re-read the very last phrase of your comment - are you saying you want to set the library in "notebook A" mode/view, and it would still show you the entire library, but the only annotations you'd see are those you had put in notebook "A"? If so, that's an interesting thought. To me, it seems useful for study or as you said, *preparing* a talk, but not for actually giving a talk (where I personally wouldn't want to have to jump around like some do with paper scriptures, hence the notebook use I described above), but that's me. I'll have to ponder your idea (assuming I understand now); there might be other good uses for a notebook view / mode. And I wouldn't think it would be hard to add that feature (you can already turn annotations on or off, adding the ability instead to choose from a list of "all", "none", or one of your notebooks doesn't seem difficult).

Liz

I haven't delved into how the Gospel Library app works too much. I know it's a bit different and that it has some features that aren't available in the web version. I do all my study in the web browser and generally use a laptop with a web browser at church, as opposed to the Gospel Library app, so my comments here are strictly about what I can do on the web version (the only downside to this approach is if the internet connection isn't working at church).

I like the current Notebook concept. One of the issues I run into is that I sometimes run into highlight conflicts. For example, maybe in my general gospel study, I already highlighted verses 4 through 9. Now, when I'm preparing a talk, I'm particularly impressed about verses 7 through 12. Unfortunately, I can't have an overlapping highlight.

Now suppose I could set a context for the study bar and I have two notebooks: "Gospel Study" and "Talk". If I'm in the Gospel Study notebook context and go to the chapter, I would see verses 4 through 9 highlighted. However, if I switched the study bar context to the Talk notebook, I would see no highlights...then I could highlight verses 7 through 12 and enter notes on them as they relate to the talk that I'm preparing.

There could be more uses for this, as well. For example, I forget which apostle said he marked a separate set of scriptures for each calling he had. Others may want to mark a separate set of scriptures based on topics, such as Jesus Christ, Tender Mercies, Commandments, Atonement, etc. This would allow people to do such things online.

It's possibly straightforward to add such a feature, but, like all things, it's work. It's going to touch the UI, APIs, and the database, so it touches everything.

I like the idea of being able to select "All" in this case, but that brings back the problem that I can't have overlapping highlights. It would be a lot more work to figure out a solution to that. And if I could only show the context of one notebook at a time, that would have some impact on my current use of Notebooks, so maybe if there was a "highlight context" feature, it needs to be incorporated differently.

mevans wrote:I like the current Notebook concept. One of the issues I run into is that I sometimes run into highlight conflicts. For example, maybe in my general gospel study, I already highlighted verses 4 through 9. Now, when I'm preparing a talk, I'm particularly impressed about verses 7 through 12. Unfortunately, I can't have an overlapping highlight.

Hmm. In the Gospel Library app you can... And I just did it on LDS.org - I highlighted Gen 1:3 in green. Then I highlighted v2-4 with a red underline, and v3 was still highlighted in green, but also underlined in red. (I tried two colors of highlight and my eyes couldn't see the merged colors on v3 (but I have seen merged colors in the Gospel Library app - yellow + red = orange; I just don't know if this works on the website, and my eyes have a hard time with subtlety anymore).

mevans wrote:Now suppose I could set a context for the study bar and I have two notebooks: "Gospel Study" and "Talk". If I'm in the Gospel Study notebook context and go to the chapter, I would see verses 4 through 9 highlighted. However, if I switched the study bar context to the Talk notebook, I would see no highlights...then I could highlight verses 7 through 12 and enter notes on them as they relate to the talk that I'm preparing.

There could be more uses for this, as well. For example, I forget which apostle said he marked a separate set of scriptures for each calling he had. Others may want to mark a separate set of scriptures based on topics, such as Jesus Christ, Tender Mercies, Commandments, Atonement, etc. This would allow people to do such things online.

It's possibly straightforward to add such a feature, but, like all things, it's work. It's going to touch the UI, APIs, and the database, so it touches everything.

I like the idea of being able to select "All" in this case, but that brings back the problem that I can't have overlapping highlights. It would be a lot more work to figure out a solution to that. And if I could only show the context of one notebook at a time, that would have some impact on my current use of Notebooks, so maybe if there was a "highlight context" feature, it needs to be incorporated differently.

These sound like good ideas and uses, and though it might touch everything, it should still be fairly straight-forward (and minimal) to add as it could make use of the existing bar, the existing list of notebooks, the existing function to turn highlighting on and off. The only new thing is a drop-down for which highlights to show - the rest is tweaking existing functions...

I'm curious what happens if you try the overlapping highlight like I described above. If it doesn't work, I have to believe it's a browser issue. I'm using the latest Firefox.

Liz

lmcguire wrote:

mevans wrote:I like the current Notebook concept. One of the issues I run into is that I sometimes run into highlight conflicts. For example, maybe in my general gospel study, I already highlighted verses 4 through 9. Now, when I'm preparing a talk, I'm particularly impressed about verses 7 through 12. Unfortunately, I can't have an overlapping highlight.

Hmm. In the Gospel Library app you can... And I just did it on LDS.org - I highlighted Gen 1:3 in green. Then I highlighted v2-4 with a red underline, and v3 was still highlighted in green, but also underlined in red. (I tried two colors of highlight and my eyes couldn't see the merged colors on v3 (but I have seen merged colors in the Gospel Library app - yellow + red = orange; I just don't know if this works on the website, and my eyes have a hard time with subtlety anymore).

I just did your experiment and it worked. Maybe something got fixed along the way. That's good to know. The last time I tried this was a long time ago (I've been using Notes for a long time). It didn't work, so I've never tried it again.

One issue is that it's near impossible to get the note bubble for verse 3 in your example. I've been experimenting with several marks on top of each other and occasionally a stacked bubble has appeared, but it's not too reliable or easy to accomplish. I like your idea of using an underline for one and a highlight for the other.

mevans wrote:One issue is that it's near impossible to get the note bubble for verse 3 in your example. I've been experimenting with several marks on top of each other and occasionally a stacked bubble has appeared, but it's not too reliable or easy to accomplish. I like your idea of using an underline for one and a highlight for the other.

Glad it worked for you! I expect it was an improvement added at some point.

You're right about the bubble. When I was removing my test highlights, I had to leave the page and go back to it before I could get the bubble for v3 to pop up (after deleting the other highlight). In the Gospel Library, it's much easier as each highlight has a marker off to the side (if they're overlapped, you tap and it expands to show two markers). Hopefully the LDS.org Notes team will figure out a better way to handle that.

Liz

rcs.ctr wrote:Hey Guys!

I know we have the journal function in the LDS account. Do we have enough people using the journal function in order to update the functionality of the journal section?

Some user stories I would like to see (feature request)
- As a user, I want to be able to mass update my tags all at once, so I can add / delete multiple at a time.
- As a user, I want to be able to select multiple entries at a time, so I can organize my notes better.


The idea and functionality is pulling from the word press idea of managing tags and our content.

Just a thought, Thanks guys !!!

I second these user stories. I submitted feedback on the feedback page as well.

It would be super convenient to have the ability to multiple select notes, and drag and drop them to the appropriate notebook as well.

As a final thought, I would also like to see a feature where you can keep your notes made in the scriptures, but clear those notes in the scripture reader (so it is like reading the scriptures clean/fresh each time).

dgbjarnson wrote:As a final thought, I would also like to see a feature where you can keep your notes made in the scriptures, but clear those notes in the scripture reader (so it is like reading the scriptures clean/fresh each time).

If you uncheck "Study Mode" on the study toolbar, all your highlights will be hidden.

I don't know if that's what your looking for, or if you want a chance to mark them again?