Mac and PC User Interface Differences

Not yet Fixed – Logos 5 and 4

• PC Notes can indent lines of text, while Mac can only indent within a list
• PC Program launch typically opens to usable Window size, while Mac may open to a shrunken size
• PC Resource Table of Contents (ToC) cannot be scrolled using arrow keys, but Mac can click in ToC so arrow keys no longer scroll resource text – Logos 4.5b regression
• PC Syntax Search has blue arrow to confirm menu choice, while Mac needs to use return key after clicking menu choice
• PC middle mouse click on Search or Library opens in a new tab, but Mac does not, workaround is right click, then click “Open in a New Tab”
• PC pop-ups disappear, but Mac has lingering pop-ups, which can appear in front of other applications
• PC Bible Search can scroll verse results using arrow keys while Mac cannot
• PC Collections list drop down shows 14 while Mac list has 12 collections
• PC Collections tiled view shows complete title while Mac truncates long titles
• PC Passage List Print/Export has Font Slider plus handles longer passages correctly while Mac has text flow issue across pages
• PC Home Page font size can be changed using Program Scaling while Mac font size lacks scaling option
• PC Parallel Resources has orange indicator for current resource,which is missing on Mac that is fixed in Logos 5.1 Beta 5
• PC Resource Support Info can be copied, while Mac’s cannot
• PC Passage Lists can be copied, while Mac has some bugs
• PC Text Comparison in Hebrew displays correctly, while Mac displays some verses with smaller font
• PC Bible Sense Lexicon displays correctly, while Mac displays first entry with smaller font and other entries with bold weirdness that is fixed in Logos 5.1 Beta 5

Won’t Fix

• PC Handouts are a (future To Do) for Mac if Handouts are revamped Logos User Voice suggestion => Add the Handout Feature in Logos for Mac!
  • Logos: The Handouts feature depends on now deprecated Windows-only technologies; at this time we do not plan to improve or continue the Handouts feature, nor do we plan to offer it on the Mac.
• Mac has Shift-Command-E to replace a typed reference in an applications using text services while PC has Smart Tags for Office, but lacks reference replacement shortcut for use in other programs
  • Logos: This is one place where Mac will continue to be better than Windows. Since Mac doesn’t have SmartTags we worked with the tools the platform provided. There currently isn’t a similar paradigm on the Windows platform.
• PC Installation has custom option for Logos folder location while Mac does not
  • Logos: Our Mac product uses an app bundle rather than having an installer. We would need to write an installer that gave the option to change the location at install time. At this time we have no plans to write an installer for Mac, but we are considering alternative options for allowing alternate location for user data.

Future plans

• PC Syriac ligature connected correctly, but Mac displays Syriac text as independent letters. Mac final forms are disconnected Logos User Voice suggestion => Connect Syriac Ligature on Mac
  • Logos: Text display is a function of the operating system, not Logos. Some ancient scripts have errors on certain platforms. We plan to implement our own low-level text shaping / rendering in a future release of Logos Bible Software, to ensure consistency across all platforms, but until then will be unable to address text shaping bugs at the OS level.
• PC Notes can automatically hyperlink scripture in notes while hyperlink can be manually added on Mac, Logos 5.1 Beta 5 implemented automatic hyperlink detection
  • Logos: We presently use operating system controls for rich text editing on each platform. The functionality is not the same on each, and we are unable to hook in at a low level to enable all the desired features on the Mac platform. Our long term plan is to replace the OS provided rich text editor with our own component, but until then we are unlikely to be able to advance the text editing features beyond their current state.
• PC Notes performance for typing is better than Mac
  • Logos: We are concerned with note editing performance on both platforms. Our long term plan is to replace the OS provided rich text editor with our own component, but until then we are unlikely to be able to advance the performance beyond their current state.
• PC Text Comparison can select and copy individual verses, but Mac needs workaround using Print/Export
  • Logos: The Windows edition gets text selection “for free” from the system-level control used to display the comparison grid. On the Mac we have to render the grid directly; there’s no “free” support for text selection. This would be very expensive to write, and our future plans involve an alternate display path that will again give us “free” selection support from the platform. We are unlikely to fix this until we make this more fundamental change.
• PC Command can import Libronix 3 file(s) while Mac import has lots of leaking memory errors
  • Logos: Importing old documents isn’t officially supported on Mac. However, we will look into the memory leaks for Sentence Diagram importing in a future release.
• PC Library indexing is substantially faster than Mac – Logos 4.5 regression
  • Logos: We are constantly investigating options to improve performance of indexing on both platforms. For Mac in particular we have some internal prototypes that have shown significant improvements. Once these have been thoroughly tested and stabilized we hope to ship the improvements in a future release.
• PC Stereoscopic images have 3D menu that is missing on Mac
  • Logos: We hope to implement this in a future release.
• PC Timelines has styles menu to change timeline appearance, not yet implemented on Mac
  • Logos: We are investigating options for unifying the Mac and Windows timeline layout logic which will give us the ability to share skins on both platforms for timelines.

Logos User Voice suggestion => Improve Mac Feature Parity with PC