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What’s New in Paratext 8.0

Paratext 8 has a lot of new features to accompany this major new version release. Here is a comprehensive list of what you can expect if upgrading from Paratext 7.5.

This list is also available in Paratext via the Help menu (recommended). The help page is more formatted and includes links to other help pages.

Registration

  • User registration: You must register or be registered by a project administrator in order to use Paratext 8.
  • Project Registration: Projects with certain “Type of Project” options need to be registered in Paratext 8.0 or they cannot access all of the features of Paratext 8.0.

Migrating projects

  • To be able to open or Send/Receive projects created in prior versions of Paratext, you must migrate them to Paratext 8.0.

Project progress tracking

  • There have been major enhancements to the feature to track project progress.
    • You can save and share progress settings, add tasks to your project plan from another project plan, assign tasks and checks to users on the project, and view progress in various ways.
      You must specify the rate of project progress for each task, but you can copy the expected rate of progress from one task to another.
  • You can track project progress mainly at the stage level.
  • You can specify which books to include in project progress tracking.
  • You can work on tasks and checks assigned to you and mark them as completed.
  • You can copy individual tasks from one project plan to another or copy the entire project plan to another project.

Basic checks

  • You can limit a basic check to a range of chapters in a book.
  • Markers check: In a chapter without any verse text, the Markers check ignores any valid markers, but reports any invalid markers as errors.
  • References check:
    • You can select a checkbox that will keep the References check from reporting errors if your references do not have a space between the book name and the chapter number.
    • Related to the References check, a reference icon precedes each reference that follows certain markers (for example, \r parallel passage references and \xt cross references). If a reference has an error, the reference icon has a red x; otherwise, you can click the reference icon to display the referenced text in a Quick Reference window.
    • You can automatically enter missing \xo fields in cross references or missing \fr fields in footnotes.
    • You can specify details about the location of cross references and footnotes when their origin reference contains a range of verses.
  • Quoted Text check: You can check that quoted text in a footnote (after the \fk or the \fq marker) or in a cross reference (after the \xk or the \xq marker) matches text in the verse where the footnote or cross reference is located.
  • Quotations check:
    • Checks quotations in both Scripture text and headings, but evaluates text and headings separately for quotation errors.
    • If your project has more than one way to open, continue, or close quotations, before you run the quotations check, you can specify alternate quotation marks.
  • Numbers check: The Number Settings dialog allows users to select a number grouping.

Quotation Rules

  • In the Quotation Rules dialog, it is possible to specify that a project does not mark quotations with punctuation.

Resources

  • Resources are downloaded from the Digital Bible Library (DBL) and are no longer downloaded from the Paratext website.
  • Resources have to be installed or copied from another Paratext 8.0 project. They cannot be migrated from earlier versions of Paratext.
  • You can show resources only in languages that match your installed resources, select all resources, or select only resources that have been updated since you installed them.

Checking inventories

  • Characters inventory: Paratext can display some inventory decisions in a project text window. If you select Highlight Invalid Characters from the View menu, invalid or unknown characters have a red highlight.
  • Punctuation inventory: If the project for which you are doing the punctuation inventory does not have Quotation Rules set, a reddish bar will appear under the title bar of the inventory. You can click a button to the right of the reddish bar to set up the quotation rules.
  • Markers inventory: You can see which markers occur before each marker in your text and see how many times a particular sequence of two markers occurs.
  • Markers Missing Final Sentence Punctuation: You can check which characters occur as the final character following a paragraph style marker that has text.
  • Punctuation Followed by a Lower Case Letter inventory: You can specify what punctuation sequences can and cannot be followed by a lower case letter.

Checklists

  • Punctuation checklist: You can compare punctuation in a project with one or more comparative texts. You can limit which punctuation characters the checklist displays.
  • Word or phrase checklist: You can compare a word or phrase in different projects.

Parallel Passages tool

  • Some of the new features of the Parallel Passages tool are:
    • Checkboxes to keep track of which passages you have checked.
    • Filters that allow you to control which parallel passages are displayed in the tool.
    • An upper pane which lists the passages that match the filters.
  • You can keep the Parallel Passages tool visible when you click another Paratext window.
  • The parallel passages data has been cleaned up in the following ways:
    • Consistent highlighting regardless of the direction of the comparison.
      For example, given that verses A and B are parallel:
      If you look at parallels to verse A, verses A and B are highlighted in a certain way.
      If you look at parallels to verse B, the highlighting of verses A and B is identical.
    • The list of verses is the same no matter which reference you look at to see parallels.
      For example, given that verses A, B, and C are parallel.:
      If you look for parallels to verse A, you will see verses B and C.
      If you look for parallels to verse B, you will see verses A and C.
      If you look for parallels to verse C, you will see verses A and B.
  • If a parallel passage has been checked and the text of that passage changes afterward, you can see the changes by clicking a button in the parallel passages tool.

Wordlist

  • You can ignore diacritics when you filter words in the Wordlist.
  • You can create a spelling discussion note for a word (for example, to indicate that the word needs further study).
  • You can filter spelling discussion notes by the words that are in the comments of those notes.
  • You can filter words by prefix, stem, infix, or suffix if you specify morphology.
  • You can type a letter in the Wordlist to scroll to words beginning with that letter.
  • When you sort by End of Word, the Wordlist aligns words at the right for left-to-right scripts, at the left for right-to-left scripts.
  • You can capitalize all occurrences of a word by clicking a link in the Wordlist.
  • When you point at Spell Check from the Tools menu of the Wordlist, you can select an individual check to concentrate on one type of error (for example, Diacritic Errors).
  • You can display all words that cannot be divided according to prefixes and suffixes you have specified.
  • If the Biblical Terms list associated with your project is Major Biblical Terms, you can specify whether proper names will be hyphenated or not be hyphenated.
  • When you export your wordlist to an XML file, the file contains the number of occurrences of the words in the list. If you have approved hyphenation or morphology, the exported file contains that information as well.
  • You can keep the Wordlist visible when you click another Paratext window.
  • You can right-click a word in a project and select Wordlist… to look up that word in the Wordlist.
  • In a project that has an associated FieldWorks lexical project, you can use the Wordlist to look up a word or related words.

Morphology in Wordlist or Interlinearizer

  • You can enter more than one parse for a word in the Interlinearizer and in the Morphology column in the Wordlist.
  • You can specify infixes in the Interlinearizer or in the Wordlist.
  • You can enter a morpheme break in the middle of a symbol that represents an entire syllable.

Biblical Terms

  • You can highlight the occurrences of approved and guessed renderings of Biblical Terms in your text. For approved renderings, you can choose between light and bright highlighting.
  • You can filter to show only the terms with Guessed renderings.
  • Default permissions allow administrators or consultants to modify the Project Biblical Terms list. An administrator can remove permission for particular users.
  • You can add a phrase to the Project Biblical Terms list.
  • Renderings of Biblical Terms can match morphological parses from the Interlinearizer or Wordlist, which can include infixes.
  • The “Edit Renderings” dialog of the Biblical Terms Tool displays one rendering per line. If a rendering exceeds the width of the dialog, the rendering is NOT wrapped.
  • You can make Paratext recognize reduplication of a word when matching renderings for Biblical Terms.
  • You can include a comma as part of a Biblical Term rendering.
  • The Biblical Terms tool has three panes. The new middle pane displays the renderings, any rendering notes, and any glossary entry for the selected Biblical Term.
  • You can insert rendering discussion notes or rendering descriptions for Biblical Terms.
  • You can sort Biblical Terms so that the Deuterocanonical form of a lemma immediately follows the New Testament form.
  • A new view option allows you to always show all occurrences of a Biblical Term when the Verses filter is set to something other than “All Books”.

Verse History and Compare Texts

  • The Verse History window is similar to Compare Texts.
  • The toolbar has two drop-down lists to select versions to compare.
  • To display the changes that a person made in a particular version, select it in one list and select Baseline in the other list.
  • The toolbar of a Compare Texts window has a button to change the display style. In either the Verse History or the Compare Texts window, a change between one and two panes, or a change to the display style for added and deleted text affects the other window.
  • You can find a word or phrase in a previous version of a project.
  • When you compare two different projects, you can limit the comparison to differences in the verse text of those projects. This is helpful if you want to make sure the text of a translation (such as a Study Bible with additions such as headings, introductions, and footnotes) does not diverge from the text on which it is based.
  • For the Compare Texts window: Tooltips for the navigation arrows refer to a “change” rather than a “difference”; the “Show Only Changed Paragraphs” command on the view menu is now “Hide Unchanged Paragraphs”; the shortcuts to view the Next/Previous Change are different; and the shortcuts to view the Next/Previous Change have been moved to the Edit menu.

Notes

  • Links in the Note editing window allow certain users to replace or merge the changes which Paratext accepted with the changes which Paratext rejected.
  • You can click a button on the toolbar of a Note editing window to see any changes to the text after a merge conflict occurred.
  • You can click a button on the toolbar of a Note editing window to change the display style of the changes to the text after a note was inserted.
  • You can move a note tag icon which, because of changes to the text or verse numbers, has become “detached” from the selected text where it was inserted.
  • You can copy one or more notes from a Notes list window to a word processor document.
  • You can insert a consultant note when the Text Collection window is the active window and a project or resource is displayed in the right-hand pane of the Text Collection.
  • In the Notes list window, the name of the “Changed By” filter (on the “People” drop-down list if you select “New Filter”) is now “Any action by”. The new filter will show you any notes Created by, Resolved by, Assigned by, or Unresolved by the user you select.
  • You can include a hyperlink to Internet web pages in a project note or a consultant note. When a user clicks on the hyperlink, the web page opens on the user’s default browser.

Find and Replace

  • You can restrict the find to the text of your project. That is, you can skip text in places like introductions, headings, notes, and figures.

Send/Receive

  • You can set a schedule to Send/Receive a project (for example, On Startup/Shutdown) as long as that project is not inactive.
  • You can remove yourself from a shared project.
  • To avoid problems with a network drive, you can Send/Receive via Chorus Hub. To download Chorus Hub, navigate to: software.sil.org/chorushub/download.
  • When you Send/Receive your project, Paratext includes many of your project settings in what it copies to your repository.
  • You can permanently remove yourself from a project that is shared via the Internet.
  • When Paratext is first installed, it offers to Send/Receive after registration details are added.
  • Commands to accept or reject the changes Paratext made for a merge conflict (or to merge the sets of changes) were changed to make their effect more clear.
  • It is no longer possible for the Send/Receive of a project to be limited by requiring that the project administrator receive changes first.

Project history

  • If a single computer has different user accounts for different registered Paratext users on a project, when a different user logs on and starts Paratext, Paratext automatically marks a point in project history to accurately identify which users made which changes.
  • Project history filtering has been improved (there are filters to see changes by a particular user or in a particular verse range) and the information in the “table” at the right is now in the pane at the left (the information table has been eliminated).

Transliteration

  • After you download and install SIL Encoding Converters, you can add converters, and then set up a project to display the text of another project with a different writing system.
  • You can have an encoding converter transliterate from the writing system of language A to the writing system of language B or vice versa.
  • New projects are the only projects that can be set up to automatically display the text of another project in a different writing system.
    When you transliterate a project, Paratext will transliterate the text of the project, Biblical Terms renderings, any history of Biblical Terms renderings, and any glossary entries.

Project data normalization

If data in your project uses a mix of composed and decomposed characters (likely due to using different keyboard layouts), you can force all the data to be consistent.

Project types

  • You can create an Auxiliary project. An Auxiliary project is derived from a base translation, but does not need to be registered.

Users, Roles and Permissions

  • A translator can assign a book to him or her self.
  • If a project administrator does not have internet access, he or she can only add a guest user.

Miscellaneous

  • By default, the current verse is highlighted in non-active windows. You can choose between light and bright highlighting.
  • You can change the view of the texts that are displayed in the Text Collection window.
  • From the Advanced submenu of the Tools menu, a translator (who has editing permission) or a project administrator can select Standardize Whitespace to correct errors caused by missing spaces before markers.
  • The Print Draft and Save as RTF commands automatically omit empty chapters.
  • The line spacing for Print Draft is in decimal increments.
  • If you want to insert cross references from a model text, you can use one of three built-in sets of cross references.
  • You can choose a pre-defined custom versification for the Ethiopian or Indonesian canon.
  • You can specify word break characters for scripts which do not normally indicate word division with spaces. Preview view hides the word boundaries. Any other view shows the word boundaries.
  • If you use the Regex Pal command (on the Advanced submenu of the Tools menu), Paratext displays changes in open windows in a similar way to when you Find and Replace.
  • You can find text in the output of a Bible module or find and replace text in the specification file for a Bible module.
  • Paratext displays dates in an international standard year-month-day format: yyyy-mm-dd.
  • You can create and use a TECkit.map file to convert from one Unicode representation to another Unicode representation (for example, you can convert between different scripts).
  • From the Help menu, if you select Check for Updates…, you can see if there is a download in progress. If a download is in progress, a dialog displays the progress of the download and allows you to cancel the download.
  • In the Interlinearizer, you can break a phrase into individual words on a phrase-by-phrase basis or for all occurrences. You no longer have to eliminate any gloss for the phrase.
  • You can reduce the size of your project history, reduce the size of your project repository, rename your project, change your project encoding to Unicode, or change the names of users on the project.
  • You can view the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine text of the New Testament in the Source Language Text window.
  • You can only delete individual books in a project if you are the administrator on that project.
  • The default behavior is for non-standard diacritics to follow the base character.
  • The way to assign books to users and the way to prevent users from editing certain parts of a project is now managed by Paratext automatically if you assign editing tasks to team members.
  • You can have Paratext include screenshots of open Paratext windows when you report a problem.
  • Figures are no longer included by default in Bible Modules, but you can modify the specification if you want to include them.
  • Consultants can temporarily exercise administrator privileges.
  • The appearance of the Project History window has changed. You can see changes made by individual team members, compare changes in individual books to a previous version of the book, and undo selected changes.
  • Consultants have default permission to edit the Project Biblical Terms list, but translators no longer have default permission to edit the Project Biblical Terms list.
  • You can use regular expressions in the filter box of the Notes list window; the Biblical Terms tool; or the Project History dialog.
  • You can prevent users from setting project progress.
  • You can share your language definition information with others.
  • The user interface for choosing a language and for choosing a language identifier for a project has changed.

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