Paratext

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New Paratext Live Server

Paratext has a feature called Paratext Live that lets a group of users edit the same document at the same time, keeping their versions up to date on each computer as they work together.  This can be used, for instance, when a group is discussing a text, allowing several people to edit the text and improve on each other’s changes, evaluating the result together before agreeing on the best translation.  This is similar to the kind of collaborative editing found in editing environments like Google Docs.

Unfortunately, some performance limitations in the Paratext Live server have made this feature less useful than we wish.  We have now written a new Paratext Live server that has important advantages over the earlier one:

  • It is much faster
  • It can handle more simultaneous users
  • It is easier for us to support

Both Paratext 8 and Paratext 9 now use the new Paratext Live server.  To use the new server, Paratext 8 must use 8.0.100.87 or newer and Paratext 9 must use 9.0.100.5 or newer.

Older versions of Paratext 8 and Paratext 9 can still use Paratext Live, using the old server, but they cannot use the new server.  If you want to use Paratext Live regularly, we encourage you to upgrade to the current version.  We also encourage you to make sure other people on your team upgrade to the new version – if team members are using different Paratext Live servers, they will not be visible to each other.   Each member will see only the team members who are using Paratext Live on the same server they are using.

If you start a Paratext Live session and you can’t get everyone into the same session, please check everyone’s version numbers to make sure they are on the same server.

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Paratext 9 is now released!

We are pleased to announce that the Paratext 9 final release is now available on the Paratext download page. Paratext 9 will help translators work more efficiently through improved menus and window layouts, and by providing easier access to reference materials through Enhanced Resources. The Paratext 9 beta has been available since mid-June, and has been used in active translation projects and translator’s workshops, where it has been well-received.

Why switch to Paratext 9?

Paratext 9 is the current released version, which will be continuously improved. Some people upgrade simply because they like to use the latest and greatest software, others prefer to wait. You should try Paratext 9 now if you:

  • want to try the new, improved, user interface.
  • want to organize your work environment flexibly, making it easier to put the
    tools you need wherever you want them to be.
  • want to try Enhanced Resources, which turn gateway language translations into source texts with direct links to the source language text, source language dictionaries, encyclopedia-length articles, and images.
  • want to be able to find resources more easily using filters and search criteria.
  • want to use Paratext on more than one screen.
  • want to use a powerful and flexible new Parallel Passages tool.

How hard is it to learn Paratext 9?

The user experience of Paratext 9 is quite different from Paratext 8, with a new approach to menus and window layout. Most users who have learned Paratext 9 find it more logical than Paratext 8. Most of the tools in Paratext 9 are unchanged, so the core experience should remain familiar. Based on our usability testing, field testing, workshops, and user feedback, we expect experienced users to be able to learn the differences in an hour or two, whereas users who usually require support will be able to learn the differences in less than a day of active use. Please take the time to review the following guide to help you get started:

Introducing Paratext 9

Can I keep using Paratext 8?

As long as Paratext 8 is still supported, you do not have to switch to Paratext 9. We know that some teams are slow to adopt new versions, so we will continue to support Paratext 8 for a long period after Paratext 9 is fully released, giving people time to adapt and learn the new version.

You can also continue to use Paratext 8 while you try out Paratext 9. Just don’t open them both at the same time. If you already have Paratext 8 on your computer, the installer does not remove it.

If other members of your project are using Paratext 8, you can do Send/Receive with Paratext 9 on the same project.

Thanks to our translators!

We hope that Paratext 9 will be a blessing to translators worldwide. Many of you have helped us design and test Paratext 9, trying out early versions on your translation projects to help us create a tool that will work in the real world. We believe in the work you are doing, and everything we do is motivated by our desire to support you in that work. Paratext 9 is our gift to you for the work you are doing.

The Paratext development team

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Applying a Project Plan to your Existing Project

Applying a Project Plan to an existing project is one of the biggest frustrations for teams that are starting to use the Project Plan to manage assignments and keep track of their progress.  You may have a dozen books that are already consultant checked and some that have already been printed.  Yet, when you or your administrator applies a new plan to your project, you find that you are unable to mark tasks as done for work that is already completed.  The Stages Table provides a simple grid (below) that is supposed to make this easy, but as you will soon see, it doesn’t work as expected.

With a single click, the administrator can check off all the tasks in a stage as being complete.  Let’s suppose that Genesis has already been consultant checked and printed.  We want to mark all six stages as having been completed.  We start by marking Drafting as complete:

Now all the tasks in the drafting stage have been marked as complete for the book of Genesis. Next, we can mark Team Checking as complete (At the time of this writing there seems to be a bug.  You may have to click outside of the Assignments and Progress window and then back inside the window before you can mark the next stage as complete). After we do this for the first three stages in our sample project, we are suddenly blocked.  In the image below, Paratext says that we have over 4,000 issues to resolve in Genesis before we can mark the consultant check as being completed!

This is where the frustration begins.  Genesis has already been checked and completed in Paratext 7 a while ago, and the team does not have the time to go back over everything. What can they do?!

Fortunately, we have recently discovered a workaround to resolve this problem. It is the perfect solution for applying a project plan to a project that has existing text.

How to mark tasks complete for previous work

The reason that Paratext won’t let you proceed is that the automatic checks have discovered problems that are supposed to be resolved before the stage can be marked complete.  Often these are things like missing Biblical term renderings or unknown spelling status for words.  You may, in fact, want to revisit these before your final publication, but not now!  You just want Paratext to show the correct status for the book of Genesis, and any others that have been completed.  The project administrator can bypass these error messages and correctly mark the completed stages in three simple steps:

  1. Temporarily turn off automated checks
  2. Use the Stages Table to mark the completed stages for existing books
  3. Turn the automated checks back on

Temporarily turn off automated checks

Go to the Project Plan on the menu.

Paratext 8: Project -> Project Plan -> Checks tab
Paratext 9: Project -> Project Settings -> Project Plan -> Checks tab

Make a note of each check and the stage at which it is set to run.  You can take a screenshot using PrtScn (Print Screen) and paste it into a Word document, or you can write it down on paper.

Once you have made note of all the settings there, set them all to “None”:

Save the new settings by clicking the OK button.

Use the Stages Table to mark the completed stages for existing books

The stages table is found by clicking on the blue icon for Assignments and Progress and selecting Stages Table from the dropdown menu. You will now be able to use the Stages table to mark the actual stage of completed books.  You will not receive any messages about errors in the text that need to be resolved.

Turn the automated checks back on

You must now set the automated checks back the way they were.  Although the checks will continue to signal errors in the books that you have marked as complete, it will not undo the progress that you have marked.  This is important.  We don’t want to hide any issues that may need to be resolved in the future.  For now, your project’s progress will be correctly indicated and you can address things like global spelling issues before the next publication.

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Paratext 9 Beta is Now Available

We are pleased to announce that Paratext 9 is now available as a beta version. Paratext 9 will help translators work more efficiently, creating better layouts, and providing easier access to reference materials through Enhanced Resources. It has already gone through a lot of testing and users have been very happy with it. You may encounter some minor problems that we aren’t aware of yet, so there will continue to be some minor changes over the next couple months as we work towards the official release. However, we are confident that it is stable enough for everyday use.

Should you use the Paratext 9 Beta?

Yes, if you:

  • want to try new UI features that let you organize your work environment to simplify your work.
  • want to try Enhanced Resources for easier access to Greek and Hebrew, encyclopedia-length articles, images, and media from a gateway language translation.
  • have good computer skills or support from people who do.
  • are willing to take the time to report bugs promptly.
  • are connected to the Internet frequently to receive updates.

You can download the Paratext beta from the Paratext 9 download page. Double click the downloaded file to launch the installer. The installer will then guide you through a short installation procedure.

You can continue to use Paratext 8 while you try out Paratext 9. Just don’t open them both at the same time. If you already have Paratext 8 on your computer, the installer does not remove it. If other members of your project are using Paratext 8, you can do Send/Receive with Paratext 9 on the same project. We know that some teams are slow to adopt new versions, so we will continue to support Paratext 8 for a long period after Paratext 9 is fully released, giving people time to adapt and learn the new version.

The user experience of Paratext 9 is quite different from Paratext 8, with a new approach to menus and window layout. Based on our user interface testing and user feedback, we expect experienced users to be able to learn the differences in an hour or two, whereas users who usually require support will be able to learn the differences in less than a day of active use. Please take the time to review the following guide to help you get started:

Introducing Paratext 9

We hope you enjoy it!

The Paratext development team

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Normalization of Unicode Text in Paratext

Paratext Now Gives Users Control over Normalization

A recent update has added a new normalization setting.

We are recommending that users review this setting and determine if a change should be made for their projects.

The majority of projects migrated from Paratext 7 will have normalization set to “Off”.  This might not be the best setting for your project.  The rest of this article describes in very brief form what Unicode normalization is, and the meaning of the three available settings for it.  It will be up to you to determine what the best setting for your project.

Brief description of Unicode Normalization

Unicode normalization  is the process of establishing the rules for how characters that can be represented in more than one way under the Unicode standard should be represented in a given project. Lack of consistency in how these characters are represent in a Paratext project leads to problems with searches and filters not working as expected, and can cause poor looking publications.

For those not so familiar with Unicode issues, I think an example will help. The letter “e” with an acute accent, “é” can be generated by the computer using one Unicode point (U+00E9), or with the normal “e” (U+0065) plus the acute accent (U+0301).  The problem is when there is a mixture of these two representations in the same Paratext project.  To humans  all the “é” are the same, but to Paratext they are different.  Therefore if one searches for the code point (U+00E9), the search will not find any of the words where “é” has been represented by the normal “e” (U+0065) plus the acute accent (U+0301).   The first representation is known as “composed” since the two parts of the character are joined or composed into a single character.  The second representation is known as “decomposed”, since it is split into two parts or decomposed.

Normalization Control added to Project Properties and Settings

The Project Properties settings dialogue now has a normalization select box. (Line 4 in the screen capture shown here.) The user could not control how normalization was done in earlier versions of Paratext 8.

Normalization

Normalization Feature

The normalization feature has three choices: 1) Off (no normalization), 2) Composed characters (NFC), and 3) Decomposed characters (NFD).

Normalization Feature

Normalization: Off

The default choice for projects migrated from Paratext 7 is “Off”.  When this is selected, Paratext will not attempt to change the character codes in anyway.  It will accept whatever is typed in even if some computers on a team are using composed characters (NFC) and others are using decomposed (NFD).

Normalization: Composed

Selecting “Composed” will tell Paratext that whenever a character is typed in as decomposed (NFD) it should change it to composed when possible.  Characters that do not have a composed form available will of course be left as decomposed.  If it should happen that a decomposed character is entered, Paratext will change it to its composed form the next time the project is saved. Characters will be consistent in the sense that every specific character will only have one form in the project.

Normalization: Decomposed

Selecting “Decomposed” will tell Paratext that whenever a character is typed in as composed (NFC) it should change it to decomposed if a decomposed representation exists. If it should happen that a composed character is entered where a decomposed form exists, Paratext will change it to its decomposed form the next time the project is saved. Characters will be consistent in the sense that any character that could be represented by a decomposed form will be.

Normalization Defaults

The default normalization setting for new projects is “Composed”.  Since this is a new feature, it is recommended that you consider if your project needs normalization or not and if so which kind would be appropriate.

The default normalization setting for existing projects is “Off”.  When the feature was added to Paratext 8, the upgrade did not attempt to automatically set normalization.  Nor did it prompt you to make a choice. If you use accented characters or have a custom keyboard, then it is recommended that you take the time to set the normalization in a fashion appropriate for your language.

Which Normalization Should I Use?

It is beyond the scope of this article to give all reasons about whether to use composed or decomposed characters.  Your organization should provide guidance on this issue.  If you would like to see an example of thinking through these issues, you can go to the following link and read about the decision that was made about encoding in Cameroon:

https://langtechcameroon.info/composed-characters/

The important thing from a Paratext perspective is to be consistent and always represent a character the same way.  Software uses the underlying codes and not the appearance of characters when doing its work.

Conclusion

Maintaining consistent representation of characters will ensure that searches in Paratext will find all the relevant words.  Specifying the appropriate normalization for your project can also avoid some formatting problems that can occur during publishing.

Specifying a normalization for a project has the added benefit that the differences between the keyboards in a team are less important. One computer can be using composed characters, while another uses decomposed and Paratext will automatically make the data consistent for you.

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