Note tags and icons got lost during creation of new project [solved]

Question

I did not mark this post as a “question”. It might be a bug-report, unless I will find out that we did something wrong. [edit and spoiler: It was NOT a bug; we overlooked a feature; read the entire thread to know it all; this is now tagged as a “question” and the title is marked as “solved”; all is well]

Recently a project was forked: A local “Backup project to file” and then a local “Restore project from file” with the option “New Project”. All files were selected in the process of creating the new project, as proposed by PT, including what was listed as “Note Tags [date and hour]”. The new project is properly registered and works fine so far.

But today the team has noticed* that all special notes are no longer tagged as before. In the project the special tags are gone. The notes themselves are fine. But all those that had special tags and icons are showing a blanc space (in the Notes List window) where normally the icon would be.

I have done some digging:
We have presently a new file CommentTags.xml which is almost empty. Looks like PT did not find it after the fork and created a new blank one with only the default red-flag. (Project is currently using PT 9.3.103.7.)

We still have access to the former file CommentTags.xml with our special tags and icons. (This is from a PT9 version which was “the latest” around autumn 2022.)

I found this related question (about PT7)

Import note tags Questions

Hi, I was wondering if there is a straightforward way to import a set of note tags into a project? For example, if a consultant has a basic set of note tags that he would like to use on all the projects he checks, is there a simple way to import them, or does he need to recreate them in all the projects? I have experimented (In Paratext 7) with copying the CommentTags.xml file into a project directory, and then opening the note tags in Project properties, and it seemed to work, but I wasn’t su…

where the user is being encouraged with " Copying the CommentTags.xml file should not cause any issues."

Since we are now in PT9, latest version, I want to ask for similar encouragement, before I do the grafting- or splicing-process. Can I replace the the new incomplete file with the old and complete CommentsTags.xml?

I did a file-compare on both XML files and find that the structures are fully similar. Just the old file has got more entries. I would risk it.

Thank you for your thoughts.

TL/DR:

Note about a possible plan B: I know how to manually create new tags and select icons in the project properties “notes” tab. I know the Names and the Icons and the Templates from our notes on notes. I just fear that different Tag-IDs might get assigned, if I re-create the old system from the PT GUI. There are certain IDs missing from the old XML file, which is telling me that the team must have deleted certain tags in the past. So I have considered this, as possibly “safer” than to hack XML-files. But as the IDs are not accessible via the GUI, I do not really like this plan B.

*Today we had an occation where user X sent some notes to user Y, as in the past, requesting that an entire batch of edits should be entered into the PT main project, including changes-of-spelling for certain key terms. This was the moment, when the team discovered that their special tags and icons had gone missing.

User X is very qualified for linguistic-observations and for discussing such issues with the team. Then such fundamental edits in PT are always handled by team-member Y, who has got a good feel for PT, and for how to enter what type of changes; especially if they concern more than one verse.

There used to be a special tag and icon for such work, between user X and user Y.

Those tags and icons (about 10) are important to the team and project; they are part of the work-flow and really help to not drown in red-flags. There are many notes in total, so it matters that they can filter and know what is what.

Answer 1

Close Paratext before making any changes to files in the Paratext project folder!
You can safely copy the old CommentsTags.xml to the new project. If you are concerned, then I would suggest that in the new project folder you change the original file to something like CommentTags.old. That way you can always change the extension and get back to where you were.
Here is a quick video about the process for making sure you get the notes tags when you restore a project:

NOTE when I did the restore I also selected the “Settings” and this may change settings that have just been added to the project.

Please note that the best way to “fork” a PT8 or PT9 project is to use the Project Settings > Advanced > Convert Project tool. This keeps all of the history and other information in the project. If you have a lot of history, this process can take a long time.
If the project is coming from PT7 then you would need to use the Backup/Restore process that you are using and you would lose the history.

Answer 2

Thank you muchly @anon848905. I just did the fix and it worked.

It will take a few send-receive from several team-computers to see if we get any side-effects. I am not worried about those few. (Remember, the problem was discovered during a full batch of actual work.)

I suspect, with some experimenting from this morning (where I had created one new tag for testing, we might have some “funny” notes that were entered as today-ID2 and will now show as new ID2 which is really good-old ID2 from before the fork.

I had done a local backup of the PT project.
I had created a milestone.
I had shut down PT.

Answer 3

Separate answer about the cause of the problem:

I am grateful to @anon848905 for taking the time to create a video. For my own benefit, I will add in words, how our problem has happened:

From 1:31 in the video it is visible what the procedure looks like in detail: When “restoring project from file” with option “new project” PT9 does propose to not use the former “Note Tags” but is proposing to create a fresh set.

I am not critizising PT for this feature, the developers must have had reasons to operate the procedure like this. Maybe a note in the help-column on the right, would orient the users about this issue. (Forking a project or changing an NGO is so rare, that nobody can learn and retain such details, even if they were once mentioned during some training.)

As a user and project-supporter I would not have over-ruled a proposal by PT, during the nerve-wracking process of making a fork.

Until this morning, I had never know about the file called CommentTags.xml, although the project in question is making good use of their own custom set of tags and icons. Again, as I have written elsewhere, I love the way PT is written in modular fashion and with readable XML-files.

I doubt there will be another fork in the next 20 years, but maybe this could help other teams. Or it will serve us in the future, when we encounter mild after-shocks and want to look up what went down in March of 2023 with the notes.

I will edit the first paragraph of my question, will clarify that this is not about a bug, and will mark my question as solved.

Also I thank @anon848905 for the un-asked bonus information that there is a better way altogether for making project forks.