How do I see what has changed in "Properties and Settings"?

Question

After doing a send/receive with one of our translators, I see that he has made changes to "Properties and Settings" three weeks ago. He probably doesn't remember what he changed. Is there a way to find out what he changed, so that I can review it?

Answer 1

Strictly speaking this is possible using external programs. The learning curve is pretty high, and based on your post mere curiosity probably wouldn't be enough motivation to install and learn the tools. But it's possible.

Paratext's Send/Receive is build on top of another program called mercurial. There is a program called TortoiseHg which you can install and which will let you search the history of each of the files backed up by the Send/Receive process. You can learn about that program using Google if it's something you need.

Note that using TortoiseHg to view the changes is probably fairly benign. However you most definitely don't want to use TortoiseHg to make new changes (something mercurial can do, but which might mess with Paratext's method of recording changes).

Comments

I'm an experienced developer (I first started using version control with sccs on a Sun workstation network in the 1980s), so I was able to use the mercurial client to see what had changed. It turned out to be that he had done some set up of interlinear for himself, with his name added to the <InterlinearConversionCompletedBy> element. So, nothing for me to worry about.

Answer 2

Hi John.

The history would not show you what changes were made (if any changes were made) to a configuration, only the announcement that it opened that configuration. But note that the history will mark a point in the history even if it is only for entering a configuration without making changes. You can test this by opening, for example, the language settings, move through the tabs and then accept. A history point will be recorded.

Some things you may want to consider are:

• Only the Admin role (or the Consultant role with temporary Admin permissions) could make real changes to a configuration.
• The configuration has relatively few options. Perhaps it is enough for an Administrator to look carefully to see if there is anything out of place.
• If it is really important to notice the difference, you could try this: If you haven't already done send/receive on some other computer, or you have a backup, use a program like WinMerge to compare the C:\My Paratext 9 Projects\[Project name]\Setting.xml file of both versions and see the changes. Note: This should be done very carefully and it is best to make a copy of these files to another location on the computer before comparing.

I hope it will be useful,
Pepe.