How do I make a customized Biblical Terms list?

Question

For a project with short name XYZ, you can make a customized Biblical Terms list by adding terms, adding phrases, and/or removing terms from the “XYZ Project Biblical Terms” list. Here are the steps:

1. Have the project administrator follow the instructions in [How do I associate a Biblical Terms list with a project?](http://support.paratext.org/t/how-do-i-associate-a-biblical-terms-list-with-a-project/443) to associate "XYZ Project Biblical Terms" with the project.
   Initially, "XYZ Project Biblical Terms" does not contain any terms.
2. Click in the window of project XYZ to make it the active window.
3. Add a term or phrase in one of the ways listed in [How do I add a term or phrase to the Project Biblical Terms list from the List window?](http://support.paratext.org/t/how-do-i-add-a-term-or-phrase-to-the-project-biblical-terms-list-from-the-list-window/311)
   Briefly, those ways are:
   • Select the star to the left of a term or terms in a Biblical Terms list in the Biblical Terms tool.
   • Right-click a lemma in a Source Language Text and add it to the Project Biblical Terms for XYZ.
   • Open the Source Language Search Tool and use search results to add a term or phrase to Project Biblical Terms for XYZ.
   • Use search results in the List window to add a term or phrase to Project Biblical Terms for XYZ.
4. To remove terms from the XYZ Project Biblical Terms list, follow the instructions in [How do I remove terms from a Project Biblical Terms list?](http://support.paratext.org/t/how-do-i-remove-terms-from-a-project-biblical-terms-list/518)

You can also add to XYZ Project Biblical Terms by converting from an existing My Biblical Terms list.
How do I convert My Biblical Terms list to a Project Biblical Terms list?

By default, all administrators and consultants on a project can add terms to or remove terms from the Project Biblical list. However, the project administrator can prevent an individual consultant or administrator from being able to modify a Project Biblical Terms list or can allow an individual translator to modify a Project Biblical Terms list.

See also:

• [Introduction to Biblical Terms lists](http://support.paratext.org/t/introduction-to-biblical-terms-lists/152)
• [What Biblical Terms lists are built-in to Paratext?](http://support.paratext.org/t/what-biblical-terms-lists-are-built-in-to-paratext/458)
• [How do I prevent a user from modifying the Project Biblical Terms list?](http://support.paratext.org/t/how-do-i-prevent-a-user-from-modifying-the-project-biblical-terms-list/500)

Answer 1

Thank you for helping!!
I have no filters turned on (set to “All Terms”) except that it is set to “current verse”. and the missing terms are in the current verse.
And the current verse is in a book that has been there for many years.
They are terms I added previously to the Project BT List, probably in some former version of PT, not terms I added recently.

image.png793×350 31.1 KB

If you compare the two screenshots, you will see that for example the term σκανδαλιζω is missing in the Project BT List open in the Renderings Window, even though it has a yellow star in front of it in the All BT List in the BT Tool.
That mystifies me, and it isn’t the only example, there are a considerable number of these.

There is no difference, whether I open the Project BT List in the Renderings Window or in the BT Tool.
Thanks.

Comments

One thing that the Biblical Terms tool is very sensitive to is that all \id
lines (first line in every book) be identical except for the three letter
book code. And the book code must be Paratext’s three letter code that you
see in the dropdown list on the menu. I anon421222’t know if that will fix your
problem but it is worth making sure that the project’s “Full Name” in
Project Properties and Settings and the \id lines match for all books. The
\id line for Matthew, for example should look like this:
\id MAT - Full Name

A problem can occur if team members edit the \id line of a book unknowingly
(changing it to \id Matiu, for example, or changing the full name because
now it’s a Bible), or if they change the Full Name in the project
properties without also correcting the \id lines to match it.

Blessings,
Shegnada J.

Blessings,
Shegnada J.
Language Technology & Publishing Coordinator, SIL Nigeria
Complex Script Layout Specialist, GPS Dalls
Skype: Shegnada.james.

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This seems to be a cross between some unexpected behavior and a bug.

When a star is filled, a copy of the term is copied to the Project Biblical Terms List. This is not a link. What happened in your case is that the occurrences of the term must have changed between when you originally copied them to the Project Biblical Terms list and now. The reason, for example, that they are not showing when filtered by current verse, is that the reference for that verse is not in your copy of the term.

However, there is also a bug at play where removing the star and adding it back does not re-copy the term’s information into the Project Biblical Terms list. The only way I got this to work is to remove the term, close and re-open the Biblical Terms tool, and re-add the term back to the Project Biblical Terms list. I’ve written up this bug in our tracking system.

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Thanks. But there is definitely nothing
wrong with my \id lines and book names. All my Scripture
reference links work, SAB can take my books to build apps etc.
All the \toc1-3 are correct as well. Otherwise there would be
other things not working either. It is just the BT lists which
are not.

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Thank you for pointing that out. What a long
way round, but far better than it not working at all. Deselecting the term, closing the BT Tool and
reopening it, reselecting the All BT List, then reselecting the
term, does fix it, but only IF you also select the term FIRST
and THEN edit the rendering of it. I would have expected the
term to be copied to the Project BT List even just by selecting
it from the list, irrespective of whether and when you edit the
rendering of it. Currently it MUST be editing right after
selecting it, or it still won’t get copied.

    Also, I checked: the reference for the verse

for that term is NOT missing in the All BT list. There I can
check them all without bother. It just doesn’t transfer them to
the Project BT List, when selected.

blhaophfdaiobfdj.png569×639 38.6 KB

    Thanks for reporting the bug and working it

out. It will be great, once this works properly!

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Sorry to say I’ve discovered a similar problem early this week as I was teaching a workshop. It was run in Bahasa, so we used the Major Biblical Terms list provided by Margreet Kroneman in Indonesian. It is a huge asset for this team who doesn’t speak English, because it provides the BT in Bahasa Indonesia. I imported it into the team’s project’s BT List and it works great with this one glitch:
If you fill out the renderings list, even with the exact form that is in the corresponding verse, the tick (for rendering present) in the list does not appear until you go to the next verse and back again, or to the main BT Tool and back. That isn’t exactly prescribed behavior, either, is it.

image.png932×225 30.9 KB

See the screenshot: the renderings in the list are in the text, but there is no tick.

Answer 2

How does one make a distributable Biblical terms list that can be shared by multiple projects in a region or entity?

Comments

You can create a new Project Biblical Terms list by:

1. As described above
2. As described in the How do I add a term or phrase to the Project Biblical Terms list from the List window topic
3. By manually creating Terms via Edit > Add Biblical Term from the Biblical Terms tool (you must be viewing a Project Biblical Terms list for the menu item to be available).

Then to distribute them, you can:

1. Point the other projects to use another project’s Project Biblical Terms list in Project > Project Properties and Settings > Associations tab > Biblical Terms List. This has the advantage that any changes to the list will be seen by the other projects, but it requires having both projects be available to everyone on both projects.
2. Copy the file (ProjectBiblicalTerms.xml) to the other project folders. This has the advantage that each project can then customize the list further to their needs.
3. [Not recommended, but possible]
   Rename the ProjectBiblicalTerms.xml file and copy it to the Paratext settings directory (i.e. My Paratext Projects or My Paratext 8 Projects). This has the advantage that several projects can see the same list and will get the changes to the list at the same time and people anon421222’t all need to be a part of the same project. However, because the list does not belong to any project, it will never be S/R’d to other projects and must be manually copied to everyone that needs the list each time an update is made.

(Note that the Biblical Terms List chosen for a project should be selected in Project > Project Properties and Settings > Associations tab > Biblical Terms List to ease use)

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The SIL Base plan calls for checks of Money, Weights and other Measures. A Biblical terms list including these items is needed. If someone were to make such a list, how could it be included in the distribution of Paratext. Alternatively, if we had fully populated categories for Money, Weights and other Measures in the Major terms list that would meet the need. Currently, the Major terms lists has a money category but it is not very complete and the other needed categories are not on the list.

Answer 3

In the past, I added the whole Major Biblical Terms list to my Project Biblical Terms List and then added some selected terms from the All Biblical Terms list by clicking the star to the left of the term, to also be part of the Project Biblical Terms List.
However, now when I want to edit some of these terms’ renderings in the Renderings window (which runs the default I set under Properties, Associations, to Project Biblical Terms List), the terms I previously added to the Project’s BT List from the All B Terms List, do not appear in the Project’s list, even though, when I open the All B Terms List separately, from the Tools menu, they are still marked as being in the Project’s BT List.

Deselecting and re-selecting the term using the star on the left makes no difference.

Now the only way I can add a term from the All Biblical Terms List to the Project’s Biblical Terms LIst is, if I first click the star, then edit the rendering in the All Biblical Terms list (the order is a must, the opposite way round it won’t work), and this will only work for terms in the All BT List that were not previously selected to be in the Project’s Biblical Terms List.
Terms that I selected in the past, cannot be made to appear in the Project’s BT List any more.

Restarting PT or the BT List makes no difference. Closing the renderings window or opening the Project BT List in the separate BT Tool also makes no difference. I cannot make those previously marked terms appear in the Project’s BT List. In fact, I even tried adding them as a new term from the search from the SLT. Even then it complains, saying the term is already there, which however it isn’t.

Is this a bug, or what do I need to do to make it work?

Comments

You anon421222’t by any chance have a filter tuned on? I am trying to replicate
your directions in PT 8.0.100.50 and can’t seem to make it fail, but I may
not be doing exactly what you are seeing.

anon848905
Americas Area Language Technology Coordinator
[Email Removed]
[Phone Removed]Office at JAARS)
[Phone Removed]Cell)
Skype name: anon848905

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anon295619:

Is this a bug, or what do I need to do to make it work?

The Biblical Terms tool has an always-on, implicit filter applied that filters out terms that do not appear in any of the books in the project.
Do the “missing” terms only occur in books that are not yet in your project?

Answer 4

anon295619 - very strange. I can get the same result if in the Project Properties and Settings I associate a different project list with the Biblical Terms. When I do this and then mark those terms with stars they show up in my list and have stars, but if I add any new terms they anon421222’t show up in my list because the list is actually based off another project.

Please verify that the list selected in Properties is the project list and not the list from another base project.

Answer 5

Please use Help > Report a problem to report the issue to us - ideally right after the problem occurs.

Answer 6

anon295619 - I do not see this behavior in PT8.0.100.50. When I open the Terms Renderings window and edit the rendering the check mark appears immediately.

As anon291708 says, it is best for this type of problem to use Help > Report a Problem so that the developers can see your data.

It is also very helpful when people are reporting an issue on this support site to indicate what version of Paratext is having the problem.