Sil Converters in PT8 on Linux

Question

Is it possible to use SIL Converters with ParaTExt 8.0 on Linux?

I’d like to create a transliteration project that uses SIL Converters to transliterate from the base text of another project, but maybe this isn’t possible in Linux.

I’m on Ubuntu 16.04 and have installed the package fieldworks-enc-converters (4.0.7+trusty1), but I don’t see an equivalent package for ParaTExt.

anon317109

Answer 1

I’ve afraid there isn’t a enc-converters package available for Xenial/16.04.

In the past Paratext has always used the enc-converters package, which was actually a problem as it conflicted with the fieldworks-enc-converters package (which meant that one couldn’t have fieldworks installed and enc-conveters at the same time)

Give the unavailability of enc-converters, and the conflict problem, it likely makes sense to switch paratext to using the fieldworks-enc-converters package.

If you are happy using a terminal/command line you can actually do this manually (until an updated PT package with this change is avaliable):

Switch Paratext to use fieldworks-enc-converters.

Assuming fieldworks-enc-converters package is installed.

(if you haven’t already) Start Paratext once on the system then close it.

In a terminal:

cd ~/.config/paratext/registry/LocalMachine/software

gedit sil/silencconverters40/values.xml

Replace the entire file this:

<values>
<value name="RootDir"
type="string">/usr/lib/fieldworks</value>
<value name="PluginDir"
type="string">/usr/lib/fieldworks/EC/Plugins</value>
<value name="DeveloperPluginDir"
type="string">/usr/lib/fieldworks/EC/Plugins</value>
</values>

(of the contents of this pastebin https://pastebin.com/9ADbnGY9)

Save file and close gedit.

mkdir wow6432node

cp -R sil wow6432node/

#########

Please note the encoding converters Help/About tab did not display correctly when I did this. (Possibly because I lacked some FW package)

Comments

Thanks!

This seems to be working, at least I can get further through the process than before. Now I think I just need to work out how to add specific converters to the repository.

Answer 2

Paratext on Linux versions 8.0.1.12 or newer automatically works with fieldworks-enc-converters
(8.0.1.12 was made available 2017-06-23) The current stable version is 8.0.1.14