Looking for existing language data

Question

Does anybody know why this is showing up when you go to File > Open Notes… and open the notes for a project?

Answer 1

This happens any time a language is referenced that Paratext does not know about. Usually this happens only when viewing notes that have some text marked up in a different language and there are no projects on your machine that reference that language. In this case, Paratext will look at the SIL Locale Data Repository to determine if there is any existing information about the language online.

I do see a potential problem in that it does not seem to cache any language it finds after contacting the SLDR so if you don’t ever create the language in Paratext or get a project with the language, then it will always contact the SLDR.

Comments

I just tried to create a new note in a project and formatted it in a particular language. Then I deleted any resources/projects using that language. After closing Paratext, reopening it, and then going to File > Open Notes… for that project, I still did not see the Looking for existing language data… message. So I have still not been able to recreate this problem experienced by one of our translators.

I am also wondering if there is any way to easily find notes with text marked up in a problem language like this.

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Yes, if you ever had the language on your machine, it’s cached in the C:\ProgramData\SIL\WritingSystemRepository\3 folder (that’s why you were unable to reproduce it).

There isn’t a good way to search for them, unfortunately.

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The user with this problem just switched to a new computer, and it is only on that computer that the problem occurs. Would copying all the files from the C:\ProgramData\SIL\WritingSystemRepository\3 folder on the old computer to the same location on the new computer solve the problem?

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Yes, I would expect doing that would fix the problem. Just make sure not to overwrite anything already there (as there is a chance that the copied files might be out-of-date).

Answer 2

I have a similar issue as anon716631 (setting up a new machine for a user) and when LOADING Paratext it sits there for a full 2 minutes while it has “Looking for existing language data…” on the progress bar. This seems very strange to me - especially on a brand new i7 with 8GB RAM. Usually Logos is sluggish to load, but that comes up in 20-30 seconds, whereas PT9 is still taking 2+ mins. I’ve evn tried updating to the latest Beta 9.0.100.11 but it didn’t change anything.
It looks like I’ll have to copy the WritingSystemRepository folder over from the previous machine…
But surely we should be doing something smarter than querying the SLDR every time we open Paratext! Nudge, nudge… Scott D also reported this in Sep 2018.with PTXS-17507.

Edit: Yes, copying the WritingSystem folder from the old machine to the new SOLVED the issue for me too. I’m hoping we can automate this in future.