[PT8] Can we change Resource stylesheets? (Can we turn off red letter for words of Jesus?)

Question

EDIT: Paratext 8 Question:

Someone wants to be able to turn off red lettering in the resources that have the words of Jesus marked using \wj … \wj* but since the stylesheet is marked as ‘customised’ in the project properties and settings then it seems changes to usfm.sty are ignored, and in any case it seems not recommended to edit usfm.sty directly. Is there any other way to turn off or adjust stylesheet rules for resources?

Is there anything similar to sewhite’s Resource Font hack?

Answer 1

Which resource are you referring to? If it is the NIV I would actually be happy to make that adjustment to the custom style sheet, since NIV red letter editions are not officially supported by the Committee on Bible Translation. however, some translators may like the feature so I would be hesitant to turn it off without more feed back.

A better solution would be to add a control in PT that would allow the user to turn on and of red lettering.

Comments

Yes on further investigation, it seems that NIV11 and NIV11UK are the only ones that override usfm.sty for the \Color of \wj. Other resources like ESV, NLT use the markup but don’t override usfm.sty so I have been able to change usfm.sty on my machine and I will advise my annoyed consultant friend to do likewise. Of course that may need to be redone every time Paratext updates and wipes out usfm.sty, but that’s OK.

So if you could update the NIV custom style sheet to not touch Color (or anything else) for \wj that would be great. I presume the custom stylesheet just overrides parts of usfm.sty but I obviously can’t look at it myself since it’s wrapped up in the password-protected p8z zip file.

Perhaps rather than a tick box for red letter, a more sustainable feature in Paratext would be some way of providing a supplementary .sty file that can override anything provided in the resource zip. It’s possible there may be other things that we need to change too.

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rowbory:

so I have been able to change usfm.sty on my machine and I will advise my annoyed consultant friend to do likewise.

You didn’t mention a Paratext version, but definitely do not do this in Paratext 7! It will be propagated to everyone via S/R across different projects.

It should be okay to do this in Paratext 8 (but is still not recommended for consistency reasons across projects).

EDIT: Noticed that you mentioned a p8z file, so it’s probably PT8.

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Yes, Paratext 8. And yes, I’ve always been very wary of editing usfm.sty given its use across all projects. But there seems no other provision for changing this behaviour of resources at least in PT8.

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I think it would definitely be preferable without the red letters. Red letter contrast is poorer and thus harder on older eyes for some older MTTs with not so good eyesight any more.

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A possible solution would be to allow a custom.sty stylesheet to be placed in a resource folder. This would allow for other viewer choices as well and would not affect usfm.sty. Since this is the standard supported way of changing usfm behavior for any other project, I wouldn’t foresee complications and would hope it wouldn’t be too difficult to implement.
Blessings Shegnada

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I like Shegnada’s suggestion, but with the following observation.

The actual .p8z files are stored together in a _Resources folder. Just dropping a custom.sty into that directory wouldn’t work, so possibly you could name them to match the resource name, e.g. ESVUS16.sty.

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You would want the name to include custom as well as the resource id since we want a stylesheet that only overrides specific things, not a total replacement of the resource’s stylesheet. That would be harder to get permission for and open things up for more problems.

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I want to echo ChrDre’s comment. Reading red on a computer screen is very
difficult for some of us who have color perception issues. Leave the
markup, but we don’t need to see red in Paratext.

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ChrDre:

I think it would definitely be preferable without the red letters. Red letter contrast is poorer and thus harder on older eyes for some older MTTs with not so good eyesight any more.

And for those people who do want to see the words of Jesus in red (which probably doesn’t include me), is there at least a way the developers could change the shade of the colour? In printed Bibles, the colour is more brown than red (to my eye), and this dark shade makes it easier to read. Why does PT show it in bright red? (It looks like colour #FF0000, aka RGB 255, 0, 0)

Answer 2

Casting my vote as well for the ability to turn off red letters in 8.1.

Comments

You should actually “cast your vote” by filling out the survey found at Survey of needs to edit PT8 resources

Answer 3

Related to this would be the ability to turn off the pink font color of glossary entries:

Answer 4

rowbory:

Is there anything similar to sewhite’s Resource Font hack?

This link is broken – I mean it doesn’t try to go anywhere, despite the fact that the mouse cursor changes to a hand when I hover over it. Does anyone know what happened to it?

Comments

[Link Removed]