Unlink daughter project and change to standard

Question

I was wondering if it is possible to unlink a daughter project and change to a standard project in PT8? In the Project, Properties and Settings is greyed out in one test I did, in the other it lets me change the Project Type, but the OK button is still greyed out.

I’m helping a project that needs to unlink the parent/daughter because they found out that the versification for parent and daughter need to be different. What’s the best way to do that in a way that preserves the most information:

1. Convert project to preserve original setup, unlink
2. Backup/Restore to new project, manually export/import spelling, renderings, etc

Thanks,

Stevan

Answer 1

Beware that doing this will break all connections with the base project so they will not be able to easily determine when the base project text is changed (i.e. all the status boxes will be gone). Status boxes are very useful to a derived project so I would make certain that they need to use a different versification before preceding.

That being said, the easiest way to change to a Standard Project without losing anything else is to close Paratext and open the Settings.xml file inside the project folder and change the line:
"<TranslationInfo>Daughter:{baseProj}:{LongString}</TranslationInfo>“
into:
”<TranslationInfo>Standard::</TranslationInfo>".

EDIT: This should only be done by advanced users.

Comments

Thank you! Your suggestion to modify this line in the Settings.xml file seemed to work. I have now been using our project several days with this changed Settings.xml file and everything seems to work fine.

Answer 2

A post was split to a new topic: Can normalization setting be changed without losing all project history

Answer 3

Can this same trick be used to change a Standard project to a Daughter project?

Comments

CrazyRocky:

Can this same trick be used to change a Standard project to a Daughter project?

Yes, this should also work to change a Standard project into a Daughter project. In my example above, the {baseProj} must be the short name/abbreviation of the base project and the {LongString} must be set to the <Guid> entry of the settings file in the base project.

Note that changing between project types is usually not a good idea because of the project registrations from the Paratext Registry. However, because both a Standard project and a Daughter project both have to be registered in the Paratext Registry, this particular scenario works.

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I have changed a Standard project to a Transliteration project using the method listed here, but it is still showing up in the Registry. Other project which were initially created using a project type that was a sub-project of a different project never showed up in the Registry. Is there some way to remove this one I’ve converted?

My main purpose for changing the type was so that it wouldn’t clutter our service groups audits of the different projects under their supervision.

Answer 4

mnjames:

Is there some way to remove this one I’ve converted?

You aren’t able to just delete the entry in the Registry?

Comments

The issue is converting it from a project that has its own registration to one that inherits the registration of it’s base project. I am not sure how I would do that. Since registering a project puts the project on the S/R server, unregistering it usually removes it from the S/R server, I do not want to do that. What I want to do is to transfer the project’s registration to the Base project. So if someone could give us a step by step on how to do this it would be helpful.

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I think that what I would do is the following:
Starting with a Registered Standard Project and changing it to a project that gets its registration from a base. This presumes that the base project has not been registered.

1. Make sure you do S/R of any projects so that you have all the data on your computer.
2. Open the Standard Project and Delete the project (Keep only my project, delete for others, delete registration). This should remove the registration and remove it from the S/R server. You need to have all users remove their copies.
3. Register the Base project, share and do S/R
4. Set the original project to the desired type, share it and S/R.

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anon848905:

You need to have all users remove their copies.

This was the sort of thing that made me worry about just doing this. However based on the replies here I bit the bullet and tried. It appears that anon848905’s instructions work (meaning you don’t have to edit the Settings.xml file manually), and it appears that other users will receive the updated changes without needing to delete their project.

The only thing I didn’t confirm is whether they absolutely need to do a S/R before someone starts this process. My guess is that doing that might be a wise precaution, but probably isn’t necessary.

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mnjames:

The only thing I didn’t confirm is whether they absolutely need to do a S/R before someone starts this process. My guess is that doing that might be a wise precaution, but probably isn’t necessary.

The reason for suggesting that the person doing these steps does a S/R before starting is to insure that they have the latest files from the server. Since the process involves removing the files from the server you want to make sure you have them before you start. Generally it is a good idea to do S/R regularly so it might not be needed if one has been done, but it is just good practice.

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Sorry, my statement was badly worded and didn’t convey what I intended.

I completely agree that the person doing this change ought to do a S/R before deleting the server copy.

What I meant to say is that I don’t think other members need to so a S/R before the administrator does this process.

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mnjames:

What I meant to say is that I don’t think other members need to so a S/R before the administrator does this process.

Just to clarify - before doing a process that involves removing a project from the server, I would highly recommend that everyone on the team do a S/R and the administrator doing the process should be the last to S/R so that they get all the changes from all the team members.

Answer 5

You should be able to delete the entry in the Registry for the project (this will also delete it off the S/R server) and then be able to S/R the project with its new type and everything should just work. Since the project ID and everything else won’t change, all the history should remain intact and users that had the previous version should just be able to S/R to get the updated project type.

Answer 6

Thanks, Sounds like it will work.