When does Paratext automatically Mark a Project History Point?

Question

We’re discussing when Paratext automatically marks a history point and aren’t sure. Some people have suggested it is every day you work in Paratext, somebody else suggested it was before every Send/Receive. I checked the Help, but didn’t find the information I was looking for (perhaps I wasn’t looking in the right place?).

Can anybody provide an authoritative answer?

Thank you,

SIL+LSS+PNG

Answer 1

I’ll try give you a fairly exhaustive list of the situations where Paratext will mark a point in project history (in no particular order):

• Before and after restoring files via Backup/Restore
• Before and after migrating from PT7 to PT8
• Before marking glossary entries in the Biblical Terms tool
• Before importing books into a project
• Before copying books into a project
• Before deleting books
• Before showing the Project History window if something has changed
• Before showing the Recent Changes dialog if something has changed
• Before doing a Send/Receive if something has changed
• Before a consultant is granted admin permissions
• Before performing a merge on a Study Bible project
• Before publishing global consultant notes
• Before doing one-way data migration steps on a project for an upgraded Paratext version (rare).
• Before undoing/reverting a change by a user either through Project History or Recent changes
• Before various tools that fix certain problems in a project (mostly hidden commands).
• Before marking the last task of a chapter complete in Project Progress.
• Before a non-admin makes a change to book permissions
• Before and after doing a Find/Replace All
• Before inserting cross references via Tools > Cross References > Insert Cross References
• Before and after archiving a project for DBL
• Before changing to a different registered user
• Before and after using Convert Project
• When the user creates a manual project history point
• After a new file is added to the project (e.g. a new notes file).
• Finally, if no other point has been marked in a given day, one will be created during a normal save if something has changed.

Note that this list is from Paratext 8.0 and may not reflect the situations in other versions.
Although this list was trying to be exhaustive by finding all the locations in the code that create a project history point, it was a quick look and it’s likely I’ve missed some.

Comments

Wow! Thank you for this detailed answer! And thanks to the others for their thoughts too.

SIL+LSS+PNG

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In addition to what anon291708 said, Paratext Live adds marks to project
history when any user starts or joins a session, when any user leaves a
session, when any user clicks the exchange-all-files button, and after
every 2 hours of Paratext Live operation.

PADev.

Project History Point? [Questions]

Answer 2

This isn’t a complete answer to your questions, but this is what the help files in Paratext 8 say:

Paratext automatically marks certain points in the project history, including the following:

• Immediately before and immediately after a Find and Replace has been performed.
• When you set up the project to be shared.
• Just before you revert one or more books.

The following are other times when you might mark a point in the history of your project.

• Before and after making major changes to the text (for example, correcting spelling, or checking biblical terms).
• At significant and memorable points in the project (for example, before a consultant reviews a book, and also after you make changes to the book based on the feedback from the consultant).
• You could even mark a point in history before beginning your work every day as a reference point for each day’s work.

From my own observations:
In Paratext 8, when I looked at Project > Project History, it seems that I can see all send/receives that have changes, and I can click on any books that have changes to jump to them in the compare window. Alternatively, I can click on Tools > Compare Texts, which lets me compare the current text to any version of the text in the past. In the Compare Texts window, you can also see the various stages of the translation, so if you use the Planning tool you can jump to certain points, for example, just after a Consultant Check.

Doing a manual “Mark Point in Project History” simply creates another history point which has a description, as far as I can tell. While it isn’t always easy to find these, it does help you remember those milestones which might be difficult with only dates shown.

Answer 3

Paratext marks points in history when:

1. Any time you do a Send/Receive with any changes (this could be changes to the text as well as changes settings or notes)
2. Before and after a Find/Replace. The point before is made if there have been any changes to the text before the Replace.
3. Any time you open the history after a change has been made to the text. So, if you close history, make a change, and then open history again there will be a new point. However, if you leave history open and make lots of changes they will not be added to the list unless they are Replaces or S/R.

This last item is the primary one - any time a change to the text or settings is made and history is opened there will be a history point. It is a good idea to periodically add a manual point if you want to highlight a particular issue. “Today we are starting work on the Biblical Terms”

Working on Wordlist or other tools will show up in the History after you close and open the window.

If you complete “Progress” this will be noted in the history the next time you open the history.

Comments

I remember discussing the topic of how often to recommend marking points in the project history with one of the developers. What came out of it was to mark important points you might want to go back to, but to balance your idea of what is important by the fact that if you mark points in the history many times per day then the history will become very large and Send and Receive could become difficult in low bandwidth areas.