Project not listed in Send/Receive

Question

I discovered today that a translator has been working in an unregistered back translation project on his computer (called “RBL” on his computer). I also found out that there is a registered back translation on the server, with a slightly different name (“Rbl” on the server). The registered version is very outdated and it seems like we could just merge all of his local RBL changes into the registered Rbl version to get it up-to-date, except there’s a catch: when he does Send/Receive the “Rbl” project does not show up as being available to him.

Just today I made him both an Administrator for Rbl and has editing rights on all the books, because he’s the project coordinator and also the one doing all the back translation work. In the Paratext Registry his role and permissions are now listed correctly, and his name there matches exactly with his Paratext name on his own computer, but he simply can’t see “Rbl” as a project when he bring up Send/Receive. Any ideas on what might be happening?

Answer 1

We do not allow two projects on the same machine where the names only differ by case. This is mostly a limitation of Windows treating files/folders the same regardless of case.

Note that it’s probably best to create a backup of the RBL project on the translator’s machine before doing the following.
The best way to handle your issue is probably to use Tools > Advanced > Convert Project to rename the RBL project on the translator’s machine and then to delete the RBL project. After that, the Rbl project should appear in the S/R list and can be safely downloaded. You can then use Tools > Compare Texts to copy all his changes over from the newly-named project to the Rbl project.

Comments

Genius. Thanks. That makes sense. Maybe it would be nice if the Send/Receive window at least showed the existence of the “Rbl” project but had it grayed out or something, and with an “alt text” note saying something to the effect of “Project not available due to existing project with similar name”. Without having any feedback whatsoever, there’s no way to track this problem down unless you “just know” about the case limitation in the project names.

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@n8_in_car ,
Just FYI, our current plan is to do the following. I’m afraid I don’t have an estimated time frame for when we’ll get to this, though, since all the existing code will need to be converted to rely more on GUID and less on shortname.

PTX-108: Allow multiple projects with the same short name on one machine

Relax Paratext’s requirements for local projects slightly:

• Proposed: At least one name (short and/or long) must be unique. (Under the hood, always use the GUID.)
• Current: Short name must be unique.