Change Short Name

Question

We will be doing a transliteration into two dialects. The first thing I did was to convert the original project into UTF-8 encoding. In the process I had to assign a new short name. Now I’d like to delete the old project and change the short name of the newly converted one back to the 3-letter Ethnologue code. However, I can’t find any way to do that. The code fields are always grayed-out, both, in Paratext and on the projects registration website.

I’ve searched this support website, but it seems like this question has not been answered before.
Does anyone know how to change the short name?
thnx

Answer 1

I.e. see Guide: Tools > Advanced > Convert Project .

Comments

Hi wdavidhj, yes, that was the procedure I followed for converting the project. But that link doesn’t answer how to change the short name back to what it is supposed to be. Perhaps @Paulus+Kieviet is right, that I will have to do a second conversion again to get the original short name back. However this solution seems like overkill for merely changing a name. So I was wondering if there might be an easier way. Perhaps there is some hidden admin feature that would allow me to do that, (something like the hidden feature to Temporarily Grant Administrator Permission) for consultants.

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If you want to change the Project’s SHORT name back (and presumably
keep your history), then the ONLY way is to run a second conversion.
Sad, but true! I also encourage you to restart Paratext after
deleting the previous (old) project, before the conversion.

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Mark+P:

If you want to change the Project’s SHORT name back (and presumably

keep your history), then the ONLY way is to run a second conversion.

I knew that this was the case. But it’s interesting that there aren’t other avenues open …

I’ve only done one conversion, and, if I remember correctly, it takes ages rewriting files, etc. This seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut when all you want to do is change the Short Name.

I wonder the developers could implement a simpler way, initiated through the PT Registry, perhaps?

To all readers: click to vote for me to submit a Feature Request for this!

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AFAIK, it doesn’t matter how many “Like!” votes you get, as it isn’t
going to make it any easier. The problem is that in order to KEEP THE
HISTORY, the entire history needs to be re-written (with the new code)!
For many years, it was IMPOSSIBLE to every change the short-code. Now
it’s difficult (and low), but at least it IS possible.

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As @Mark+P has stated, because of the fact that some filenames contain the shortname of the project, with the way that Paratext manages files, changing the shortname of a project requires rewriting the entire history of the project to make sure that Project History can display changes correctly.

In addition to this technical requirement, I think it’s also needed to keep people sane - imagine going to the S/R dialog and the names of some of your projects have suddenly changed without warning.

That being said, Paratext could, theoretically, handle changing a shortname without a massive rewrite of the entire history because Mercurial (Paratext’s history backend) does understand the concept of renaming files. Paratext, and possibly the Registry, just don’t currently handle it well.

Answer 2

The only way to change the short name is to use Convert project once more, after you’ve deleted the original project. It may be good to close and restart Paratext after deleting the project, so it’s well and truly gone and you can re-use the name of that project.

Paulus+Kieviet

Answer 3

Ok, thanks for all the replies. I went ahead and did another conversion which solved it.