Issues getting a transliteration project to work

Question

I am trying to navigate my first transliteration project.

Background information
The team is starting typesetting, and has major Unicode problems. The project was converted to Unicode incorrectly, in such a way that the hacked font was converted into a Unicode hacked font, and so the hacked font is required to display the text. Switch to Times New Roman and all the wrong characters show – but Paratext thinks the project is already in Unicode so it is not possible to use the Convert Project tool, which only accepts a legacy encoded project as the source. I was about ready to give up when I realized I could create a TECkit to fix all the wrong encodings, and send the fixed transliterated file to the typesetter. It was a success! The team can keep working with their existing keyboards and fonts, but the text is all cleaned up in proper Unicode for the typesetter.

Issues
Updating the initial TECkit file was difficult. I got it working, but when I modified it, it took a long time to get it updated. At first, I kept the same file name, but nothing was changing. I made a new TECkit with the updated changes, and that didn’t help. Finally I learned by digging in this support forum that I need to go to the View menu and select “Refresh the Transliteration for ___”

That works for me, but so far the person on the team I am working with does not have an option to Refresh the Transliteration. It doesn’t even show on his menu when the T project is active. Trying to figure out if his role makes a difference, or if it is because it is using a system level TECkit in my computer’s repository that nobody else has access to.

Does the TECkit mapping get sent to all computers via Send/Receive? It gave me a warning when setting up. Wanted me to check the box to add it to the system repository or else it would only be in effect for the current session. That seems problematic because the system repository is not getting transferred via send/receive. If my only other option was to make it active for the current session, then that wouldn’t get sent either. We still don’t have the option to update on my colleague’s computer, even though he is now also an administrator. (All this is by email correspondence in French, so there is some room for misinformation)

What should a user’s role on a transliteration project be anyway? Since the project is not editable, you would think it would be Observer. However, I suspect that the observers are not seeing their changes reflected in the T project. What I fear mostly is that the only way the team gets to see changes is when I do S/R on both projects and the transliteration runs on my computer. That would be a disaster since I am only the computer support guy who is setting then up.

Lastly, (and this could be a separate topic) I activated font features on the T project to show literacy variants. As far as I can tell, none of the team is seeing the change in the font on their computers. And… even the other administrator on the project can’t open or edit the font features that I set for the transliteration project. I’d report this as a bug if I can understand exactly how T projects are supposed to work and what behavior is expected.

Answer 1

“What I fear mostly is that the only way the team gets to see changes is when I do S/R on both projects and the transliteration runs on my computer. That would be a disaster since I am only the computer support guy who is setting then up.”

dhigby, I am afraid that your fear is basically correct. At least in 7.6, only the person setting up the converter was able to apply the conversion and that is the standard behavior that I see in Paratext 8. I also consider it a disaster as it greatly slows down progress. I long ago reported it as a problem but it probably got lost. Do please report it again. The more votes the better. The process is this. The team edits the source text and does send/receive. You, the computer with the converter, do send/receive, apply the converter (using View/Refresh Transliteration if it doesn’t automatically apply), and do send/receive again. The team should now be able to see the changes in the conversion daughter project.

I’ve played with various roles but none enable someone else to apply the converter. You might want to allow others to be admin or translator in order for them to impact the language settings (i.e., if you are still working on your alphabet) and/or the checking inventories.

For one project, we are going to try changing which computer can apply the converter. I am hoping that unlinking the converter on one computer and linking it in another will actually work. Otherwise, just starting over is my next choice. Since my best practice advice is to put all Paratext Notes in the source project and to treat and view the converted project in all ways as a throw away transitional stage, we won’t lose anything by doing so.

I don’t know anything about the font feature problem you have, but the mapping does NOT get sent on send/receive unless you deliberately include it. I recommend putting both the font and mapping files in the My Paratext 8 Projects/proj id/shared folder, If a folder named shared is created and placed in the same folder as the project figures folder, its contents will be sent along with send/receive. A single font and a tec file don’t usually impact send/receive speed very much.

Blessings,

Shegnada James

Language Technology and Publishing Coordinator, SIL Nigeria

Text Processing Specialist – Complex Script, GPS, SIL Intl

Skype: Shegnada.james.

[Email Removed]

+1 972 974 8146

Comments

Thank you, Shegnada! Even if nothing gets “fixed”, we at least need the correct documentation that explains that only the person setting up the converter can actually run the converter. I did make a team member an admin on the project and they still don’t get to apply conversions. I will try to send the tec file to the team member who will be making the conversions, and then if he can get it working, I need to extract myself from this project!

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You will probably have to unlink the converter on your computer before he will be able to link it on his.

Blessings,

Shegnada James

Language Technology and Publishing Coordinator, SIL Nigeria

Text Processing Specialist – Complex Script, GPS, SIL Intl

Skype: Shegnada.james.

[Email Removed]

+1 972 974 8146

Answer 2

dhigby - here are the steps I used to be able to have two different users update the transliterated project.

1. Create the transliterated project on User A
   a) Put the map (or table) in the “shared” folder of the base project so that it will get shared to User B
   b) Make sure that the applied map or table is the one found in the shared folder
   c) You will need to make some edit to the base project so that the “shared” folder gets shared to User B
2. After the transliterated project has been created, use Project > Users, Roles and Permissions to share it with User B. Note that User B should be given editing rights to the books (even though the books can not be manually edited). This allows User B to complete the transliteration
3. Users A and B should do S/R so that the base project (with shared folder) and the new transliteration project are shared to User B
4. Verify that the shared folder with the map or table is present in the Base project folder
5. User B will need to have the transliteration set up on their computer (including installing SIL converters if that has not been done)
6. The transliteration should now work on both computers if both users have editing privileges to the text.

Comments

Checking out anon848905’s steps, they do work for me.
Some other things I discovered:

• You can make a shared folder in the transliteration project to put the encoding map file so it is shared by send/receive. So 1a could read "put the map (or table) in the “shared” folder of the base or the transliteration project.
• I did find that my user B does NOT need editing rights to the books in the transliteration project to be able to do a refresh transliteration and to see the changes applied.
• User B does not need to be an administrator to set up his copy of SIL Encoding converters to use the mapping file. A non-administrator can go to project properties and settings, click on the encoding converter slot, choose Add converter and go through the process of selecting a map or tec file, then naming the converter, and Paratext will remember that name, even though he cannot click OK but can only click Cancel to get out of the project properties dialog.
  *If in the process of setting up an encoding converter, the user wants to change or delete a converter setup in Encoding Converters, you cannot get to that dialog from the options in Paratext project properties and settings. You can open the Clipboard EncConverter, then right click the converter icon in the system tray (lower right) and choose “edit or delete converter” to be able to delete or edit a converter.
• In Step 5, the conversion step has to have the same name in the SIL converters setup. In this screenshot the name of the converter is “cyrillizer”, and you name it when you have selected the mapping file then click “save in repository”.
  
  

  image.png595×542 18.2 KB
  
  This name in the converters setup is what Paratext saves in the project properties and settings, and if it is not identical on the different computers, one user’s Paratext will say the converter specified is not found.

In my testing, once these steps are completed, either user can edit the mapping file in the shared project folder, refresh the transliteration based on the newest mapping file, and send/receive those changes in both text and mapping file to the other user.

Answer 3

Thanks for all the research, sewhite and anon848905.
If I understand correctly, both users can choose the same converter file, (a *.tec file in my case) but if I call mine Yom Converter and the other guy calls his Yom Convertisseur, then one of ours will fail to work.

Comments

Yes, that is what I found. My user B created the converter under a different name. When A did another send/receive, B got a message that the converter for the project could not be found because Paratext was looking for A’s converter name.