Paratext as a portable app?

Question

How feasible would it be to create a portable version of PT8?

I am aware of a large number of users who are facing an increasing risk of having their machines examined by hostile investigators. A hidden volume (for plausible deniability) on fast flash storage (microSD or USB) can contain portable versions of apps. (e.g. Chrome, for accessing secret email accounts without leaving cookies exposed, yet persistent 2FA across sessions.) If they could install a portable version of Paratext onto this volume, they’d be in much better shape when their systems are examined.

Apparently there are tools that make it possible to deploy a portable version of a program without even writing code. Somehow it apparently even makes registry access portableized. See https://portableapps.com/development. But I don’t know how to interpret this.

Of course, the benefits of PT being portable could extend beyond those users with profile concerns. It means a translator can travel with just a USB stick or microSD card instead of carrying a computer.

Can anyone venture a guess on feasibility?

Thanks!

Answer 1

It should be feasible. We actually already have a task to do this, but it has been low-priority.

Comments

Great! Please contact me off-list if more details on this group of users would be helpful.

Thanks!

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I’m interested in this too–could be very useful in sensitive contexts.

Answer 2

For some ten years or so I am using Thunderbird portable only. My only reason for doing this was backup: I am storing the entire folder, whenever I am doing a backup. And funny enough, the program is actually smaller than all my mail data, it hardly matters size-wise.

So if I ever need to look at a pre-historic mail, I am very certain that it will open, because the original tool is there to open it (as long as the ever-evolving Windows will be willing/able to start old versions of Thunderbird).

I can only guess that Thunderbird is quite different from PT. I can just testify that my portable tool from the portableapps.com looks very well made and has been stable over many years. I keep getting regular security updates and I have not seen many disadvantages. (Some over-keen web-things sometimes want to prepare or even send an e-mail; so I grin, because those normally end up in my very inactive Outlook and nothing happens. Feels almost like an added layer of protection.)

fwiw