Print compare versions only works once

Question

I want to produce PDFs of differences between two project versions, one for each book, but it only works once, then I need to restart Paratext for it to work again!

Here’s what I see: I open my project in Paratext 9.0.64.1, navigate to the book I want to output and select Compare Versions. I open the version menu to the right and scroll down a number of pages to the version I want to compare. Then I click the Print button, select only the 5th option (Show Older Text), then click the Print button. PT gives me a print dialog and I select PDFCreator and click OK. Then it gives me ANOTHER print dialog so I select PDFCreator again and click OK there. This takes me to PDFCreator and I create the PDF. So far so good, except that double print dialog is weird.

Then I change to another book in the main Paratext window (or stay on the same book, it doesn’t matter…). If I try to do the same thing again (whether or not I close the Compare Versions window and reopen it), I click on the Print button, select the 5th option, then click the Print button. In the Print dialog that comes up I select PDFCreator and click OK. It does NOT give me another print dialog this time, but takes me right to PDFCreator with a document called about:blank, which if you create a PDF file from it, it is (not surprisingly) a blank page.

BUT if I close Paratext and reopen it, then I can print one more text comparison before it goes back to printing blank pages. Needless to say, since I’m hoping to print two comparisons of every book in the Bible (with and without unchanged paragraphs hidden), I’m not too keen on having to close Paratext, reopen it, reopen the Compare Versions dialog (which takes a little time), and scan down a number of pages to find the right version to compare, for each of the 66 x 2 outputs. I guess I have resigned myself to needing to do this, but this is a very frustrating bug that should be squashed.

Furthermore, the Save as HTML… button in the Compare Versions - Print dialog doesn’t seem to work, even after restarting Paratext. It asks for the output file name, but never writes out the file. Thanks for looking into these things.

Answer 1

The first 9.0 patch (9.0.100.2) should be out to pre-release users later today. It contains over a month’s worth of bug fixes and small tweaks, so it should fix a lot of the problems users have been finding. (Hopefully )

EDIT: 9.0.100.2 should be out to pre-release users now.

EDIT2: 9.0.100.2 has a crashing bug when trying to pull a new project, so 9.0.100.3 is the version you want now (this is why we do pre-releases ).

Comments

My release stage is set to pre-release, but when I ask Paratext 9 to Check for Updates, it says it is up-to-date. Is there a step that I’m missing? I have 9.0.100.1.

Answer 2

jeffh - please submit this as a bug report.

Answer 3

jeffh:

Furthermore, the Save as HTML… button in the Compare Versions - Print dialog doesn’t seem to work, even after restarting Paratext. It asks for the output file name, but never writes out the file. Thanks for looking into these things.

This has been fixed in the latest patch for 9.0, but I don’t think anyone has that patch yet. I expect the other issues are also fixed, but it’s probably best to submit a report as @anon848905 suggested.

Comments

I just installed the release version of 9.0.100.1 (which is dated 9/24) and confirmed that it still has this problem. I’m on the Beta channel, but Paratext says I am up-to-date. So how does one get the latest patch?

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No patch for 9.0 has been created yet - so you are up to date.

We have bug fixes in progress and should be sending out a pre-release (beta) patch out next week.

John+Wickberg

Answer 4

Still hoping for the Beta patch… I can print multiple comparisons from Paratext 8 without having to restart Paratext, so that is one option I could use. But the Save as HTML option also doesn’t work in Paratext 8. (Although it appears that the print comparison in Paratext 8 actually creates an HTML file to print from, if the progress dialogs are telling the truth!)

Answer 5

I wasn’t on the pre-release version setting, so went and changed my settings in order to get hold of 9.0.100.2 And after re-starting Paratext it told me that an update was being downloaded. BUT, when I looked it said it was downloading version 9.0.100.3 (which is now installed and working fine).
So I don’t know what happened to 9.0.100.2 but I’m not complaining
I don’t know what else to try to tell Paratext to find the latest version. The website download page hasn’t got the latest patch yet either, but presumably it will be there soon for people to manually download and install.

Comments

We found a problem with the 9.0.100.2 patch that prevented new projects from being received by Send/Receive.

A fix had been done for this, but was missed when the patch was created.

The latest patch is now 9.0.100.3.

John+Wickberg

Answer 6

Thanks Mark, for mentioning “after re-starting Paratext”. I restarted Paratext 9, and now the update is available. Really? If I’m in a program and I click on Check for updates, I sort of expect it to go out to the Internet and “Check for updates”! If it only check for updates when you restart Paratext, then you should change the name of that menu item… But surely it can’t be very hard to have it check for updates in real-time when you select the menu item.

Answer 7

I’m very happy to report that the Save as HTML does seem to be working (at least on Linux edition) since last week. I’m very grateful indeed for it being fixed, because it is a mainstay of my checking/consultancy approach.

Answer 8

Yes, the Save as HTML does seem to work in this latest version. Thanks for fixing that.

The actual Print option on the text comparison is still broken. I click on Print, and it asks for the printer so I select PDFCreator. Then it asks again for the printer, so I select PDFCreator again, and it prints to a PDF file. But the second time and later, after it asks for the printer, it just sends a blank page to the printer.

So I can create HTML files of the differences, and I think that will suffice for my current needs. (I could print from the HTML if I absolutely needed a PDF…) But please do make sure that the bug in printing is still on the radar of things to fix.