How to edit biblical term added from All Biblical Terms list

Question

So in the Biblical Terms tool I go to the All Biblical Terms list. I want to add the Hebrew word that means ‘flock (of sheep and/or goats)’:

image988×335 67.4 KB

If I select the term in this list and then go to the Edit menu, it is not possible to “Edit biblical term” (which is sensible, since this is a list that comes from Paratext):

Now I star it so it’s added to my Project biblical terms list:

Now I return to my Project biblical terms list and there it is. But … the gloss has changed! Look:

image992×562 119 KB

So I think, well, I can edit the term now that it’s in my project. So I select the term, go to Edit > Edit Biblical Term, and it’s not greyed out. So I click and get:

I edit (and click okay):

And the result is:

(If I try editing again, I see that the term really has reverted to simply “flock”)

Two questions:

1. Why do glosses in a biblical term sometimes (but not always) change when I add the term to my project list?
2. Is there a way to fix this (either by editing, or by some other means)?

Ideally, entries in a biblical terms list would be identical whether the item is appearing in the “master” list or in the project list. If not, then it would be nice to be able to edit entries.

Answer 1

viverechristus:

BiblicalTerms.xml

I am a translation consultant working with a number projects. In one of the projects I noticed a problem with the glosses in the biblical terms tool not acting as I expected. When I selected a term from the All Biblical Terms list by “starring” it, the gloss from the All Biblical Terms list would not be carried over to the Project Biblical Terms list, it was obviously coming from somewhere else. I searched the forum and found this discussion that described a similar problem. Has a solution been found to the problem described in the previous discussion?

Here are some screen captures from my situation:

All Biblical Terms List (with “starred” terms)

Screenshot All Biblical Terms1330×707 119 KB

Project Biblical Terms List (showing different glosses)

Screenshot Project Biblical Terms1345×705 106 KB

As stated in the previous discussion the glosses seem to be coming from \Program Files\Paratext 9\Terms\Lists\BiblicalTerms.xml and not the C:\My Paratext 8 Projects\DAAU8\ProjectBiblicalTerms.xml file.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Comments

I’ve not heard that anything has been done about this yet. I reported the problem on Jul 20, 2021, via the PT “Give Feedback” tool and was assigned issue # PTXS-29594. I also reported a related problem on Feb 17, 2021 related to a specific entry in the Biblical Terms list (# RES-1124). That was before I tracked down where the problem was coming from or realized it was quite pervasive rather than specific to a single entry.

I would guess that the more people report the problem through the Feedback tool, the more likely it is to be assigned resources, so I’d suggest you make a report in Paratext as well.

I have no idea how hard this would be to fix, but not much research is needed, since I think most of the relevant details are in this thread, including the specific xml files in the background.

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I reported the problem and referenced this discussion. I also took the following photo with my phone that shows a popup box in the All Biblical Terms list. The gloss in the box is different than the gloss in the list.

20220526_0752401920×1440 253 KB

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My understanding is that BiblicalTerms.xml is the default gloss that PT will draw from, no matter what the list. In order for a variant gloss to be picked, the Term Id associated with that gloss must be different from any term found on the BiblicalTerms.xml list. I have been creating an XML of my organization’s key terms list, and I have adopted the approach that each term on our organization’s list must be unique (i.e., distinct from any term on the BiblicalTerms.xml list). Only then can the custom glosses be reliably used on the list.

This can be accomplished by adding even one space or character within the quotation marks of a term’s Term Id line.

Answer 2

Here’s a partial reply:

In the xml file containing all the words added to my project list, the gloss has actually changed based on the edit I made in the Edit Biblical Term tool (see previous post)!

\My Paratext 8 Projects[project]\ProjectBiblicalTerms.xml

image747×301 13.6 KB

The All Biblical Terms list, however, has the original gloss I saw. Recall that this is what you see when you’re looking at the All Biblical Terms list.

\Program Files\Paratext 9\Terms\Lists\AllBiblicalTerms.xml

So where does the simple gloss “flock” come from? I found it here:

\Program Files\Paratext 9\Terms\Lists\BiblicalTerms.xml (and in the file’s localization as BiblicalTermsEn.xml)

image621×555 15.9 KB

It seems to me that the Biblical Terms Tool’s instantiation in PT 9 is looking in too many places for the gloss.

1. When the All Biblical Terms list itself is displayed in the tool, the gloss comes from AllBiblicalTerms.xml
2. When the same term is included in the Project list in the biblical terms tool, the gloss is now pulled from either BiblicalTerms.xml or its localization.
3. The Edit Biblical Term dialog pulls the gloss from the same place as #2, but saves the edit in ProjectBiblicalTerms.xml. However, there is apparently no tool that actually looks at the gloss in ProjectBiblicalTerms.xml unless the term ID tag is UNIQUE to that file, in which case the gloss is taken from here as a last resort.

This strikes me as counter-intuitive.

Answer 3

viverechristus - please report this with Help > Give Feedback.

Comments

Done. (I referenced this post to save the trouble of redocumenting all the details.) Thanks, anon848905.

Answer 4

I want to clear up some things.
The reason the glosses are changing between when you see the term in the All Biblical Terms list and when you see it in the Project Biblical Terms list is because of localization of the terms. Localization is done via the term ID (lemma) and has only been done on the Major Biblical Terms list. Because of this the Major Biblical Terms list is specially handled inside of Paratext to allow localizations of the terms (glosses and definitions).
The complication comes in with the Project Biblical Terms list since it can contain terms from anywhere (Major Biblical Terms, All Biblical Terms, custom terms, etc.). Thus, we decided it’s best to have them be considered localized as well so that any terms that are localized will be localized for other people on a project that use a different language. This works fine for any major terms since they were localized when being viewed inside the Biblical Terms Tool. It also works for any custom term since it will likely have a unique term ID and won’t be localized. But when a term from the All Biblical Terms list is used and it contains the same term ID as one in the Major Biblical Terms list, it will pick up the localization of that term instead of showing what was in the All Biblical Terms list.

This interaction also makes it difficult to “fix” since it’s just a localization of the term - the fix would have to be to remove the English localization.

Note that the localizations for the terms are stored in the BiblicalTermsXX.xml files (where XX is the language code for the localization).

Comments

Thanks for the explanation. Here’s what I understand: when I add a Major Biblical Terms item to my Project list, what shows up as the gloss comes from BiblicalTermsEn.xml (since English is my localization language), NOT from the BiblicalTerms.xml list. This is the expected/desired behavior, right? Further, if I add a term from All Biblical Terms to my Project list, and if the “Term Id” of that item is identical to “Term Id” in the localization file of the Major Biblical Terms list (for me, BiblicalTermsEn.xml), then it will continue to pull the gloss from the localization of Major Biblical Terms. Is that right?

Is it safe to assume that this bug won’t be fixed and we should do something like Phil suggests – add invisible spaces? (Invisible spaces: a classic strategy going back at least to Ender’s Game!)

The reason this matters (for me, at least), is that sometimes the Major Biblical Terms gloss is misleading or unhelpful, or there’s some other problem with a particular item in that list, so we need to pull the term from All Biblical Terms instead. I guess I don’t understand why a project can’t edit the localization, which would fix a lot of problems. Or perhaps have an option to ignore the localization. Or … I’m not sure.

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viverechristus:

Is it safe to assume that this bug won’t be fixed and we should do something like Phil suggests

I’m not saying that it won’t ever be fixed, but since it requires redoing our current localization strategy for Biblical Terms, it’s likely not going to be fixed anytime soon.

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Thanks for the response. We have a workaround, so it’s not critical!