Bulk Consultant Notes?

Question

Hey everyone,

Any idea how I might make bulk (consultant) notes? I want to make the same note in a lot of different verses.

For example, some languages prefer Reason-Result word order and others prefer Result-Reason word order. It would be nice to create notes as quick prompts so teams with a preference different than their source would know to consider the change. Does that make sense? Teams could choose the linguistic issues that are relevant to their language.

Answer 1

One option is to create a note tag (under the settings) that says what you want in a template. Then when you create the note you simply apply that template.

Comments

Hi anon062569,

Thank you for reminding me of that tool. I haven’t used it in my role and had forgotten its existence.

The Biblical Terms Tool has a column for Semantic Domains that you can filter on. If you go to the BT menu, you can toggle the column to be visible. And there is a Biblical Terms list called Major Biblical Terms (SIL Semantic Domains) I was thinking back to my dictionary days and thought that semantic domains would include types of questions. I did not see them now that I am glancing through it on my computer but I admit that I did not search rigorously and they could still be in there.

Still, you should be able build your own Biblical Terms list on types of questions and include references. This would allow the team to see your various groupings all together in a list. I would think that could prove quite valuable to others also.

Blessings,

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Have you thought about making a “Project” with these prompts on all the verses - which would be a huge task in itself - that could be shared with the translators for which they’re relevant and added to their Paratext workspace (perhaps by an Expat, or even an Expat on Zoom with remote assistance on)? This may get at what would be helpful for national translators, but sadly, doesn’t get at your original post of how you put 500 notes saying the same thing in different locations in the text.

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Following up with bbrollier’s suggestion. Back a number of years ago using a separated project for the notes was the way we suggested folks did this, but when the notes tool was introduced we moved away from this option. However, for what is being asked for this might be the best way to go.
There is (was) a check in the \cms folder that is called “InsertCrossReferencesOrNotes”. This is normally unavailable because of the first line being “\check DELETED”. If you comment out this line with a # then the check becomes available. There should be an rtf file that describes the use of this tool.
Basically you would create a list of the locations where you want the note and it would insert the note(s) into a project. The examples in the rtf are for cross references, but you should be able to insert any kind of text there. It does not even need to be marked with USFM.
Here is my test info:

\ref MRK 1:1
This is a test
\ref MRK 1:2
This is a test

This came into Paratext as: \c 1 \v 1 This is a test \v 2 This is a test

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If I understand you correctly, that is my intention. I plan on creating a separate Consultant Notes project for each linguistic difficulty so that teams can choose which prompts would be most helpful for them. Right now I’m working on Rhetorical Questions but one of my teams asked for prompts for the first person plural exclusive so that would be the next project.

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Hey anon848905, thank you for the suggestion. I’ll definitely consider that. Off the top of my head, I’d include an unusual symbol like # to make it easy to search for the notes and to make sure they’re not confused with actual text. But I wasn’t sure if the InsertCrossReferencesOrNotes would take a # as code. We might need to use something else. It seems like the tool could be very useful for pre-populating verses. Hmmm.

Answer 2

Hola.
I also consider that the most practical thing we have in Paratext is to create the template that anon848905 mentions, if what you need is to put the notes in the same text. And manipulating the notes file can bring more problems than benefits.

I just want to add that: we also have options to put notes in the WordList. In this case the note does not appear in the text because it does not apply to a specific verse, but a word in question is added and this makes possible the observation of that note to all the verses where this word is present.

As an example, in the following image, a note on the word “chaynullami” will refer to the 272 verses (the red circle on the right) where this word is present according to my filter:

image1126×802 252 KB

When we create a note in the WordList, the note (the red circle on the left) is marked in blue, to warn that there is a note (like the red flags in the text).

This option is also available for Biblical Terms.

Saludos,
anon689242.

Answer 3

Just an update for everyone following this conversation. I wrote a macro so the computer creates Consultant Notes in a list of verses, but it isn’t in a format that can be shared yet. Hopefully I’ll have that next week. It is a dumb program (no feedback check to make sure notes were created correctly) so it randomly stops and does make some errors, but it isn’t hard to go back and check for mistakes. I’ve let it run when I go to bed (because you can’t do anything else without interrupting the macro) and in the last few nights it has made 1945 Consultant Notes for rhetorical questions. Of course I’ll share that rhetorical question project once it is done. This is a kludgy work around until someone can program it correctly or come up with a better solution. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been working on.

Answer 4

Here are the files for creating bulk notes. This is a beta so I’d probably want to meet with anyone who’s interested for 15 minutes to walk them through it once. I have a few days to ask the programmer for revisions so if you’re interested, I’d like to make sure it works on a variety of machines.

Also, I have the projects for Rhetorical Questions and for Reason-Result that are ready to share. Does anyone know if there is a repository or shared space for Consultant Note projects?

Bulk Notes Program

onedrive.live.com

Bulk Paratext Notes.exe

Application

Paratext.xlsx

onedrive.live.com

Paratext.xlsx

Microsoft Excel Workbook

Answer 5

@anon848905 @anon044949
If I make more of these Linguistic Specific Notes (and people think they’re useful), could we find somewhere on the Paratext webpage to share them? I can share them via word of mouth and on a Seed Company page, but the end user is much more likely to find them on the Paratext site. Thanks.