Is it possible to export to Scripture Forge from PT9? If so, how?
Scripture Forge (SF) works seamlessly with PT9. You don’t have to do any exporting from one to the other. SF works just like another PT instance - just send and receive in PT9 and then synchronize in SF (or the other way around) and everything is up to date. You can see that working in the first video on our Learn More page.
I think I understand now. I thought the short promo video was saying that I could write checking questions in Paratext as a note and then do a S/R to have it show up in SF, but now that I looked at it again it seems that it was only exporting the text that you want to check. So the current method is definitely better since it cuts out that step.
Since the questions written in SF show up in Paratext as a flagged note, would it be possible to do the reverse? It would be great to be able to write questions in Paratext and have it show up in SF, mainly because 1) the translators are already used to using notes in Paratext and 2) they don’t have to be connected to the internet to write the questions. Also, I noticed that the questions from SF show up with the default red flag in Paratext. It would be great to have it show up with a unique SF-colored flag to distinguish it from consultant notes.
I just discovered SF yesterday and am excited to share it with the translators today and have a discussion on how we could best make use of it in Bangladesh.
Your work on this great software is much appreciated.
Yep, you got that the right way around now.
It would be possible to bring questions in from PT Notes. We would need to work out the workflow carefully to make sure we could do this well and not interfere with other notes that aren’t questions. At the moment we are working on importing questions from Transcelerator which might do what you want also and sooner. Do note for 2) that you can already add questions in SF while you are offline, including audio. Of course the questions won’t show up for others until you go back online. For changing the default red flag, this is something we have thought about but is not yet scheduled to do. We have only just finished a bunch of underlying work that now makes this possible.
Thanks, for your encouragement. BTW, how did you discover SF?
Once in a while I just randomly visit the SIL Software site just because I like to use cool software and to see if there’s anything new that might be of use for our translation projects. I don’t know when SF showed up there and why I didn’t click on it before, but I’m glad I did. Now I’ll visit the site more often to check for updates to Transcelerator.
For issue 2), you’re saying that once I log into SF, I can work in it without any internet? I didn’t know that. I’ll try it out. How about for those doing community testing? Can they also, after logging in, give answers even if they lose internet connection? And then have their answers sync once the internet returns?
One more thing. I’m an Opera browser user and even though I get a pop-up message saying that it’s not supported, it seems to be working fine. Any particular reason why it’d be smart to use Chrome? Are there big bugs/problems that I just haven’t experienced in Opera yet?
Another thing. I showed SF to the translators about an hour ago and they thought it was cool and definitely saw possibilities for its use. In addition to community testing, one other use they asked about was to get feedback from pastors–that is, not just answers to questions we pose, but simply their comments on mistakes they see in the translation or on issues of naturalness/spelling/etc. Right now, there doesn’t seem to be a way for them as community checkers to add such comments, but that would be a great additional feature. I suppose we could add lots of open-ended questions (e.g. one for each verse or one for every 2-3 verses) such as “Do you see any issues here?” and let them give their feedback as answers. But that doesn’t seem like the most elegant solution.
Yes, all good questions.
Yes, SF has fantastic offline capability. The main focus of that has been the Community Checking tool so that Checkers can answer questions while offline. And yes their answers save automatically as soon as the app is running while connected to the Internet so that others can see them too. You can even install it on a phone or tablet to give you a native app type feel. That’s a reasonably recent change so we don’t yet have a video on the site but you can check it out in this demonstration video. You’ll need to skip towards the end to see the offline demo and how to install it.
I don’t exactly know why Opera is not supported. If you really need to know I can probably find out. But I wouldn’t use it there if the service is saying not to. But I guess if you test it really thoroughly with non-essential data and it works for you then that would be good for us to know.
So your suggestion of asking generic questions in the Community Checking tool to engage pastor’s is the only way to do that at the moment but a more generic use of PT Notes in the Translate tool that would likely do what you want is coming next year. It will include the ability to invite people outside PT to view your project as an Observer or to add notes as a Reviewer. See our development roadmap.
I tried SF’s offline capability and it is indeed great.
Great! I’m looking forward to the coming capability in the Translate tool. For us, this would be even more helpful as we do more reviewing with church leaders than community checking. SF could potentially help us get their feedback more from more church leaders more quickly, more often, at less cost.