Oct 102011
Adapt It WX version 6.0.0 10 October 2011 is now available for Windows and Macintosh.
The Linux Debian packages for 6.0.0 will be available in a few days.
Windows and Mac OS X installers are now available from the Downloads page at: http://adapt-it.org/download.
Here is a sampling of major new features in Adapt It 6.0.0:
- A Help_for_Administrators.htm document is now available from the Administrator menu (and from the Start Menu on Windows). This help file provides step-by-step Help designed to help administrators set up Adapt It’s main new features described below.
- Automatic Paratext and Bibledit data collaboration. No more exporting and copying of files manually back and forth between Adapt It or Bibledit! Administrators can now easily set up Adapt It to automatically collaborate with Paratext or Bibledit.
- Source text exported from a document can now be edited outside of Adapt It, and then imported back into the same document using a new command “Import Edited Source Text…” on the Export-Import menu. The import automatically merges any new source text into the appropriate places in the document. Material that is unchanged retains all the adaptation information associated with it, but material that is new or altered appears as unadapted “holes” ready for adapting. The document may then be saved manually if the result is satisfactory. The Collaboration with Paratext or Bibledit feature always automatically does a merger in this way each time it gets the source text from the external editor.
- User Workflow Profiles support. Default user workflow profiles are provided for Novice, Experienced, Skilled, and Custom users. Each of these default user profiles can be further customized by the administrator to hide or make accessible more than 60 interface elements including many of Adapt It’s menu bar items, mode bar items, tool bar items, and Preference tab pages. Administrators can utilize this new feature to reduce complexity and/or confusion for new users, and offer an effective means of introducing features only as they are needed by team members.
- Protection from navigating the file system is now available for all types of inputs and outputs. Never again loose files or forget what they are named or where they are saved! Administrators can now designate which types of inputs and outputs should be automatically obtained from or saved to pre-defined folders controlled by Adapt It. When such protection is ON, files are automatically named to reflect their content with a date-time stamp to keep them unique, and automatically saved in special folders designed for the handling of inputs and outputs.
- Adapt It now provides a Guesser function which attempts to guess the adaptation for source words or phrases which currently have no translations stored in its knowledge base. The Guesser is statistical so it suggests guesses only after a knowledge base has sufficient data in it to make relatively accurate guesses. The Guesser is ON by default but can be turned off or its settings adjusted easily by clicking on the new toolbar icon to the right of the Print toolbar icon. When a guess has been placed in the phrase box the background color of the phrase box turns to an orange color (the color can be changed in the Guesser Settings dialog).
- Secure Email Reporting. Adapt It can now send secure email directly to the developers to Report a Problem or Give Feedback. (1) Report a problem… is a menu item on the Help menu which provides a dialog containing a partially filled in report form which can be edited to provide developers with details and/or how to duplicate the problem. Send the report email from within Adapt It with the click of a button. (2) Give feedback… is a menu item on the Help menu which provides a dialog containing a partially filled in report form which can be edited to provide the developers with information on how Adapt It is being used – including successes and/or failures; features of Adapt It that are helpful/not helpful; what features could be improved or added to make Adapt It a better software tool and so on. Both email functions are SSL encrypted and operates from within Adapt It – apart from any other client email program.
- The Export-Import menu now supports exporting the knowledge base in LIFT format, and importing data to the knowledge base from a LIFT format file. KB export as LIFT xml is now optional, the older KB export in the form of \lx & \ge fields is still the default type of export and recommended for KB backups. LIFT exports can be done via selecting the type of export at export time. Exporting the KB in LIFT format only exports source text and adaptation (or gloss, if exporting when in glossing mode), and all datetime and other information in the KB is not preserved, whereas exports of the KB in standard format preserves datetime and other KB information.
- Additional “white space” characters are supported in the Unicode build, which means that when parsing in source text the presence of any of these characters will result in a word break: NBSP (non-breaking space) U+00A0, or in Adapt It Regular, hex A0 U+2060 WJ (Word Joiner) Plus each of the special spaces or joiners in the range U+2000 to U+200D inclusive.
- Words and phrases in the target text which differ from the source text immediately above them are given a different colour. The colour used is setable from the Preferences / Fonts page.
- The Consistency Check function (from the Edit menu) has been completely revised and simplified.
… plus many more features, bug fixes and improvements. See the Adapt It changes file for more details.
