Note: this article was first posted in December 2016

Adapt It version 6.8.1 release 09 December 2016

Known Issue in Linux Xenial version 6.8.1 and a good work-around

Note to Linux users: There is a problem in the File > Print and Preview functions in the Linux Xenial and Yakkety versions that can cause the program to quit unexpectedly. The problem does not affect Windows versions. It also does not affect the Linux Precise, Trusty, Vivid, or Wily versions of Adapt It. We are still working on a fix for this problem. In the mean time we recommend that you export your texts using the Export-Import menu’s “Export Interlinear Text…” function, open the exported file in LibreOffice or MS Word, and preview or print the interlinear display from there. Interlinear documents exported from Adapt It are formatted into tables and have a complete set of styles. They also have the advantage of being edited before printing.

Feature changes and new features in 6.8.1

This release features some important enhancements and bug fixes in relation to Adapt It collaboration with Paratext/Bibledit.

  • Adapt It supports collaboration with Paratext 8 on both Windows and Linux. You should upgrade to Adapt It 6.8.1 at the same time that you upgrade from Paratext 7.x to Paratext 8. Once Paratext 8 has been installed and Paratext project data has been migrated from your old Paratext 7.x project folder to the new Paratext 8 projects folder, Adapt It 6.8.1 will automatically detect that Paratext 8 has been installed and will automatically look for Paratext projects in your “My Paratext 8 Projects” folder (Paratext8Projects on Linux). Hence, as long as you have migrated your Paratext 7 data to Paratext 8, Adapt It 6.8.1should continue collaborating with Paratext 8 for all Adapt It projects that were previously set up by an administrator to collaborate with Paratext 7.x. 
    WARNING: If you have been using an Adapt It version prior to 6.8.0 on Windows, or prior to 6.8.1 on Linux in collaboration with Paratext 7.x, you will need to upgrade to this version 6.8.1 in order to continue collaborating with Paratext 8. You should also ensure that your Paratext projects have been migrated to the new “My Paratext 8 Projects” directory (Paratext8Projects on Linux).
  • This new version of Adapt It will still work for users who have projects set up to collaborate with Paratext 7.x. Installing Paratext 8 is not necessary to use this version (6.8.0) of Adapt It. This version will continue to collaborate with a user’s Paratext 7.x data if Adapt It was previously set up to collaborate with Paratext 7.x.
  • When setting up collaboration with Paratext (or Bibledit) using Adapt It’s Setup or Remove Collaboration dialog, the analyzing of the books available in a selected project proceeds much more quickly now – just a few seconds, compared to several minutes previously.
  • More localization to Indonesian has been done.
  • Copying selected source text to the clipboard. Formerly, there  was no easy way. Copying selected source text copied the target  text under the selected source text. This still happens, however,  if the ALT key is held down while clicking the Copy command on  the Edit menu, the selected source text will instead be copied to  the clipboard. (Note: CTRL-C shortcut is not supported, by design,  in Adapt It – except in the phrasebox, or the compose bar’s text  box. This has been the case for years, and will not be changed.)
  • The document creation code has more tests to detect faulty markup that would lead to an application failure, or a corrupted document.
  • The application now tests for certain markup errors, and if it finds  one it halts the creation, and gives a warning message to advise the  user to click a checkbox in the View page of Preferences to have a  diagnostic log file produced.
  • Production of a diagnostic logfile is supported. It gets stored  in the _LOGS_EMAIL_REPORTS folder within the Adapt It Unicode  Work folder. The file is called: Log_For_Document_Creation.txt.  It is deliberately small, with just essential information:  the filename (first line), and then five subsequent lines list  the last five words correctly parsed in from the input source  text before the failure happened. Each such line lists the  chapter:verse information where the failure happened. The  bad markup will be located within that verse, after the last  word listed in this file. The user can then examine the source  test in a word processor, and possibly fix the error himself, then  resave the fixed source text, and retry the document creation again.  Note: producing the log file is slow: about 150 words a second  are scanned, so a book like Luke might take up to 3 minutes to  get to the failure point. An information message is shown to the  user informing him or her that the log file is being produced,  and to wait. But that only happens in the Windows build. OSX  and Linux builds don’t show the information message, but  they still produce the log file.  If the log file is empty, then the error was probably a utf-8  encoding error – perhaps some non-utf-8 bytes are somewhere  in the source text. (To fix encoding errors, perhaps best to send  the source text file to one of the developers.)
  • The Shift-Launch feature (i.e. Launching Adapt It with SHIFT key  held down, to bypass one or both configuration files) has been  improved. Previously, if a project was a collaboration one, the  Shift-Launch tried to restore the collaboration from data in the  Adapt_It_WX.ini file in the …\AppData\Roaming\ folder. But  the user may not want collaboration restored. So now, a Yes/No  message dialog will ask the user: “If a collaboration was set up  with Paratext or Bibledit, do you want it to be restored now,  if possible?”. Click the No button to have the collaboration  turned off.

Bug fixes in 6.8.0 release 1 July 2016

  • Left and right double angle quotation marks are now automatically added to the source and target punctuation character sets, if not already present.
  • The straight single quote, ‘ is now treated as a punctuation character by default. Earlier, it defaulted to being a word-building character.
  • USFM fixed space marker ( ~ ) is handled better. It still is a fixed space, but when occurring between a word and punctuation it is stripped off and restored later like punctuation characters, and it now automatically appears as an entry in the punctuation character set in Preferences – which allows it to be stripped off and restored to the adaptation as one would expect. When occurring between words, it is not stripped off, but behaves as expected in keeping the words together.
  • If the anchor for a free translation was on a placeholder, and  Export Free Translation was chosen, the free translation at that  placeholder was lost from the export. It’s now included, along  with any markers which occur there.
  • When collaborating with Paratext, if the source text in Paratext  had an end marker, such as \x*, left in the text at a location where  the matching preceding \x marker and the cross reference information  had been manually removed, then it caused a major problem in  the transfer of adaptation text to Paratext at File > Save. All target
    text content following the rogue \x* marker would not get  transferred – even if the user had adapted well beyond that point.  Code has now been added to skip such rogue markers, and the  data transfer now does not get truncated. (However, it is always  wise to check the source text for markup errors before setting up  a collaboration with Paratext or Bibledit.)
  • The feature introduced in 6.8.0 where certain word-final or  phrase-final punctuation characters could automatically trigger  auto-capitalizing the next word (or phrase), did not work when  the source text was a language without a case distinction. Now  it works correctly in 6.8.1.

Windows and Macintosh version 6.8.1 downloads are available at:

http://adapt-it.org/download/

Linux version 6.8.1 Debian packages are available in i386 and amd64 architectures for Ubuntu Precise, Trusty, Vivid, Wily, Xenial and Yakkety. There are instructions on how to configure your Linux system to gain access to the SIL repository at:

http://packages.sil.org

Basically you need to download and install the repository’s public key on your machine, and then set up your Software Sources with one of the following settings depending on your Linux distribution:

   deb http://packages.sil.org/ubuntu precise main    or
   deb http://packages.sil.org/ubuntu trusty main     or
   deb http://packages.sil.org/ubuntu vivid main     or
deb http://packages.sil.org/ubuntu wily main     or
   deb http://packages.sil.org/ubuntu xenial main    or
deb http://packages.sil.org/ubuntu yakkety main

Note: The Ubuntu Vivid, Wily, and Yakkety distributions only have short term support from Canonical. The Precise, Trusty and Xenial distributions are long term service (LTS) distributions which Canonical will support with bug and security fixes for 5 years from their initial release.

Important Note: Installing version 6.8.1 will automatically replace any previously installed Adapt It WX (Unicode) version from 4.0.0 through 6.8.0 (but existing project data is never touched when installing updates).

Adapt It WX is the open source, cross-platform version of Adapt It that is based on the wxWidgets framework (hence the WX in the name).

Please direct bug reports or feedback on the new version to the Adapt It team. On the Adapt It Help menu you can easily send a Problem Report or a Feedback Report directly from within Adapt It (over a secure connection) – see the Help menu. If you cannot use the Help menu’s email reporting functions, you can send a Problem Report or Feedback Report to the Adapt It team using the following email address:

support@adapt-it.org

Alternately, you can send an email to one or more of the following team members via their individual email addresses:

Bill Martin      – bill_martin@sil.org
Bruce Waters     – bruce_waters@sil.org
Erik Brommers    – erik_brommers@sil.org
Graeme Costin    – adaptit@costincomputingservices.com.au (focus on MacOSX)
Kevin Bradford   – kevin_bradford@sil.org
Michael Hore     – mike_hore@aapt.net.au
Bob Buss         – bob_buss@wycliffe.org (focus on HTML Help system)
Jonathan Marsden – jmarsden@fastmail.fm
Adapt It 6.8.1 Now Available for Download