Home > Translator Notes > Options
The Configuration dialog has several options that you can use
to customize notes behavior. The defaults are designed to make the translator's
experience as easy to learn as possible. More experienced users may well wish
to take advantage of some of these advanced options.
Option: 'Close notes window when the mouse leaves'
- To view the note window, you can either hover over the icon, or you can
click on it. But in order to close the window, you must click on the 'x'
icon in thr window's top-right corner.
If you set this option to
yes, then moving the mouse outside of
the window will cause it to close. If you are wanting to be able to quickly scan
through the text examining the contents of notes, you may find this option
to be more convenient. But it takes some getting used to, otherwise you may
find editing a note difficult should an unintentional mouse move dismiss
the window.
Option: 'Can delete other's notes and messages?'
- In our collaborative environment where people on different computers are
authoring responses and the computer is assembling the thread into a note,
we must be careful in allow deletions. These responses can provide valuable
information regarding the thought processes that led to the current state of
the translation.
But we also recognize that sometimes people
will enter things that are clutter; they just get in the way. So the purpose
of this option is to permit cleanup where needed. If set to
yes, a Delete button will appear in the
toolbar, with menu items under that button for each response. Thus you have
the ability to delete indivual reponses, or the entire note.
We suggest that you only turn this on for
users who are more experienced, and who understand the value of not deleting
historical discussions.
Option: 'New note author's name'
- You may have noticed in the figure above that each response in the note has the author's name. You
will want to enter this on each user's computer. Otherwise, OurWord uses
the name of the computer, which frequently is less than helpful.
We realize that for some translation projects
multiple people share a single computer. Currently the only way to change
the name of the user is through the Configuration dialog; definitely an
inconvenience for these projects. A better solution should happen soon in
a later version of OurWord.
Option: 'Show title beside note icon'
- One challenge with this system is being able to know what the notes on a
page are about, without having to take the time to mouse over each and every
one of them; a tedious process especially if you are an advisor who needs to
review everything.
When you set this option to
yes, the notes icons are expanded to
include the first part of the note's title. By carefully crafting the
title, you should be able to see enough context to see what the thrust of
the note is about.
We do not recommend that you turn this on
for translators, though. These notes titles will be in the way of reading,
and can cause less-experienced computer users to have difficulty following
the flow of the text, and thus in producing a natural, high-quality
translation.
Option: 'This user can assign notes to'
- One of the pictures in the walkthrough showed a large number of people
that notes can be assigned to. Most translators will only need to work with
a subset of these, so OurWord defaults to 'Anyone', 'Translator', 'Advisor',
and 'Closed.'
You can use this option in the Configuration
dialog to turn on the ability to assign notes to others. For example, the
advisor will frequently wish to assign notes to the Consultant, whereas you
may not wish to give translators the ability to directly contact the
Consultant.
We would expect that only a select few should
have the ability to assign notes to the Front Team or to Daughter Teams, as
these will generally be carefully thought-through notes that are, e.g., the
result of a consultant check.
Option: 'Categories'
- I am experimenting with the option of allowing notes to have categories
or classifications. The idea is that you may wish to classify notes as to
such things as 'Exegetical' or for a 'Study Bible.' Once I implement filters
it would then be possible to find all of the notes of a given category.
By default this is turned off; you can define the categories you wish to use,
and then if you turn the feature to yes,
another dropdown will appear on the notes window's toolbar. This will likely
be an advisor task, and should remain turned off for translators.
Option: 'Friendly Names'
- Not yet implemented. The idea is that instead of displaying 'Translator' or
'Consultant', in its place it would display 'Dave'. This would be more friendly
for translators in manipulating the system.
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