Hello! I have a problem that (I think) is related to the above. I am relatively new to Tropy, and I have been reading past posts. My apologies if I missed an answer elsewhere…
I am trying to use a portable project via OneDrive for Business via my university. I have a research assistant on a PC (I am unsure what version of Windows). I have a desktop with Windows 10 Enterprise, and a laptop with Windows 10 Home. My RA created a project file in the folder holding subfolders. I have copied that into the root folder, after reading the instructions above. I have also tried to follow the instructions in the Oct. 12 post, to rebase the project. However, the only thing I have succeeded in doing so far is to individually consolidate photos. The issues (as with other, older posts) appears to be differences in the file paths. Even those we are all in One Drive, the file paths appear to start with each user’s information. I understand that there is additional development work under way on these issues. Is there anything that I can feasibly do now?
The setup you describe should work with the current version of Tropy (though portable projects are still experimental). The important thing is that you have a single folder containing your project file and all the photos (in sub-folders if you prefer). If I understand correctly, you have that already so my guess is that project is currently not in ‘portable’ mode. The UI for this is still severely lacking, the way it works is: the ‘Rebase project’ command currently toggles the use of relative paths on or off with not much feedback either way. So you may just have to select ‘Rebase project’ one more time. The best way to know for sure would be to query the project file directly using the SQLite command I posted above. If this sounds too complicated, I’m happy to help if you upload your project file here or send it to me with a private message (or to sylvester.keil@gmail.com).
Finally, please keep in mind that, at this time, a portable project can be moved around easily, but it is not yet safe to open it simultaneously on multiple devices. At the moment, it is comparable to storing, for example a Word document in a shared folder: if you open it on multiple devices at the same time, whoever saves the file last, will overwrite the version saved previously. The same thing can happen with your Tropy project if you work on it from multiple devices, so please be cautious when working with your setup.
Hi,
When I enter the first command you suggest to check the status of my project, my command prompt returns: “‘sqlite3’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.” Do I need to be in a particular directory for this to work?
Thank you for your help in advance!
Monique
Update: I was able to make the move to a shared environment work, so I no longer need an answer to this question.
I followed the procedure you describe for an existing project and it seems to work for the moment, except for one thing: on my laptop, where I created and worked so far on the project, all is working as usual; while on my desktop, where I can now see my project (that I moved to a OneDrive folder synchronised across the devices), I could not see all the metadata as it didn’t seem to have transferred the specific template I created. Pictures appeared only with the standard metadata template.
So I did the following: I ‘exported’ the template from the ‘original’ version on my laptop (in Tropy’s preferences I selected my template, clicked on export, saved the file), and I ‘imported’ the template to Tropy on my desktop (again going to Tropy’s preferences, clicked on import, selected the .ttp file containing my template). All the metadata reappeared, and seems to work properly.
So just wanted to ask: is my fix correct? I’m asking as I did it intuitively but wouldn’t like to find myself in a difficult situation in a few days
My apologies for not mentioning this sooner, but as you noticed templates and vocabularies are not stored in your project file but elsewhere in your local Tropy ‘installation’ – this is because you might want to share templates across different projects. Therefore, if you work on the same project on different devices you should also install the templates you use on both of them. Hopefully templates won’t change frequently so that it is not too much work to keep them in sync (you could make it a habit to export the template after every change and keep it next to your project file on OneDrive). We’re currently working to set up a central template repository with which Tropy can sync its templates, so sharing templates will become easier in the future.
So this means that any future change I may make to the template (as you say it shouldn’t be often, but just to be sure), will be stored locally?
If it is stored locally, would it be possible to move the folder containing all this type of information that Tropy uses to the same folder where the main Tropy project file is, so that it is synchronised as well across devices?
Tropy stores your vocabs and templates in an ontology.db file in your user data folder (Help -> Show User-Data Folder); this folder contains lots of settings of your local Tropy installation (such as recently opened projects, the position of the window on your screen, the size of various widgets and your preferences etc.). In theory it would be possible to move this entire folder to your OneDrive and start Tropy, but I would strongly urge against doing because of potential sync conflicts.
So, for the time being, you really need to export your template in order to use it on your other computer.
In the meantime another question came up: when I open Tropy on my desktop (so the version where I had to import my specific template), just at the opening I got two error message today:
The first shows the file’s path and says ‘ResourceRequest timed out’. And the second is:
I clicked on OK in both cases, it disappeared, and then everything loaded just fine. I sense it’s because of the size of information to load, but wanted to see what you think.
Yes, this error indicates that Tropy reached a timeout while loading the project initially. This may happen if you have a large project (when this happens, it means that we need to further optimize the queries for large projects); it may also happen if there is a timeout/delay in reading from the project file: OneDrive does download your file before usage, right? Another reason for this might be that the hard disk on this computer is slower (e.g., if you use a SSD on your other device but not here) – this would explain why the issue appeared now.
It may have been something unrelated to Tropy too, but if you get timeouts consistently on this computer, could you tell us your hardware configuration and, roughly, how large your project is (or even share the project file with us) in terms of number of items, photos, notes (you can see those numbers by selecting all the items in your project, e.g. with Cmd+A in the item table)? Thanks!
Yes, OneDrive downloads the file before usage. I think the main reason is indeed the difference in hardware + the size of the project: I get the problem on an iMac with a classic hard disk; I got no issue on a recent MacBook Pro with SSD as you hinted at…
The project is very large, it is the one I was mentioning in another topic about the number of photos that Tropy could work with. I have passed the mark of 10K but should still be under 20K now. Happy to share my project file, can you remind me your email address?
OK, yes, if you could share a copy of your project with me (e.g. at sylvester.keil@gmail.com), we can use it for testing. That would be much appreciated!
As I recently updated the template on my laptop, and wanted to export it to my desktop version, I followed the exact same procedure as above (export, save, import) but it doesn’t work. I got the following error message:
Just delete the old version of your template first, then import the new one and it should work. We should eventually replace this error message by a confirmation dialog – right now we err on the side of caution and do not overwrite the existing template.
Yes! You can now use the project preferences to achieve the same thing: linking photos relative to the project file is equivalent to what the ‘rebase project’ command used to do.
Yes, you can still configure how files are linked in an advanced project. The new default project type uses relative file links and copies all files into the project folder on import.
