3.0.8-alpha

⚠️ This is still an experimental 3.0 alpha release. If you use the new multilingual migration, it will modify your project data—make a backup first.

Multilingual fields

Archives can now specify which fields to make multilingual, and which IMDI schema to validate against (ELAR now uses a draft IMDI 3.0 schema that supports the multilingual fields).

Multilingual Free-form fields

Multilingual “slots” for free-form fields are now fully functional:

Placeholders show you where to type:

If lameta doesn't know the language of some text, it will show like this

Multilingual Closed Vocabulary fields

Hover over a field to see all the translations that will be exported:

If a translation is missing for a value, the field shows a warning icon, and the tooltip gives you a link to where to fix it:

Project:Languages:Metadata Languages

We have introduced a field called Metadata Languages that does two things:

1. Controls the order in which lameta shows each language slot:

2. Some projects will be migrating from "slash notation". For these projects, until we finish the migration (see below), we need to know the order of these languages. This field does that for us.

Metadata Languages are numbered and re-orderable:

The order is used for two things:

Migration

A number of projects using lameta 2.x are already writing multiple languages in lameta fields. They are doing this by separating different slots with spaces and slashes, e.g.

This release includes a number of features designed to help you to safely migrate this data to a form in which lameta knows exactly what language each bit of text is in. This migration requires that every fields includes the same slots, in the same order. In order to help you verify that the conversion will work correctly, lameta postpones the actual migration until after the user has had a chance to look over all the fields.

When lameta detects taht a multilingual migration is pending, upon opening the project it will always take you to the Project:Languages screen. There, lameta will show a new "Migration Panel":

There must be at least two Metadata Languages defined before migration is possible. Until then you will see:

If lameta can tell that you may have left out a metadata language, it will warn you:

Once migration is successful, you will see:

lameta prevents IMDI export until you finalize the migration.

Language labels are mandatory until migration is complete, then optional:

For genres and roles, you can add translations here:

Other UI improvements

• Added limited spell checking ability (English, Indonesian, French, German, Portuguese, & Spanish).

• Added standard Cut/Copy/Paste (and related) context menu items.

  

Performance

• Large projects now load 12x faster.

Fixes

• Fixed a problem with OPEX schema validation.
• Fixed an issue that could import folders with detected problems during CSV import.
• Fixed a possible problem when adding contributions if some contributions did not have People entries yet.
• Fixed a possible problem if two people's IDs differed only by case.
• Fixed selection jumping to the wrong item after filtering with no prior selection.
• Fixed encoding for values containing quotes in CSV Export.

3.0.7-alpha

You can now specify the Access level of Project-level documents:

Removed the "Field Changes" section in the Project:Archive tab.

3.0.6-alpha

Improved RO-Crate Export

• many changes to the graph in response to review

Improved IMDI Export

• now much faster
• shows a progress bar
• you can now cancel it
• warnings and errors are now displayed in a scrollable, copy-able box with each kind of warning given its own color
• converts "~1960" to an IMDI-valid "1959/1961"
• converts "?" in Birth Date to Unspecified

Multilingual Fields

• should still be considered experimental
  • we could improve language selection
  • we need to think about where this should appear
  • currently tied to the archive—it's not clear when/if that is the correct approach
  • currently, only ELAR has this turned on for the Session Description field

Other Improvements

• Show PDF directly in lameta
• Show TIFFs directly in lameta
• Make information about archive-specific settings less prominent
• Spell checking in English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish (it's not smart enough to know which language).
• For projects with a large number of sessions, show loading progress

Fixes

• Fixed a problem where the developer build could export IMDI but installed versions could not
• Fixed a problem where access levels were saved with their ID and label instead of just the ID, causing problems when upgrading from lameta 2.3 files

3.0.5-alpha

• A bit more polish on the RO-Crate Html Preview

3.0.4-alpha

Warning

Opening a project in this version may modify it. Back up your project before opening it.

This is an experimental release intended for testing changes in lameta 3.0.

Search Field

In Sessions or People, you can now enter text to filter to items that contain that text.

As you type in this field, the items will be filtered down. lameta displays the count here:

Here are some examples of the kinds of things you can filter for:

Sessions / People Metadata

Session/Person child file names

Contributions

Notes

Status

RO-Crate (Research Object Crate) Export

Research Object Crate (RO-Crate) is a community effort to establish a lightweight approach to packaging research data with their metadata. These come in different flavors or profiles. lameta's ro-crate conforms to the LDAC profile.

To use this export, go to File: Export Project.

This export will add or update ro-crate-metadata.json to the root of your project directory. Because that json file isn't very easy for humans to read, lameta also generates or updates a ro-crate-preview.html file — an HTML overview of the entire project. By simply opening it in a browser, anyone can quickly understand the project’s contents without needing lameta or any other specialized software. Here is an excerpt from a sample project:

Archive configurations

• You can now choose a configuration tailored to specific archives (ELAR, AILLA, PARADISEC, TLA, REAP, ANLA, AILCA). Each archive can define
  • vocabularies (development is in progress)
  • fields
  • file naming rules
  • access protocol choices
  • IMDI (ISLE MetaData Initiative) compliance requirements

Multiple Subject and Working Languages

• Projects can declare multiple languages (not just one)

Project Fields

We have reorganized Project fields into the following sections:

Collection

Funding Project

Languages

Location

UI/UX Improvements

• Clear indicators on fields (required by chosen archive, PII (personally identifiable information) warnings, IMDI inclusion status)

• Improved field hints, validation messages, and streamlined form layouts

• Prominent notice when a file does not conform to the selected archive's file naming rules, along with a button to auto-fix

Other

• Improved localization structure for the UI
• 542 fully automated tests of which 38 exercise the actual UI

2.3.17

This release is just to change from "Beta Test" to "Release".

2.3.16-beta

Session IDs can no longer have spaces.

• IMDI outputs that find spaces in session ids will convert them to underscores.
• Session ID fields now show validation messages:

• People Full Names now also show validation messages:

2.3.15-beta

• Lameta now always enforces strict ASCII with no spaces on file and folder names

For files added before this version in a mode that didn't enforce these restrictions:

• Added indicators that draw attention to file naming problems
• Added a button to auto-fix naming problems on individual files

2.3.14-beta

Fixed: Enforce sentence case capitalization of genres in IMDI.
Added: a few more Spanish translations

2.3.13-beta

Export to IMDI files only now includes a ConsentDocuments.imdi.