Known Issues with this Version

If you have used older-style sharing over a local area network (projects have the extension fwdb), you need to turn off that way of sharing (revert to fwdata format) in order to try Send/Receive for collaborating. You can do this in File > Project Management > Project Locations and Sharing. Uncheck the box labelled “Share projects stored on this computer.”

If you want to track our progress on these and other issues, follow one of the links below and sign up for an account on our JIRA system.

Send/Receive

• It is strongly not recommended to restore over (replacing) an existing project with which you are collaborating using send/receive. The subsequent send/receive would send a huge number of changes to all the other team members, effectively restoring the old version of the project on every team member’s computer.
• You cannot have non-ASCII characters in the FLEx project name to use Send/Receive.
• The menu item “Copy (Ctrl+C)” isn’t working on the “Conflict Detail” dialog box (Issue 14327).
• The Text Chart is changed incorrectly (words are moved to emptied cells) after another user deletes some charted words from the text (Issue 14317).
• If both users edit the same phonemes, or add inflection features to the same lexical entry, the results may need subsequent editing. E.g. A phoneme may have incompatible phonological features and an entry may have incompatible inflection features.
• If you add a question or add a message to a merger conflict/notification, it is not possible to edit or delete those comments subsequently (Issue 14076).
• Using any Send/Receive commands in quick succession usually causes a message to pop up which claims that FLExBridge is already running. If it is not (e.g. you closed the Messages window then need to reopen them) wait for 5 seconds and try again.
• Linked media files over 1MB in size are not being transferred. No movie files of any size are being transferred. If a user subsequently removes the link to the file due to the current restrictions, the warning messages continue to be displayed at each send/receive operation if the file is still in the project folder.
• When both users change the properties of the same style, the resulting merge conflict message does not state the conflicting style settings.

Send/Receive Lexicon (LIFT) with e.g. WeSay

• Send/Receive Lexicon should not be used to pass data between two or more FLEx users. You should use Send/Receive Project.
• Send/Receive Lexicon depends on the LIFT standard. Some FLEx data is not handled well yet by this collaboration method. E.g. Which entries belong in which inflection template slots and some other morphological grammar facts stored on a lexical entry. Components of a complex form. Custom lexical relations.
• If you created a custom field in WeSay and used a previous version of LIFTBridge with FLEx (e.g. in 2012), FLEx will crash when you try to open the project. Please contact us or visit our Jira page for help.

Other Issues

• In Dictionary Configuration, the check box under sense that says “display each sense in its own paragraph” is not working properly. This will be addressed in a development effort to redo Dictionary Configuration.
• The Sena 3 (sample project) link doesn’t work on the new Welcome dialog box the first time the dialog opens. Workaround: Use Open and then select Sena 3 (Issue 14324).
• Semantic Domain’s Suggest feature is too prolific when there is more than one word in the Gloss field. (Issue 14243).
• Interlinear SFM import fails with Unicode to Unicode converter (Issue 13741).
• Right-click menu is inappropriate for Status and Confidence fields (Issue 14195).
• Unicode Character Editor fails to process code points out of plane 0 (Issue 14263).
• Type-ahead doesn’t work on custom fields referring to custom lists (Issue 13248).
• To use Phonology Assistant with this version of FieldWorks, you need to upgrade Phonology Assistant to version 3.4.6 or later.
• To use FLExTools with this version of FieldWorks, you will need to upgrade to version 1.1.4.

A Full package contains .NET 4.0 and Windows Installer 3.1; a Minimal package does not.

Users can probably use the minimal package unless this is the first installation of FieldWorks and their operating system is older than Windows® 8.

The SE packages only contain Language Explorer (FLEx); BTE packages also contain Translation Editor.

1. Download one of the Full or Minimal installation packages above.
2. Double-click the exe file you downloaded. After it extracts files, the first installation screen appears.
3. Follow the on-screen instructions. Make sure you allow the SIL Software installer to install FLExBridge and any other required third party software it says is required.
4. If you have used FieldWorks 6.0.6 or earlier on this computer before, you may see two further steps:
   1. Select which if any projects you wish to migrate from FieldWorks 6.0.6 or earlier format.
   2. Choose whether to uninstall the last version of FieldWorks or its desktop shortcuts.

For more information on upgrading to FieldWorks 7 or 8 from an older version (6 or earlier), see the Data Format and File Locations page.

Please check the Known Issues section above.

Note: The movies have not yet been updated since FieldWorks 6. More recent movies are available online as noted on the demo movies page. Download additional localizations from the localizations page.

• Sample projects are no longer being included in the download packages.
• The version of sample data you need will depend on the model of the version of FieldWorks you are using.
• For versions 8.0.5 and later, use this sample data:
  • Sena 2 – 14 MB (Lexicon and Texts for training)
  • Sena 3 – 15 MB (Lexicon and Texts data)
  • Lela-Teli 2 – 2 MB (Data Notebook for training)
  • Lela-Teli 3 – 2 MB (Data Notebook data)
• Click one of the sample projects, such as “Sena 3”. Download and save this file to your computer. If you find that your browser (e.g., I.E.) has renamed the files to .zip, you will need to rename them first to .fwbackup in order for the FieldWorks restore function to work.
• Launch FieldWorks (FLEx).
• Open the Restore a Project dialog by doing one of the following:
  1. If the welcoming Language Explorer dialog appears, click “Restore a project from a backup file”.
  2. Or if the main FieldWorks Language Explorer window appears, choose File -> Project Management -> Restore a Project.
• On the Restore a Project dialog, click “Another location” and click Browse.
• Navigate to the downloaded sample project file (which may be in your Downloads directory by default), click the file, and click Open.
• Click OK.

Following is the MD5 hash of each of the download packages, should you wish to use this to verify the download completed successfully.

Recommended System Configuration

• Operating system: Microsoft Windows® 7 with Service Pack 1
• Computer and processor: Computer with Intel Core® (or equivalent) processor running at 2.2 gigahertz (GHz) or higher
• Memory: 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM or more.

Note: The more RAM and the faster the CPU, the better FieldWorks will perform, especially with larger projects.

Minimum System Requirements

• Operating system: Microsoft Windows® XP Professional with Service Pack 3 or later, Windows Vista® with Service Pack 2 or later, Windows® 7 with Service Pack 1, Windows® 8, Windows® 10.
• Computer and processor: Computer with Intel Pentium® (or equivalent) processor running at 1.5 gigahertz (GHz).
• Memory: 500 megabytes (MB) of RAM.
• Hard disk: Hard disk space requirements will vary depending on existing machine configuration and custom installation choices. As a guideline figure, you should have at least 1.5 gigabytes free prior to installation. In any case, you are recommended to have at least 10% of your hard drive free in order to allow Windows to run properly.
• Display: 1024 by 768 pixels screen resolution or greater (for laptops, use native display resolution).
• Offline storage: An external USB drive, network drive, or writeable CD-ROM to allow offline data backups.
• Peripherals: Mouse or compatible pointing device.

For SE:

• Setup
• Technical Support
• License

For BTE:

• Setup
• Technical Support
• License