I’ve just released version 1.6 of Memory Serves.

You can download the latest version here.

Here are the main improvements in this version:

• Global search and replace

  Now you can search and replace in all memories/glossaries at once

• Download search results

  You can download the search results as a TM file. This is useful for things like creating a TM/glossary for all entries added in a given date range, created by a specified user, or containing a certain word.

• You can add records from the Web interface.
• Records on browse page and in search results are edited in place.

  Before, when you clicked “Edit” for a record in a search result, after editing you would be sent to the search page with your search cleared. Now, you edit records in place, so you stay on the same search results page.

I’ve just released version 1.5 of Memory Serves.

Download the latest version here.

Below is a list of the fixes and improvements in this version:

• Runs as single instance: if you try to run Memory Serves and it is already running, it will open a web page to the Memory Serves site and exit. This prevents errors due to two instances of Memory Serves competing for the same port.
• System tray icon. This lets you easily see if Memory Serves is running. You can also right click the icon to launch Memory Serves in your browser, or quit the server. Display of the system tray icon can be controlled in the preferences.
• Rudimentary statistical information is displayed on the view memory/glossary page (% of records validated and reliability rating stats).
• The memory footprint was reduced slightly.
• Other minor tweaks to the view pages

About Memory Serves

Memory Serves is a free application that lets you share Felix translation memories (TMs) and glossaries over your local network or VPN.

I’ve just released version 1.3 of Memory Serves.

Download the latest version here.

This new version has greatly improved performance, as well as two new features: search and replace, and an admin interface

Improved performance

Memory Serves is now much faster and more responsive. In the previous versions, performance would drop markedly with very large translation memories, but version 1.3 is up to 10 times faster.

Search and replace

Memory Serves has a powerful new search and replace feature, making it easy to explore and maintain your translation memories and glossaries. See the section on Search and Replace in the manual for details.

Admin interface

A new admin interface allows you to create and manage user accounts, view logs, and configure Memory Serves preferences. See the section on the Admin Interface for details.

About Memory Serves

Memory Serves is a free program for sharing Felix translation memories and glossaries over a LAN or VPN. Using Memory Serves, a group of translators can share their TMs and glossaries in real time, ensuring consistency and quality of translations.

I’m working on the next version of Memory Serves now, so I’m doing a lot of dogfooding with it. I’ve thus been using Memory Serves pretty much exclusively over the past month for my own translation work.

Over the course of using Memory Serves intensively, I’ve uncovered quite a few areas needing improvement; which is good, because knowing about the problems makes it possible to fix them.

One feature that really saved my bacon, however, was the fact that Memory Serves keeps the database up-to-date at all times. I had been working on a fairly large translation, and went out with my family for dinner. Okinawa was experiencing some intense electrical storms, and when we got back, I found that my neighborhood had had a blackout, and my computers had all shut down.

Since Memory Serves uses the SQLite database to store the translation memories, all changes to the TMs are saved to disk immediately. So none of my work was lost, and I was able to carry on translating.

With Felix, your TMs aren’t saved automatically; you have to save them much as you would a Word document. Although it will prompt you to save if you exit the program with unsaved changes, if your computer (or Felix) crashed, then you’d lose all the translation entries you’d made since your last save.

This happened to a Felix user a few months back: she had been working on a translation for about six hours when her computer crashed, and she hadn’t saved her TM even once. She asked me if there was some way to recover her translations, but the only way was to use Align Assist to recreate her translation memory — the original TM was lost.

I added a ticket to my Felix issue tracker to add automatic background saving of TMs, but until now I’ve given higher priority to other development. Seeing first hand how this feature saved my own bacon with Memory Serves, however, I’ve decided to give it higher priority for Felix as well. I hope to have it included in Felix by the next release (version 1.5), or at the latest by the version after that (1.5.1).

The next version of Memory Serves will be released over the next few days, and it’ll have a lot of improvements as well. In particular, it’s much faster, fixes some issues with correcting/editing translations, and will have a new search and replace feature. The new search and replace will serve as a prototype of the improved search and replace I’m adding to Felix.

The Memory Serves manual is now online.

The manual provides more detailed information about Memory Serves and how to use it. I’ll be adding to this manual continually, so if you have any questions about using Memory Serves, let me know!

I’ve just released version 1.2 of Memory Serves.

Download the latest version here.

In addition to some minor bug fixes (like a problem adding records with non-ascii characters in the context field), version 1.2 of Memory Serves includes a new program called Memory Importer:

Uploading large memories or glossaries to Memory Serves would sometimes cause a time out error; you can use this application to import your translation memory (.ftm/.xml) and glossary (*.fgloss/.xml) files into Memory Serves, without worrying about time outs.

To launch Memory Importer, go to the Start menu, then select All Programs >> Memory Serves >> Memory Importer.

Next, simply select a memory or glossary file, then click Import. You can also edit the meta information about the memory, such as the source language, creator, or client, or add notes about the memory.

Note that you have to run Memory Importer on the computer where Memory Serves is installed. It can’t import memories over the network (yet).

About Memory Serves

Memory Serves is a free application that shares Felix translation memories and glossaries over a local network, allowing multiple translators to share their TMs/glossaries in real time. Translations added to the memory by one translator are available to the other translators instantly.

This is great when several translators are working on the same project, when you have a company-wide standard glossary, or any time you need to share a memory/glossary that is still being added to.

Memory Serves creates a Web server on your local machine using the open-source cherrypy framework. This server is visible within your LAN or VLAN only; it’s not visible to the entire Internet. The IP address it uses is that of your own computer.

I’ve just released version 1.0 of Memory Serves. There are a number of improvements over the early releases of Memory Serves. The main ones are listed below.

• Browse memories and glossaries
• Search memories and glossaries
• Edit, delete, and view records
• Utility to clear admin account if you forget your password*

* The utility can only be used from the host machine, and will only affect the account of the logged-on user.

About Memory Serves

Memory Serves is free program that shares Felix memories over the local network. This is useful when two or more translators are working collaboratively, and want to share the same translation memories/glossaries. It also makes it possible to manage your group’s translation memories in a central location.

Felix version 1.2 on the way

Barring a meteor strike to the Japanese archipelago, I’ll be releasing Felix version 1.2 tomorrow. This will enable networking goodness using Felix memories.

I’ve got Felix working with Memory Serves now. There are still a couple of kinks to work out; for example, memories on the server aren’t fully integrated with the Memory Manager dialog in Felix. But normal memory and glossary searches are working, so I’m making this early release.

I expect to have the final release of Felix 1.2 and Memory Serves 1.0 within about a week, right on schedule. In addition to the network capability, I’m planning on adding a couple more improvements to Felix for the 1.2 release, along with some improvements to Memory Serves for the 1.0 release.

You’ll need the latest version of Memory Serves in order to use it from Felix, because I had to make a couple of changes to get them working together well.

Download Felix version 1.1.8 (6.7 MB)
Download Memory Serves version 0.3 (6.9 MB)

Using the Network Function

To connect to a memory on the server, copy the connection string for the desired memory/glossary in Memory Serves, then from the Felix File menu, select Connect… (you can do the same thing from the glossary window).

The Connection Dialog appears. Copy in the connection string, and click OK.

Now you should be able to use the networked memory just like an ordinary Felix memory.

There are still some kinks to work out before the official 1.2 release, but if you’d like a preview of the network function, I’d greatly appreciate any feedback and bug reports.

I was hoping to have an early release of Felix with support for Memory Serves memories by today, but unfortunately there is still a little bit of work to do. I’m leaving today for a trip with my family (going to climb Mt. Fuji with my son for his 10th birthday), so the release of Felix 1.1.8 will have to wait until sometime next week.

I did release Memory Serves version 0.2, however. The main change from version 0.1 is that there is now an admin account, which is needed to delete memories and shut down the server. When you first launch Memory Serves, it will prompt you to create an admin account.

Please note that installing version 0.2 will wipe out any memories/glossaries you had loaded in version 0.1, as the database schema has changed.

I’ve just released version 0.1 of Memory Serves. This is ahead of an early release of Felix version 1.2, planned for next weekend. Together, it’ll be possible to share Felix memories over a local network.

This early release of Memory Serves is in order to get feedback and hopefully uncover any problems running on different systems. Well, hopefully there won’t be any bugs to be found (and I’ll win the lottery), but we all know how likely that is. An early release gives me wiggle room to declare a “bug free” major release .

That said, I have tested it fairly thoroughly on my own XP and Vista systems. Since it does include a built-in server, it’ll be interesting to see how various firewall and security settings deal with it.