Generating bibliography problem

poirmw
I am using the latest beta version of Zotero, as well as the Standalone version. When I attempt to create a bibliography containing the entire contents of My Library, by sending the results to the Clipboard, I get the following message: JavaScript App, "An error occurred generating your bibliography. Please try again." My bibliography is highly specialized, but not very large. It contains just over 400 items.

See error report AD 630049168
  • fbennett
    I can reproduce this, and will look into it early next week if it isn't solved before then.
  • fbennett
    I found the problem here, actually. When generating a bibliography for the clipboard, Zotero generates the text in HTML, and the outputs it as plain text using XML magic.

    The CSL processor was including a character in the automatically generated HTML output that is valid HTML, but not declared in the Firefox xml engine (&​nbsp). I've replaced it (and a few other similar special characters) with numeric codes (which work everywhere), and tested that clipboard output will work reliably in Zotero with the fix in place. I'm releasing that now, and it should find its way into the next Zotero beta release.

    Thanks for reporting this; that's how things get better.
  • poirmw
    Thank you. I take it that the correction will be made to both the FF version and the Standalone version of Zotero? Again, many thanks.
  • ajlyon
    Yes, this will be in the next version of both.
  • poirmw
    I am still having problems generating a bibliography with the latest Standalone version of Zotero. I wonder if someone might look at error report # 653294030 ? In advance, thank you.
  • Mark Walmsley
    I'm also using the newest standalone version of Zotero and having the same error when attempting to use citation style MHRA (have also tried others with no success) and in any output format. I have looked through forum posts that point to this being a recurring error that had been fixed in previous versions. Can anyone tell me if they are having similar problems or if there is something I am doing wrong?
  • adamsmith
    Mark - no, this problem should be fixed.
    Describe exactly what you're doing and see if the error occurs with any reference or only with a specific one. Then provide an error report ID.
    http://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_bugs
  • Mark Walmsley
    I am selecting my entire library (137 items), right clicking and selecting "create bibliography from selected items". I am then using MHRA format without bibliography and output method "save to clipboard". I have also tried the first five or six citation styles with exactly the same result. On previous attempts I have also varied the output method, again, with the same results. I have checked for updates and am fully up to date. Error Report ID is 783124876
  • adamsmith
    Dan, Simon - what does the error report say?
  • Simon
    edited January 22, 2012
    [JavaScript Error: "sep is undefined" {file: "chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/citeproc.js" line: 9992}]
    with 3.0b3.2 (citeproc-js 1.0.250)
  • fbennett
    edited January 22, 2012
    That's from the processor then.

    @Mark Walmsley: You should find that one or more items in your bibliography are triggering the error. They will probably contain quote marks, one or more apostrophes, HTML-like in-field markup, or unusual characters (that are not in UTF-8 encoding). You can identify the problem entry or entries by trying with the first and the second half of the full set of references, then dividing again with the half the produces the error, and so forth. A few iterations should narrow the fault down to a single bad item.

    When you have identified the item, please export it by left-clicking over the item in Zotero, and exporting it as Zotero RDF. Then copy and paste the content of the exported file to http://gist.github.com, save it as a "Public Gist", and post the URL from the address bar back here. The feedback would be very helpful: I would like to prevent the processor from failing on bad items, and data that breaks it is the best way to narrow down the few remaining problems.
  • Mark Walmsley
    I found the offending item which was a stray single quotation mark in the title of one of my entries:

    Robert F. Williams, '"Black Power”, and the Roots of the African American Freedom Struggle

    I have exported the entry as Zotero RDF but I'm not sure how to copy and paste its contents as when I try to open the file it simply imports it as a collection to Zotero. Is there a program I need to use to do this or am I doing something wrong?

    Thanks for your continued help with this.
  • fbennett
    edited January 22, 2012
    You can open the file with any text editor (such Notepad). But you don't need to ship the content, I think; I should be able to reproduce the fault with a lone open-quote here. Thanks very much for reporting back. Is it working for you now?
  • Mark Walmsley
    Yes it's working perfectly now. Thanks for all of your help
  • fbennett
    Great. I figured out what the problem was, I think. The processor normally copes with mismatched quotes okay, but in this case the open double-quote appears to have been a straight quote, and the closed double-quote a fancy typesetter's quote. Together with the leading single-quote, it caused a crash.

    I'll set up to normalize quotes when the data is received by the processor, but this seems to be a very rare case, and you should be able to rest easy for the present.
  • fbennett
    This bug is now fixed, in citeproc-js release 1.0.266.
  • Mark Walmsley
    I must say that I'm very impressed with the quality and speed of your customer service. I have already recommended Zotero to a lot of friends and acquaintances but I will make sure to do so more often in the future.
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