Zotero / LibreOffice - Random italics in inline references [SOLVED]

jafro
Hi,

I have a problem with Libreoffice and Zotero (in Ubuntu). The document began to italize the references randomly when editing or inserting new reference. E.g like this:

PNG-image of the problem

I can turn italics off manually, but they may or may not come back later (eventually they come back). I can not reproduce this behaviour every time, but usually all new references are in italics. I have, amongst other things, tried changing styles in Zotero, but it keeps italizing anyway. Anyone seen this annoying behaviour before? I'd rather not markup my document from scratch. :-(
  • adamsmith
    which versions of all the involved software are you running? I remember a similar issue in earlier versions of 2.1 but that should long be fixed.
    One guess would be that there is a problem in one citation - you could try testing this by splitting the document in two and see if the issue exists in both parts or only in one of them.
  • jafro
    edited October 7, 2011
    Thank you for your tip.

    Zotero 2.1.10,
    Zotero Openoffice integration 3.5b1
    LibreOffice 3.3.3
    Firefox 7.1 (but problem existed also in earlier versions of Firefox)

    I tried splitting the document, and only the first part had this problem. Is this the only way, finding the one "bad" citation? This is a rather large document, and my time is limited. PhD due to be delivered in 13 days.
  • adamsmith
    Well, since you can keep splitting in half that really shouldn't take so long - you can isolate 1 in a thousand citations in 10 splits.
  • jafro
    Actually, this is not it. It reproduces in several split chapters now. It may be related to an error in the database itself, but that would be harder to find. Don't Zotero have a validator or something which could help testing for errors in the database?
  • adamsmith
    this is almost certainly not a problem in the database (you can check database integrity in the advanced panel of the Zotero preferences).

    I don't have a lot of great ideas here - maybe Frank or Simon (who actually wrote the components involved) have a suggestion.
  • jafro
    edited October 9, 2011
    Thank you for your response.

    I'm going through all of them manually now. I found some weird behaviour in several inline references.

    Example

    If I don't use the page-field (to the right, entry is 6-8), but enter 6-8 in the manual editor, the italics disappear. If I put the numbers back in the page-field, the italics appear again. This is not isolated to this particular reference, but neither to every reference using the page-field.

    As I labour through the document, reinserting them, changing them in the editor or removing them where I can, the presence of italics seem to slowly diminish.

    But it doesn't feel right.
  • fbennett
    I can't think of any reason the processor itself would do this. Have you tried setting the local in Firefox to en-US, and run it against a small document that shows the problem? Possibly Word or the plugin are stumbling over something in the character encodings. Just a shot in the dark, really, but it might be something to try.
  • jafro
    edited October 11, 2011
    I can copy a few citations and a paragraph to a new paragraph, and the problem will reproduce in locale en-US and nb-NO. If I delete all the citations in the paragraph, new citations may or may not be italized.

    I will test a bit more.
  • jafro
    It does not reproduce everytime. The problem may or may not go away when I delete all three citations in the test-document. Re-inserting the exact same citations may or may not italize. Mostly, the italics disappear after reinserting them.

    Can't see that locale has anything to do with it, but the letter é in "Thévenot 2001" seems to be a problem, but then again, doesn't reproduce everytime.
  • jafro
    edited October 11, 2011
    Yes. Many citations in my database containing letters like ø, á, è and é get italized in inline-text, even if surname (shown) doesn't contain the unusual letter. In new, fresh documents, this doesn't happen at all.

    When I copypaste an "infected" paragraph to a new document, the problem continue in the new document.

    This happen in both nb-NO and en-US.
  • fbennett
    If you're up for a small experiment, try installing the feedback gadget, and see if you can capture one of the bad references to the CSL Test Submission group. That might provide a clue to where things are going awry.
  • jafro
    Feedback gadget was not compatible with Firefox 7.
  • fbennett
    I've put up a new copy that may work better. It's also configured to auto-update, if the build works correctly.
  • jafro
    edited October 12, 2011
    Feedback gadget installs, but won't let me save anything.

    "CSL Feedback Gadget installed. To save tests, join the CSL Test Submission group on zotero.org. "

    Well, I am a member now.
  • jafro
    edited October 12, 2011
    Ok, managed to save reference. Sorry for twin posting, gadget needs some sort of confirmation when saving is successful.

    http://www.zotero.org/groups/csl_test_submission
  • fbennett
    Thanks, got it. The gadget didn't save the data for one of the references. Could you do a Zotero RDF export of the Thévenot 2001 item, paste it to http://gist.github.com, save it as a public gist, and post the URL from the address bar back here? With that data, I should be able to run the test outside Firefox. That should tell us whether it's a processor issue or something on the plugin/Word side.
  • jafro
    Thévenot: https://gist.github.com/1283452
  • fbennett
    edited October 13, 2011
    The data all renders okay in the test framework. The problem is probably either due to some difference in the Firefox Javascript processor (there are some of these, but they are very rare), or some issue in your Word environment that is triggered by some action of the plugin.

    Both of those are kind of outside my jurisdiction, so I'll let the Zotero team pick up from here.
  • jafro
    edited October 13, 2011
    Thank you.

    So, to sum up, we now know that my problem with inline italizing is not related to a single corrupted citation in the database or in the document itself. The problem is mainly, but not exclusively, associated with citations with unusual characters in name of author, like é, á, æ, ø and å. Problematic citations seem to bulk up in the documents, as if they affect each other. There is however exceptions also here; single quotes which stand alone are italized. Sometimes I can use manual editor to create workaround, sometimes not.
  • jafro
    Hello, just wanted to say that this problem is related to character-styles. Large portions of my document were marked up as "emphasis", which is a style I never use. But in some way, this style had spread itself through almost all of my document.
  • fbennett
    Hmm ... maybe we shouldn't write off the possibility that the processor is a fault too soon. I wonder whether Unicode decomposition could lie at the heart of this.
  • jafro
    It is a fact that even though character-style were set to emphasis, this didn't affect all references, but in particular those with unusual characters, and a few others.

    There also seem to be a bug in Libreoffice where character-styles spread in paragraphs or chapters like viruses infecting a body, but right now I'm just glad I don't have to worry no more. Two days until i deliver my manuscript.
  • fbennett
    Glad to hear the your project is under control. When you get to the other side, let's look more closely at this.
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