Warning: Unresponsive script

Peter100

I get this error (twice) when I'm trying to export my library:

"A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.

Script: /Users/xxxxxx/Library/Application Support/Zotero/Profiles/5nbjfma9.default/zotero/translators/BibTeX.js:2161"

The Debug ID is D1364800775

Thank you,
Peter

dstillman

http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/unresponsive_script_warning

You shouldn't get that during an export, but have you tried simply clicking Continue a bunch of times?

Peter100

Yes, I hit "continue" twice. It did create the lib but I have yet to be able to import with PDFs.

It did seem to work when I selected "notes" only and not "files" during export.

(I am posting a follow-up question under import-export.)

dstillman

I'm saying that if you just keep clicking Continue, it may finish eventually. See the linked page for an explanation.

It's fairly rare for there to be a situation where it wouldn't ever finish, though it's not impossible.

adlerhn

Every time I export my library including files I get around 3 "unresponsive script" warnings from Firefox. Just pressing continue every time should do the job. The only downside is that the script is paused until you press continue, so it is not possible to leave it in the background doing the export by itself.

adamsmith

may I ask why you're exporting your library so frequently? Note that export is _not_ a good way to back-up.
http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data#backing_up_your_zotero_library

adlerhn

Thanks for the link, it is interesting.

Even if it is not recommended as per the link above, I am using export as a backup, because I prefer my backup to be in a standard format which I could potentially use in any other tool (i.e. BibTex), rather than backing up the internal Zotero files.

adamsmith

up to you, but you'll lose some data, will have problems with existing Word/LibreOffice documents, and if you use sync that will cause problems if you restore from an export rather than a proper back-up, so as a backup strategy this is really ill-advised.
I don't see why a back-up needs to be in a widely supported format. If you want to switch, you can always export (and obviously that's important), but it's not like Zotero, being open source and all, will suddenly vanish.

dstillman

Yeah, what adamsmith says. Given that you're still using Zotero, why not just back it up in the recommended, non-lossy format and, if you ever stop using Zotero, export it at that time?

The Unresponsive Script Warning still isn't ideal, of course, and we'll hopefully be able to make it less likely in future versions, but given that most people do large exports infrequently, it's not a huge priority. My link above also gives instructions on how to just disable the warning, though it will mean that if other parts of Firefox hang you won't get a warning letting you recover. (In Zotero Standalone that setting is set to 0 by default since there's nothing else running.)

adlerhn

adamsmith: thanks, that makes a lot of sense.