[error 390487215] syncing not working

mlwang

It's been like this since this morning (i.e., about 8 hours ago). Zotero has kept trying to sync, but never succeeded, or so it seems.

I'm using MLZ 4.0m405 with Firefox 24 on Mac OS 10.8.5.

fbennett

Does it throw an error message (shown by an exclamation next to the sync icon)? If so, what shows when you click on the error icon?

mlwang

Thanks for asking.

I don't remember the exact original message, but I got this one after a few more tries:

ItemID not set for object before attempting to load data

Searched the forum for the error message, and tried a few tricks, but nothing worked.

Exported my library and manually deleted the 3 new items not on the server after manual comparison (Not that many items yet, thankfully), and emptied the trash. Still no good (same error message).

Restored from backup, and problem solved, at the loss of 3 items (same as the above).

Emptied trash, edited the exported rdf and removed all but the 3 items, and re-imported the new rdf.

Syncing is working again, though still don't know what happened.

fbennett

I'll make a note of the error: this obviously should not happen, and I'm curious how it could have arisen.

Restoring a library from RDF is not ideal, since any links to documents created against the original database content will be lost. If you get this again, let me know and we'll try to pin down the cause.

mlwang

I've managed to reproduce it: a bizarre combination of of item type "hearing" and a name entered in the "testimony by" field. Screenshot available at https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3F1SeOjlQYqRjlfbVFQcjVFTkE/.

Changing the item to another type (I tried "case" and "document") is enough to make the syncing work again, and it doesn't matter what name is entered (I tried several, including English names). Deleting the name, however, would also make the problem go away. Entering something into another field (date, e.g.) is fine, too.

Tomorrow I'll try again from another computer.

fbennett

Brilliant. This was a careless error on my part. The testimonyBy creator is added by MLZ, and the sync mapping (to make it compatible with the Zotero sync servers) was missing.

It's now fixed: after updating MLZ, sync will work again for that combination.

mlwang

Confirmed. Thanks. One side issue though: every time I update MLZ, the mlz-amlaw.csl is reverted back to an older version. You might want to update the included styles.

fbennett

Ouch, I didn't realize that was happening. Would you like to have the new Taiwan legal style in the MLZ distribution?

mlwang

That would be nice, for teaching people MLZ would become just a tad easier. The style is (will be) needed by a relatively small number of people, however, so I don't mind if you leave it out. A centralized repo for easy download is good enough for me.