you are on a custom Zotero build Zotero 4.0.27.SOURCE - BetterBibTeX broke

moritzklenk
since I dowloaded 4.0.27 I can no longer export to Better BibTeX. When I start Zotero it says "Better BibTeX has been disabled because it found Zotero 4.0.27.SOURCE, but requires 4.0.27 or later."
This totally broke everything I relied on and I don't know how to fix it.
I tried to download Zotero (Standalone Mac, btw.) again from the website not via the update function, but no change.
I disabled Better BibTex restarted Zotero, enabled it again, restarted - no change.
I need help, please.
  • adamsmith
    You should be able to force better bibtex to still run in the add-ons. This is a labeling issue, not an actual incompatibility.
  • moritzklenk
    ok. they fixed that by updating the add-on. Now I still get java-script errors. I checked a few items - they have caused no troubles so far, but for some reasons cannot get exported now.

    [JavaScript Error: "Error connecting to server. Check your Internet connection." {file: "chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/sync.js" line: 2566}]
    [JavaScript Error: "Error connecting to server. Check your Internet connection." {file: "chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/sync.js" line: 652}]
    [JavaScript Error: "value is undefined" {file: "/Users/moritzklenk/Documents/ZOTERO/translators/BibLaTeX.js" line: 441}]

    Also, I can no longer get the preference window. Clicking on Zotero in the menu bar only lets me quit Zotero. I have no idea...
  • adamsmith
    have you ever manually edited your translators?
  • moritzklenk
    well yes and no: yes I did, but I updated all translators so they should have been replaced by the original, right?
  • moritzklenk
    also: would it affect that I can no longer open the preference pane?
  • moritzklenk
    I would love to try to reset the translators, but I cannot access the preferences... all troubleshooting recommendations therefore do not work.
  • adamsmith
    Find your Zotero data folder and move the "Translators" folder out of it to a different location (e.g. your desktop). Restart Firefox/Zotero and try again. I don't think a broken translator should affect the ability to open the preferences, but hard to say.

    If that doesn't help, try disabling all other add-ons, in particular better bibtex, for testing.
  • moritzklenk
    Ok. I did. disabled all add-ons, tried to export it (now using BibLaTeX - because BetterBibLaTeX is no longer there), after it updated it's translators automatically, and I got this error again:
    [JavaScript Error: "value is undefined" {file: "/Users/moritzklenk/Documents/ZOTERO/translators/BibLaTeX.js" line: 441}]

    btw.: before I did try to export I could access the preference window. After I only get "Quit" again...
    Still no solution.
  • adamsmith
    Is this one specific item or in general? The function it fails on tries to handle the filepath for an attachment. (It works for me, so this isn't a general problem).
  • adamsmith
    oh, and an error report ID would be great, after triggering that issue.
  • moritzklenk
    it is only for few items - but no new items, old and often exported ones..

    Report ID of last error: 1580128906
  • adamsmith
    Can you open the attached files? Can you give us the full filepaths of all attachments for which this is happening?
  • moritzklenk
    edited July 1, 2015
    (sorry, not strange.) and no: I cannot open it (it was a web address...)
  • adamsmith
    Do you mean it's an attachment that's just a weblink, or is it actually an attached file, but instead of a filepath it has a web address. The latter shouldn't exist, the former would point towards a possible bug in how export is handled.
  • aurimas
    If you click on the attachment that causes issues and you look in the right-hand pane. What are the first two lines that appear there?
  • emilianoeheyns
    (If BBT still won't start on standalone that's a bug -- I used Services.vc.compare to compare the version, and it reports 4.0.27.SOURCE as lower than 4.0.27, which made BBT erroneously report incompatibility)
  • emilianoeheyns
    (BBT has an active check for 4.0.27 and disables itself if that or a later version isn't found; I couldn't sensibly keep BBT compatible across the changes it introduced. Not complaining, just explaining)
  • moritzklenk
    indeed this was one problem: the first line was empty, so no name. Filling something in here did solve this problem. To be precise: it solved the problem for exporting it with BibLaTeX. For BetterBibLaTeX there is another problem, now with this code:
    [JavaScript Error: "part is undefined" {file: "/Users/moritzklenk/Documents/ZOTERO/translators/Better BibLaTeX.js" line: 3735}]
    Report ID: 954048799

    I guess this is caused by the same attachments... renaming the first line is not enough for BBT. I'll go and find out.
  • moritzklenk
    Ok. to delete these strange attached "files" which are no files but links did solve the problem.
    Yet I still wonder, how did it happen? I've never had this problem before and as I mentioned I have used these items quite often.
    Thanks for your help.
  • emilianoeheyns
    edited July 1, 2015
    Hi obsrvng_obsrvrs,

    I (author of Better BibTeX) am not part of the Zotero team; as such, I don't read these forums as frequently as the Zotero team does, and I can't access the data that's behind the debug ID. I'd hugely appreciate it if you could file problems with Better BibTeX at https://github.com/ZotPlus/zotero-better-bibtex/issues . Better BibTeX also adds an option "Report ZotPlus Errors", which will yield a debug ID whose data I can access. If you right-click the reference that shows the problem and then choose "Report ZotPlus Error", the debug ID will also give me the reference data in question for easier reproduction of the error.
  • emilianoeheyns
    (oh and adamsmith is correct when he mentions disabling better bibtex before reporting zotero errors; it wouldn't have been the first time BBT was the cause of what looked like a Zotero error. I have a growing test suite, but it doesn't have 100% coverage)
  • aurimas
    So not having a title is a problem with recent changes. The default Zotero behavior and UI should not make it possible to have no title for an attachment, but it's possible that Zotero plug-ins could enable this behavior. We'll obviously have to account for this.
  • aurimas
    Should be fixed in the latest BibTeX/BibLaTeX translator. Update your translators via Preferences -> General -> Update Now and try again.
  • moritzklenk
    Ok. I would like to try, but I still got the problem not being able to access preferences. Sometimes there is only "Quit", nothing else (Standalone, Mac) when clicking on Zotero in the menu bar.
  • dstillman
    That's a Mozilla bug, but you can always access the preferences from the gear menu in the Zotero toolbar.
  • emilianoeheyns
    BBT 0.14.1 now handles this case too. Must have been some strange beast -- given the way BBT works, it means it's an attachment that does have a path, but not a title.
Sign In or Register to comment.