Broken reference between Zotero 4.x and 5.0 beta

I have a reference that was working with Zotero 4.x but provokes a nasty crash with 5.0 beta.
System details:
ArchLinux, Libreoffice 5.3.2.2, Zotero 5.0-beta.182+d472752
Exported reference:
https://transfer.sh/QtY6w/Ramirez-Valiente.rdf

It's easy enough to reproduce:
1. Create new document
2. Insert the reference
3. Watch Libreoffice crash

The hang is so severe that in order to get Libreoffice working again I have to `ps aux |grep libreoffice`, `ps aux |grep zotero` and use `kill -9 PID` to be able to launch Libreoffice again (Even if I close Zotero, the process remains "hung"). After the crash, I can't even use zotero to post a log file to Zotero's server (the "view output" option also does not show anything, so this is kind of severe)...
  • edited April 26, 2017
    It's been 6 days and no reply. I guess this post could have been "swallowed" by the many others, but I think it might be an important issue to track, since it affects the beta version, so I'm bumping it.
  • Sorry for no response. I was actually looking into this and then some other things cropped up and I forgot to update. Seems to be related to unicode characters in the citation text.

    An update is coming shortly, but for the time being the ridiculous workaround appears to be to insert a citation which doesn't have unicode characters first (specifically in the author name in this case), after which entries with unicode characters do not crash libreoffice.
  • Thank you @adomasven!
    The workaround works on a new document, but I still get the same error when changing the bilbiography style from "BMC Bioinformatics" (numbered references) to "Molecular Ecology" (text references).
    I'll have to investigate further to try and make it reproducible (so far I can avoid the error by removing all citations with unicode characters, but this is less than ideal).
  • edited April 26, 2017
    Well, after testing I can confirm to you that this is equally as broken in 4.0, unfortunately. Might have something to do with JRE or LibreOffice updates, but there have been various reports of libreoffice crashing on linux intermittently for the past year and I've confirmed them myself, although was never able to trace down the cause. It seems that this isolates it though - unicode characters.

    I can also confirm that this works fine on windows, so it might be worthwhile playing around with different JRE versions or older versions of LO (but no older than 4.2) and seeing if that yields any results. Do post if you find a combination that works.

    Also see the issue on github for updates.
  • Ok, I'll try on my old laptop with older versions of LO and see if that solves the issue. But I'm not entirely sure how far I can go "back in time" in order to find the problem.
    I don't think I have had JRE enabled in LO for quite a while now, so maybe that is not related.
    Also, is there any way to increase the logging verbosity?
  • I don't think I have had JRE enabled in LO for quite a while now, so maybe that is not related.
    The libreoffice Zotero plugin is Java based, so JRE is certainly involved.
    Also, is there any way to increase the logging verbosity?
    For LibreOffice there isn't without a development build.

    Either way, there's likely to be updates on this by the end of the week. Hopefully a proper bugfix.
  • Ok, thanks.
    In that case I'll withheld my "regression testing".
    If you still need more info on this by the end of the week let me know and I'll save a bit of the weekend for that.
  • @Stunts could you download the updated .oxt file and install it over the existing Zotero extension in LibreOffice?

    This should fix the problem and if it does we will release it shortly to the general public.
  • The hard crash I had been experiencing seems to be gone with the updated extension. Cheers!
    Unfortunately the new version still doesn't allow me to change from a numbered style to a "spelled" style, presenting the following error:

    ```
    Zotero experienced an error updating your document.

    Error(s) encountered during statement execution: no such column: NaN [QUERY: SELECT itemID, note FROM items JOIN itemNotes USING (itemID) WHERE libraryID=? AND itemID IN (NaN)] [PARAMS: NaN] [ERROR: no such column: NaN]
    ```

    I will try to identify the new culprit in a new document and report back.
  • Confirming that on a new document I can insert the formerly problematic reference (even if it is the only one) and no crashes are experienced when using the updated extension.
    Great job.
    I'll try to identify the next problem and report back.
    Is it ok to continue discussing this here, or should I open a new thread?
  • Just to be sure I have triggered the error and submitted the Debug ID: D851532213.
    The reference from the original post causes the trouble.
    I have copied my text to a new document in incremental iterations, and switched styles. Once the "Ramírez Valiente" reference is in the new document, switching styles will trigger the bug.
    However, so far I was unable to reproduce in a completely new document (without copy & paste from the problematic document).
  • Oh, sorry about that. That's a different bug that we are aware of and will fix shortly. Glad the crashing is gone, it's been bugging us for quite a while.
  • The bugfix for the crashing and the error you are seeing currently should be out shortly with beta.185. Thanks for leading us on onto a way to reproduce this bug!
  • Owo. Confirming that beta.185 solves the issue.
    No more crashing and style switching works!
    Thank you for your extremely quick reaction.
    Good luck with the last push out of beta. It is turning out to be quite an awesome release.
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