Zotero freezes after style changes

johannes.kruse
Hi everybody,


each time I try to prompt a style change in Word and try to use the style 'Politische Vierteljahresschrift' Zotero freezes... This happens on two different computers. Anybody else having the same issue?

Best,
Johannes
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  • RintzeRintze
    Does the same happen with other styles?
  • johannes.kruse
    No, I just changed it back and forth from other styles and that works out just fine. Just once I try to change it to the PVS style does it crash (and actually now both Word and Zotero crash).

    /Johannes
  • RintzeRintze
    Did you try reinstalling the style?
  • johannes.kruse
    Yeah, as long as you mean going to the style repository and installing the style available there over the already existing style...
  • RintzeRintze
    Does the style work when you use "Right-Click to Create Bibliography" from within Zotero? (see http://www.zotero.org/support/creating_bibliographies#right-click_to_create_bibliography )

    Does the problem also manifest itself in a fresh Word document?
  • johannes.kruse
    1. When using the right-click to create bibliography it depends. Sometimes it works, other times (particularly if I select multiple references it shows a javascript error).

    2. No it seems to me that works out just fine.

    Thanks for picking this up. - J.
  • dstillman
    edited September 11, 2012
    (particularly if I select multiple references it shows a javascript error)
    What error?
  • johannes.kruse
    In German it shows this:
    [JavaScript Application]
    Ein Fehler ist aufgetreten bei dem Versuch, das Literaturverzeichnis zu erstellen. Bitte erneut versuchen.

    I think this might be the fileInterface.bibliographyGenerationError
  • dstillman
    But Create Bibliography doesn't hang? It just either works or shows that error? Can you provide a Report ID after getting that error?

    When it freezes in Word, how long have you let it go?
  • fbennett
    edited September 11, 2012
    The style requires year-suffix disambiguation, but does not apply year-suffix to "no date" entries. That shouldn't be a problem, but if there is a processor hang, year-suffix disambiguation would be my first suspect.

    In the "year-date" macro, try adding a year-suffix line in both branches of the macro conditional, so:
    <choose>
    <if variable="issued">
    <date variable="issued">
    <date-part name="year"/>
    </date>
    <text variable="year-suffix"/>
    </if>
    <else>
    <text term="no date" form="short"/>
    <text variable="year-suffix"/>
    </else>
    </choose>

    This would need a little more tuning to format nicely, but if the style no longer freezes, that's the best way to fix it. (The processor shouldn't freeze, obviously, but replacing implicit year-suffix disambiguation with the more up-to-date and reliable explicit code is a good move.)
  • johannes.kruse
    edited September 11, 2012
    Hi everybody,

    I submitted two error reports (35931178, 876114153) with regard to the problem.

    I am not sure whether the first error report accurately captures what has gone awry, since the whole program freezes immediately after I try to change the style in Word.

    The second error report refers to creating citations in Zotero in the PVS style.

    @Dan: couple minutes. In the time I gave it the program never recovered...
  • dstillman
    Well, for the error, at least:
    [JavaScript Error: "this.base.givens[this.gnameset] is undefined" {file: "chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/citeproc.js" line: 12658}]"
  • fbennett
    edited September 13, 2012
    @johannes.kruse: This is a disambiguation failure. I have prepared a plugin that you can install to provide some better debugging output. After installing the plugin, you should be able to process your document without error -- but this does not solve the problem. Yet.

    After installing the plugin, please submit a Debug ID:

    http://www.zotero.org/support/debug_output

    @Dan Stillman: The output I'm looking for has "XXX" at the beginning of the line. There may be a lot of lines, depending on the complexity of disambiguation required by the document. Email is probably the best medium.

    (Edit: Link amended to point at the primary version of the processor update plugin.)
  • fbennett
    (Edited the previous post to include the rather important link to the plugin installer.)
  • johannes.kruse
    edited September 12, 2012
    @fbennett: Thanks for the effort. I installed the plug-in and restarted zotero, afterwards enabled debug output and then changed the style to PVS in Word. Zotero still freezes though and I cannot submit the debug report to the zotero servers.
    Can I check somewhere whether the plugin you have provided is correctly installed?
    Does Zotero write the debug output in a file that I could submit manually?
  • fbennett
    You should be able to get debug output from the error thrown when you right-click to create a bibliography. That error could be the cause of the freeze, depending on how Zotero and the word processor plugin are hooked together.
  • johannes.kruse
    Alright, I now have tried to create a bibliography with some random references and submitted the resulting debut output.

    Debug output has been sent to the Zotero server.

    The Debug ID is D740856657.
  • fbennett
    Let's hope it triggered the javascript error. (In case we have further debugging rounds on this, it is valuable to identify specific references or operations that reliably trigger an error. Ultimately I'll need to be able to reproduce the fault here in order to track down the cause.)
  • dstillman
    There's nothing beginning with "XXX" in there—just "CSL: Using collation sort" and then lots of "DATE: retrieved with algorithms: {"year":2012,"month":7,"day":28}" lines. Nothing else.

    Did that debug output actually cover the error? Can you restart Zotero and try again?
  • fbennett
    Johannes: Alternatively, if you can identify a specific set of items that will trigger the error when you right-click to generate a bibliography, export those as Zotero RDF, paste them to http://gist.github.com, save as a Public Gist, and post the URL from the address bar back here.

    If I can make it fail, I can fix it.
  • johannes.kruse
    edited September 13, 2012
    @Dan Stillman: Yeah, well, I don't think I can provide you with debug output with regards to the problem in Word, since Zotero instantly freezes...

    With regard to right-click - create bibliography from selected entries: I have uploaded a new debug output that looks a lot bigger - maybe it is covered in there.

    Debug output has been sent to the Zotero server.

    The Debug ID is D859029648.


    @fbennett: I have assembled a set of references that when right-clicking - create bibliography do not give a java-script error message, but actually freeze Zotero completely. These references are also in the document that orginally triggered the problem.

    https://gist.github.com/3713208


    /edit: grammar
  • fbennett
    edited September 13, 2012
    @johannes.kruse:

    Magic, thanks. The cause of the crash is the two "Bolivien" cites, which both have a value in the (last) name field, and nothing in the (first) name field. The processor is trying to apply givenname disambiguation to this pair, and since there is nothing to act on, it never performs an operation, and never clears the loop it's in.

    It will be a simple problem to fix; we just need to give the same treatment to these names that we do to single-field (institutional) names (which is to say, ignore them).

    You may be able to avoid the error by clicking on the icon to the right of each such name, converting it to single-field entry format. If that doesn't help, a complete fix will be available in a day or so.
  • johannes.kruse
    @fbennett: Alright, good to know what the problem is. Thank you! Just to let you know, in my Zotero both the Bolivien cites are formated as single-field (at least from the look of it in Zotero). It could be that when I entered them, I first wrote Bolivia and then changed the name format form two-field to single-field entries. But that should be irrelevant right?

    Anyway, thanks again for the support. Looking forward to the fix.
  • fbennett
    Thanks, it's useful to know that the field mode is irrelevant. The repaired processor just cleared the test fixture for this issue. Processor release coming put ...
  • fbennett
    @johannes.kruse: You can try reinstalling or updating the plugin (linked above), to see if the latest processor version fixes the freeze problem. The javascript error might have been caused by the same bug, but if it happens again and you can identify a set of entries that causes the breakage, post it as a gist and I'll take a look.

    Hoping for good news ...
  • johannes.kruse
    @fbennett: Is the linked plug-in updated yet? It has the same file size as the one I downloaded before and is version 1.0.48.

    After testing, it does not seem to fix the problem.
  • dstillman
    I'm not clear on whether the freeze and the error are related, but johannes.kruse, you should still be able to generate real-time debug output for the freeze.
  • johannes.kruse
    @Dan Stillman: I have done the real time debug thing; however, I took the Firefox Plug-In instead of Zotero Standalone I usually use.

    https://gist.github.com/3716718
  • fbennett
    Good morning in Japan Standard Timezone, and my apologies. Writing last night, I forgot that I had put up a separate plugin version specifically for this case. As the problem is now fixed in a fully tested processor release, I've now removed the special plugin version from the server, and amended the link above.

    If you install from this link now, you should have better luck. I have tested it locally with Zotero 3.0.8 and your test entries. Generating a bibliography with this update plugin installed succeeds (and produces a correct bibliography). With the plugin disabled, it freezes Firefox.
  • johannes.kruse
    @fbennett: I installed the plugin version 1.0.49 and tried to create a bibliography from the entries - Zotero freezes...

    It does not freeze as long as I don't select both of the Bolivien entries, so my guess is either I did not install your alternative plugin correctly or something else is still awry. :-(
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