So many problems with LibreOffice integration

jonathanschultz
Hello,

I know this is going to sound like one of those 'it doesn't work' posts, but I'm having so many problems that Zotero has become completely unusable and each time I try to replicate them I get a different behaviour. This is really doing my head in - spent hours messing around with Zotero to no avail instead of writing the article as I should be.

So to start with, my system is Debian/Linux using Libreoffice version 4.1.5.3 and Zotero 4..0.17-2. I have recently done a routine upgrade and that is when all these problems started.

Some of the problems that I seem to get randomly are (in increasing order of severity):

1. The Libreoffice integration toolbar makes no response at all to being clicked on.

2. When it does respond, the 'Set Document Preferences' window appears, but has no styles in the style box and won't respond to the 'OK' button.

3. I can get beyond the preferences, but the citation editor window is enormously tall - bigger than my screen, and refuses to be resized.

4. The citation editor window begins to be displayed, but then freezes, and LibreOffice has to be manually killed (ie kill the process from the command line).

5. My entire window manager (KWin) hangs, and even logging into my computer remotely and manually stopping the LibreOffice, Zotero and firefox/iceweasel process doesn't help. Or even manually terminating the display manager doesn't help. Literally the only way out is a full reboot.

I have tried uninstalling the zotero packages (zotero-standalone, xul-ext-zotero and libreoffice-zotero-integration) - made no difference at all.

Any help would be much appreciated.
  • jonathanschultz
    And another completely new problem:

    6. The edit citation window appears, but doesn't recognise any citation that I enter.

    Another possibly useful piece of information I just realised it that I have a different computer running similar but not identical versions (LO 4.1.3.2 Zotero 4.0.17.2) and it seems to work fine. Another thing to note about this second computer is that it is pretty much a fresh install, ie hasn't been through many (or possibly any) upgrades.
  • Simon
    These problems are all potentially related. Create a report ID after opening the citation editor.
  • jonathanschultz
    Thanks for the help. The linked page doesn't specify how to make a report ID when the problem appears to relate to word processor integration. Nonetheless I tried the procedure for the standalone version and got the report ID 744081712.

    Since it's only a short report I will also include the text here:

    [JavaScript Error: "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIServerSocket.init]" {file: "file:///usr/share/zotero-standalone/extensions/zoteroOpenOfficeIntegration@zotero.org/components/zoteroOpenOfficeIntegration.js" line: 62}]

    Seems to be a problem establishing a socket connection(?)
  • Simon
    That error message indicates that Zotero Standalone can't bind to the port it uses for communication with LibreOffice. If clicking a button in LibreOffice is doing anything besides giving you a communication error, then you probably have Zotero for Firefox open and set to a different data directory. In that case, you should first try closing Firefox and restarting Zotero Standalone and see if that works.
  • jonathanschultz
    Thanks - that last comment helped me figure out a few things. First, I hadn't realised that zotero standalone and the firefox extension use different data directories. Following advice in various forums, I set them to used the same directory. Then I had to restart firefox and zotero and libreoffice a few times (probably should have done all three at once) and now the libreoffice extension seems to work properly - including pop-up windows of the normal size.

    One thing I noticed is that a style I had imported for standalone was not visible either to the libreoffice extension or the firefox extension. This makes me wonder to what extent the two (three?) installations really are sharing their data. But when I imported the same style to firefox, it was also visible to the libreoffice extension, and we seem to be back on track.

    Still, given the inconsistent behaviour I have observed, I'd like to use it for a while before I confirm that it really is working.
  • dstillman
    Since you were using two different data directories, the style you imported into Standalone wouldn't have been available when you switched to Firefox. Now that you're using the same data directory, you won't have that problem, and regardless of whether you have Standalone or Firefox or both open, the LibreOffice plugin will show styles in that one data directory, which will have your style.
  • dstillman
    (And note that using the same data directory is the default — you would've had to have actually said No when you installed whichever client you installed second in order to use two different data directories. You almost never want to use two data directories on the same computer, since (as you discovered) it can cause all sorts of problems (at least with word processor integration) if you open both at once.)
  • jonathanschultz
    That's not quite my experience - the different available styles persisted even after I'd changed to a single data directory. Perhaps slight version differences causing the list to be stored in different places? I'll try to replicate and document if someone is likely to act on it.

    Also I don't remember selecting different data directories when I first installed zotero. Certainly when I uninstalled and reinstalled everything today it didn't ask me anything like that. I even used the '--purge' option to the uninstall command 'apt-get remove', which is supposed to tell the installer to remove all trace of the package ever having been installed.

    Small bugs at most but perhaps worth noting or looking into.
  • adamsmith
    edited February 24, 2014
    @Dan - not that you'd necessarily know, but is there any chance that the debian package doesn't ask/share by default (in which case the person packaging is should be asked to fix that)?

    @jonathan - note that the debian package is _not_ packaged by Zotero
    As for the styles: you can check your data directory. The styles are right in there. If the directory is shared, the styles are shared.
  • jonathanschultz
    @adamsmith Thanks for that. I'll investigate further when I get a chance.

    More generally - is there any reason why anyone would ever want different data directories for the different Zotero apps? As my experience apparently demonstrates, having different data directories can expose a whole pile of problems beyond the data simply not being shared.

    Granted this may be a problem for the debian package manager - I'll shoot them an email referencing this thread.
  • adamsmith
    it's conceivable that you'd want to run two entirely separate Zotero profiles - one via Standalone, one via Firefox. It's going to be rare, that's why the same directory is the default, but it's certainly not impossible.
  • jonathanschultz
    It just seems to be that if you'd want to support multiple profiles then it would make more sense to have a proper profile manager.
  • adamsmith
    which Firefox and by extension Zotero do (run them with a -p flag).
    I think it's just a matter of principle to not just unilaterally do something like sharing a data directory between applications installed separately without telling the user that you are.

    I mean - the reason you're bringing this up is that it didn't work for you, but that's an entirely different case and there is a good chance that it wouldn't have worked either if Zotero didn't have a user prompt but shared by default.
  • dstillman
    Right, this isn't a question of "support" — as long as Zotero lets you pick any directory on your hard drive as a data directory, it's possible to configure different installations to use different data directories. There's not anything we can do about that.

    The only thing we could conceivably do is not ask when you install the second client, but as adamsmith says, that's not a good idea on principle. Someone installing Standalone second also might legitimately want to say "No" in order to keep Standalone pointing at its default location and then update Firefox to use that one instead.
  • jonathanschultz
    Would you agree that this is a distribution issue then - things like flags when you run are not obvious to the naive user? I scarcely expect to have to add command-line flags to GUI programs other than in exceptional circumstances like debugging.

    When I mentioned a profile manager I was thinking more like part of the preferences menu - maintaining a list of profiles somewhere that is always shared, so that every application can switch between them as the user chooses. Again, I have no idea why you would want to do this, but if there is a case for multiple profiles then that seems like a more intuitive way to go.

    As for not working for me, it isn't just that it didn't behave as I wanted it to, but rather that it revealed some serious bugs that went as far as crashing my entire window manager. That really takes some doing! Though I do acknowledge that this is as likely a distro problem as a Zotero or Mozilla one.
  • dstillman
    This doesn't really have anything to do with a profile manager. When you use an official build of Zotero, this just works. No command-line flags, no complicated settings, nothing. You just accept the default and it works. If you say no, you can change it later in Zotero's preferences. That's it.

    Maybe some things can be done to provide clearer feedback for word processor integration problems if people do somehow end up with multiple active data directories, but 1) it's not clear that those problems are universal and 2) since almost no one should be in that situation, it's not something we're particularly concerned with.
  • adamsmith
    edited February 24, 2014
    Would you agree that this is a distribution issue then - things like flags when you run are not obvious to the naive user?
    well, but the _expectation_ isn't that Zotero users have separate Zotero profiles. I'm just saying that they can if they want to. Afaik, most people who do are experienced powerusers and/or devlopers.

    But I'm really not sure what you're getting at. I understand you had a bad experience and obviously that shouldn't happen, but none of what you're suggesting here would have in any way prevented that. Your issues are due to a bug in what I'd assume at this point is the debian package. That's what needs to get fixed. If that had worked as intended (and as it does, afaik, for all official Zotero releases), you'd never had these problems, so I'm not seeing how the other points you bring up are relevant?
  • jonathanschultz
    I'm simply pointing out that as a an experienced IT professional but naive Zotero user I managed to fall into a hole that caused me a lot of pain. If it can happen to me it can happen to others. Indeed there is a fair amount of discussion on the forums from people who suddenly discover that they have multiple Zotero profiles.

    Regarding the serious bug(s), I accept your judgement that they are likely a distro issue, and will refer this to the Debian maintainer.
  • jonathanschultz
    Sorry but I'm back... reducing to a single profile seems to fix many of the problems and at least make it stable. But I'm still having this window size problem, that is the 'Quick Format Citation' window expands vertically to take more than the entire screen and can't be resized. No errors in the error console. Can anyone suggest where I might start to debug this?
  • adamsmith
    (I'm remembering one case of this happening before, but can't find it atm. This just for future reference or in case someone has better ideas for search terms)
  • adamsmith
    also, so we're sure: what's the version of the LO add-on you have installed? (Check under Tools/add-ons)
  • jonathanschultz
    @adamsmith It's 3.5.8
  • dstillman
    Does this happen both with Standalone open and with Firefox open and Standalone closed (i.e., Zotero for Firefox in full mode)? If so, I'd guess this is some sort of Mozilla incompatibility with your window manager.
  • adamsmith
    edited February 24, 2014
    ok, that's not the problem then, but I forgot that the actual quick format bar is actually part of Zotero proper, not of the LO plugin, code-wise. One thing I'd be curious about is whether it matters whether you use Standalone or the Firefox version while inserting a citation in LO? Same problem with both?

    edit: so same question as Dan.
  • jonathanschultz
    I'm not certain what you mean by 'using' a version of Zotero. Does having firefox running mean that I am in some sense using the firefox version? What if both firefox and standalone are running - does it depend on which one was started first or does one take priority?

    I can tell you that the problem happens when firefox is running and standalone isn't. For other scenarios I'll do some tests and get back to you. I'm working on something else and having to reboot my computer each time this happens is too disruptive for me to do it right now.

    One other thing - I think I've worked out more of what happens with the window manager. It actually seems to provoke a bug in the video driver: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=680514
  • dstillman
    It's pretty simple: it's wherever you see your full Zotero library. If Standalone is open, that will be in Standalone. If Standalone is closed and Firefox is open, it will be in Zotero for Firefox. Zotero for Firefox automatically switches into a lightweight "connector" mode (similar to the Chrome/Safari plugins) when Standalone is open. The order that you open them doesn't matter.
  • jonathanschultz
    OK I've played around with it a bit, and the short story seems to be that it works properly when standalone is the running version, and doesn't work when firefox is the running version.

    It's actually a bit more complicated than that, and the behaviour does seem to depend a bit on the order of starting and stopping the two Zotero versions and LibreOffice. And there are actually three different behaviours:

    1. Works as should
    2. Works OK but Format Citation window is expanded vertically
    3. Format citation window begins to be displayed (ie window dressing is in place) but never fills in the window and apparently hangs.

    Would you like an exhaustive description of all the combinations I can think of, or is that sufficient?
  • adamsmith
    and the versions for Iceweasel (or Firefox?) and the Zotero add-on in Firefox (which can be a different version number from Standalone)?

    I don't think more scenarios are needed, no.
  • jonathanschultz
    Iceweasel version 24.3.0
    Zotero iceweasel add-on version 4.0.17
    Zotero LibreOffice Integration iceseasel add-on version 3.5.8.SA.4.0.17-2
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