[5.0 Beta] Translators not working (Chromium / Firefox)

areteichi
edited March 26, 2017
I refreshed my Firefox and Chromium profile as I was having a number of cumbersome issues with Zotero 5.0 Beta (currently at 5.0-beta.171+d357382).

Yet one major issue still persists with regards to the translators, namely, websites still would not be recognized by a translator.

For instance, when I open a link on Amazon such as this one, I can only save it as a web page ("Save to Zotero (Web Page with Snapshot)") and not a book.

The only browser profile that works properly (i.e. saves the website as a book) is the old Chromium. Just to offer a comparison, I've submitted three Debug reports:

Success: D843324273 (old Chromium profile)

Failure: D170857302 (new Chromium profile)
Failure: D894496172 (new Firefox profile)

I would appreciate if someone can offer me an advise on this issue. The version of Zotero Connector used was 4.0.29.11 for Chromium and 4.999.14 for Firefox. I'm using Chromium 56.0.2924.76 and Firefox 52.0.1 under Ubuntu 16.04.2. Thank you.
  • dstillman
    1) Close Firefox.

    2) Select the "Enable after startup" option in the debug output logging preferences in Zotero.

    3) Restart Zotero.

    4) Wait a few seconds.

    5) Start Firefox and load the Amazon page, waiting until the load completes and (presumably) you only see the webpage icon.

    6) Submit the debug output.
  • dstillman
    Actually, while I'd still like to see that (since there are some other strange errors in that output), given that this works from one Chromium profile, it would be great if you could also enable debug output logging in the Firefox connector before the page load and then submit that after the load.
  • areteichi
    >dstillman

    Thank you for your reply. I've submitted a debug report from each browser.

    Failure with Firefox:
    D623915103 (Zotero)
    D928555711 (Firefox Zotero Connector)

    Failure with Chromium:
    D197094850 (Zotero)
    D1805553386 (Chromium Zotero Connector)
  • dstillman
    edited March 27, 2017
    (3)(+0001129): Cached 503 translators in 1129 ms

    […]

    (3)(+0000003): Getting contents of false
    Can you close Zotero, move the 'translators' directory out of your Zotero data directory, and restart Zotero, and then try again?

    If that fixes the problem, if you could ZIP the old 'translators' directory and send it to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread, that would be great.
  • areteichi
    edited March 27, 2017
    I did as you suggested. The Amazon page was recognized by the translator in Firefox initially, but it soon stopped working as I started testing with Chromium.

    Here are the debug reports for each browser with an empty 'translators' folder in Zotero (since translators weren't recovered even when I clicked on "Update Translators" in Zotero settings. I'm not sure if that's a normal behavior.)

    Failure with Firefox (2)
    D923839928 (Zotero)
    D1746401019 (Firefox Zotero Connector)

    Failure with Chromium (2)
    D1771206312 (Zotero)
    D1590633903 (Chromium Zotero Connector)

    I will send the translators folder by email shortly.
  • dstillman
    Hmm, that's quite odd. You didn't by any chance extract the zotero.jar file in the application directory, did you? (That is, the directory with the 'zotero' executable, application.ini, etc.) Is there a 'translators' directory in there? (There shouldn't be.)
  • areteichi
    No, I haven't done that. My Zotero directory (/home/user/Zotero) is located in a different folder as the default settings folder (/home/user/.zotero) though. But I suppose that shouldn't be an issue.

    There is a 'translators' folder under /home/user/Zotero but it is left empty.
  • areteichi
    I apologize, but I have to correct myself.

    After having upgraded to version 5.0-beta.172+8edd4b0 this morning, it seems like 496 translators were placed in the 'translators' folder.
  • areteichi
    edited March 27, 2017
    Furthermore, I just realized that the translators do in fact now function, at least to a certain extent. Zotero's behavior has been extremely erratic since I've upgraded to 5.0 Beta that it's difficult to pinpoint and describe how it really behaves on my computer.

    The Amazon page can be saved as a book with the new Chromium profile for now. While Firefox now detects the item on the page as a book, the saving process just hangs with the message at bottom right and does not actually save the item no matter how long I wait. See the debug report below.

    Failure with Firefox (3):
    D656439049 (Zotero)
    D1820542350 (Firefox Connector)
  • dstillman
    edited March 28, 2017
    No, I haven't done that.
    But can you clarify that there's no 'translators' directory within the application directory (i.e., wherever you extracted the Zotero tarball)? I fixed the error you were getting, which is why you now have translators, but you shouldn't have been hitting it in the first place in a normal installation.

    In any case, I fixed the translator error on the Amazon page. Zotero should auto-update translators within 24 hours, or you can update manually by clicking Update Now in the General pane of the Zotero prefs.

    (I think there's a more general issue in the 5.0 beta where, when more than one translator can save from a page, failures in one are causing the whole save to fail — that's what was happening here.)
  • areteichi
    I think I might have copied my translators from the 4.0.29 installation to 5.0 beta as I had made a custom modification to one of them.

    The translators seem to be working more reliably now. However, Firefox still cannot save the Amazon item even after the translators have manually been updated. It just hangs with the message at the bottom right of the screen. (See the debug report "Failure with Firefox (3)")
  • areteichi
    Sorry, I don't mean to trouble you unnecessarily, but do you think there is a fix for the Firefox issue? It's one of the annoying bugs still remaining.
  • DWL-SDCA
    I can confirm that there is a problem saving from Amazon when using Firefox but I can save from Amazon when using the Chrome and Safari browsers.
  • dstillman
    You can update to the latest Firefox connector version and see if that helps — it fixes one underlying issue here. This was already working for me in Firefox with the latest translators, though, but sometimes after a minute-long delay, so there might still be problems. (Translator folks, I was seeing an occasional HTTP request delay from the newly fixed Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund ISBN translator.)
  • areteichi
    The newest fix did have an improvement. I can now save the Amazon item properly on a default Firefox profile.

    But my custom profile (with add-ons) still hangs during the saving process just like before. See the newly submitted debug report:

    Failure with Firefox (4):
    D713280923 (Zotero)
    D945846148 (Firefox Connector)

    While I have NoScript and uBlock Origin installed, I had them disabled for the Amazon page when I tried saving it.
  • dstillman
    Oh, sorry — 4.999.15 didn't actually include the fix. Try 4.999.16.
  • areteichi
    That resolved my issue. Thank you so much!!
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