File in recovery loop

[oojrbreton]

AMDG

Problem : Writer Loading a special file.
Working in Open Office 4.1.3. under Ubuntu 14.04.

The file is a large file of about 550 KB containing about 30 pages of endnotes. The bulk of the file has been put into a section to include the endnotes. Some indices follow the section.

When the file loads, it begins to render the endnotes. The page indicator shows that the file is enlargening. After a few pages of enlargening the file crashes takinig all other open files with it. A banner comes up saying that due to an internal error AOO has crashed and upon reopening the file will be recovered.

Upon reopening, the file is recovered only to crash again Thus the file is caught in a recovery loop. What is going on? I would very much appreciate getting a stable copy of this file.

The attachment would contain the present state of the file but I informed it is too large. I'll work on creating the problem ins a smaller file.

[RoryOF]

You could upload the file to a file sharing site and post the URL here. It is possible that it may open and save correctly on a different operating system, which can cure problems.

[oojrbreton]

Thank you for the suggestion. The file has been uploaded to Google Drive with URL
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzhOz ... m0tc3RjMTA. The file name is tp1work.odt. Google was unable to convert the file to the Google format. I mean to give you all permissions, but I'm not sure I have accomplished that.

JRB

[RoryOF]

It opens, but it is unstable. I'll examine it in greater detail later.

[RoryOF]

I've had another look at your file. I suspect (suspicion only) that you have too many frames in it. I've seen frames numbered to 486, which more or less matches the number of pages. It is usually not necessary to use frames to layout every (any?) page of an OO document. It may also be that there are other, higher numbered or differently identified, frames; if so, this could easily mean that there were more than 512 frames; the powers of 2 are "magic" numbers in computing languages and 512 frames might give an arithmetic overflow or storage allocation condition.

I'll be interested to read analysis from other Forum volunteers.

Edit: Also, I suspect the file, at some time, has been saved in an MS Word format, or edited with MS Word and saved from it; if so., either of these procedures cause problems.

[oojrbreton]

Your suggestion is very interesting. Yes, I have used a frame to mark the pages, and there the file includes many other frames besides. Is there a way I can increase the capacity to 1024 frames? Alternatively, how can I place the page number where I want it on a page without using frames? Or again, how can I grab hold of the file to eliminate the pn frames?

I don't ever remember putting this file through Word.

Looking forward to your encouraging reply.

[RoryOF]

Your suggestion is very interesting. Yes, I have used a frame to mark the pages, and there the file includes many other frames besides. Is there a way I can increase the capacity to 1024 frames? Alternatively, how can I place the page number where I want it on a page without using frames? Or again, how can I grab hold of the file to eliminate the pn frames?

I don't ever remember putting this file through Word.

Looking forward to your encouraging reply.

Where on the page do you wish the page number? Can you not use the page Header or Footer to hold this? If there is a limit to the number of frames, be it built in to OpenOffice or intrinsic to the XML parser OO uses (SAX parser?), I doubt there is any easy way to overcome this, apart from using the Master Document facility of OO. This may introduce other problems.

Speaking generally, it is rarely necessary to lay out an entire book using frames - this often indicates a misunderstanding of how to use Styles. If you upload a short file (two or three pages, perhaps) of dummy text, laid out as you require, we could advise further.

[jrbreton]

AMDG

The enclosed is a dummy text of a similar file. I am already using the header for other information. I would like to place the page numbers on the outside upper margin on mirrored pages. The document which crashes has a great number of page styles, one for each new header. Your insights are very helpful. I have already used your suggestion on other documents.

Is there any hope for recovering the file that crashes? Is there any way I can edit the file before it crashes so I can remove the frames for the page numbers?

Also I find Ubuntu 16.04 running into a lot of errors on its own.

[RoryOF]

There is/was(?) some stability problem with OO 4.1.3 on Ubuntu 16.04. I have had no difficulty with OO on Xubuntu 16.04. Examining your uploaded file.

[RoryOF]

Try the attached file; it is not quite what you want (yet), but I'm out of time now for experimentation.

[RoryOF]

Is there any hope for recovering the file that crashes? Is there any way I can edit the file before it crashes so I can remove the frames for the page numbers?

My thinking is that one should extract content.xml from the OO archive, having made a backup copy of this. I would submit this content.xml to validation in an XML editor and if necessary make any correction the validation process suggested. If the file is valid as extracted I would then use the XML editor to split content.xml into two parts which pass XML validation, and reinsert these new content.xml files into suitably renamed OO archives to see if they will open in Writer; if they do, this would allow making any adjustments desired.

Others may have a different approach.

[oojrbreton]

Again, thanks so much. I have been playing with your file and have learned from you how to put page numbers into the margins without encasing them in frames. The use of "chapter", however, presents a problem for me. In the file I define different pages for each different header title. The file contains then many page styles, something more than 50. So I am trying to use variables which I am still earning how to use.

I intend to follow your suggestions on recovering the file. But where is the OO archive, and how to find xml files and editor? This is all new territory for me.

[RoryOF]

Any OpenOffice file of form .odt (etc) is a ZIP archive. Make a copy of the .odt file and work on that copy only, so that you have an unmodified copy for someone else to look at in case of disaster. This is MOST important, as fiddling with the innards of the archive can ruin a file utterly.

Right clicking on the copy file should bring up an "Open With" window (you may need to rename file to type .zip). Select WinZip, 7-Zip, or Archive Manager (however called) and it will open to reveal a number of files and folders. The folder which contains the text is content.xml. You can download various XML editors - I use XML Copy Editor (which runs on linux); this has a steep learning curve.

You should not need many page styles - if you examine my sample file, you will see that each chapter picks up the Chapter heading in its headers without needing extra Page Styles. You may find [Tutorial] "In-line" or "run-in" headings helpful on the subject of changing Headers without needing extra Page Styles.

[John_Ha]

... The file is a large file of about 550 KB containing about 30 pages of endnotes. ... When the file loads, it begins to render the endnotes. The page indicator shows that the file is enlargeing. After a few pages of enlargening the file crashes taking all other open files with it. A banner comes up saying that due to an internal error AOO has crashed and upon reopening the file will be recovered.

For those searching, see [Solved] AOO stops responding when opening this one document which discusses a similar, probably related, problem with a 100 page document; athough AOO only stops responding for a long time rather than crashing.

[oojrbreton]

AMDG

Thank you John and Rory for a very informative discussion. My problem seems to come from the endnotes in a section, the repagination, and the size of the file. Fortunately a stable version of the file has been recovered. And yes, I always proceed from a copied stable file. My method was first to take the whole file into a new file. Then cut and paste into the section. The cut and past would transfer endnotes from the whole file into endnotes in the section. This way, I was only able to bring some 350 pages into the section. Beyond that the file crashed with even minor transfers. Interestingly I can create a .pdf file at this point.

Your discussion give me a few more directions to try which I will do, but I still think I am violating some internal boundary of Writer.

[RoryOF]

Turn on /View /Non printing characters; are any lines terminated with line returns (left pointing hooked arrows) rather than end of Paragraph marks (Pilcrows = backwards P signs)? OpenOffice does not read the line return (Shift Enter - sometimes used instinctively, carried over from older word processors) - as an end of line/paragraph mark and can then hit its internal 64K character paragraph limit; paragraphs at this limit can cause odd happenings in OpenOffice.

If there are such large paragraphs, there are ways to solve the problem.

Approximately how many foot/end-notes in any one Section?

[oojrbreton]

AMDG
I do use Pilcrows, but I do not have paragraphs longer than 64K chrs.

I use only one section into which I want to put about 80 endnotes. The present file has some 60 of them transferred.

When I started to reduce the number of styles, something curious happened which may be linked to this problem. It happens with any file so I'd like to send you a small file illustrating the problem. The file has no content, and opens as expected. After opening, I open the style dialog, which opens in automatic. Now If I switch to "all styles" Open Office crashes! The recovery dialog starts, the file is recovered, now with the all styles dialog. You can scroll through a very large number of paragraph styles, none which can be deleted. If now I switch to applied styles, Open Office crashes again. It seems any switch in the styles dialog causes Open Office to crash. After continuing this a few times, a banner might pop up say that Ubuntu has experience a internal error. Could this be a contributing factor to my problem?

[RoryOF]

I've just checked your file; no matter what selection of styles I choose to display, my OO (4.1.3 on Xubuntu 16.04) is quite stable. There were reports of OO 4.?.? being unstable on Ubuntu 16.04, but not on Xubuntu 16.04. I'm not aware if this instability was fixed on later revisions of Ubuntu 16.04.

[Edit[ Just to be clear: The Pilcrows are the desired paragraph terminator; in the event that line returns are used, then the Paragraph limit of 64k characters comes into play, [/edit]