Re: [Audacity-quality] Direct page link for app to target for "Error mot well-formed ..."

[Gale A. <ga...@au...>]

Yes but it also needs to say what to do about the "reference to invalid
character number at line x" error. At the moment I think the plan is
to have a TOC item for that error that links back up to a modified
http://alphamanual.audacityteam.org/man/Errors_on_opening_or_recovering_an_Audacity_project#meta
 to say that the answer is to remove anything that starts
with &# and ends with colon.

Another approach:

Change the item in the TOC to say:

" "not well-formed (invalid token)" or "reference to invalid character number"
at line x "

In the first green box, split the first bullet into two to say something
like:

* The project contains imported files whose metadata (like artist or genre)
   contains control characters meant for use by another player application.
   This mostly occurs with iTunes files on Mac where the project was
   created in an older version of Audacity. This usually creates the "(invalid
   token") error.
* The project contains imported files whose metadata contains symbols
   that Audacity cannot display. This may create either the "(invalid token)"
   or "invalid character number" error.

If so, then the section "Solution for error caused by control characters"
needs to be renamed as "Solution for error caused by control characters
or symbols". Then expand the section to mention that it covers symbols
that can't be displayed, and say that for symbols there will usually be five
characters between the &# and colon, not four as for control characters.

You could perhaps try it both ways in your sandbox?

"Mismatched tag" is worth adding too as mentioned by Steve, but I think
that is user error most times (manual editing of the AUP file).


Gale


On 26 May 2017 at 17:43, Peter Sampson <pet...@gm...> wrote:
> Something tlike this draft WIP page ?
>
> http://alphamanual.audacityteam.org/man/Errors_on_opening_or_recovering_an_Audacity_project
>
> Peter
>
> On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 10:33 PM, Gale Andrews <ga...@au...>
> wrote:
>>
>> On 25 May 2017 at 11:40, Steve the Fiddle <ste...@gm...>
>> wrote:
>> > On 25 May 2017 at 02:36, Gale Andrews <ga...@au...> wrote:
>> >> On 22 May 2017 at 19:18, Peter Sampson <pet...@gm...>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>> Hi Steve,
>> >>>
>> >>> I have just created a standalone page for dealing with the error
>> >>> message
>> >>> "Error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line x" - see:
>> >>>
>> >>> http://alphamanual.audacityteam.org/man/Error:_not_well-formed_(invalid_token)_at_line_x
>> >>> I don't think the app currently has a link for this error message -
>> >>> but it
>> >>> would
>> >>> be great if you could see your way to add one - this error crops up
>> >>> quite a
>> >>> lot
>> >>> in queries in the Forum from puzzled users.
>> >>>
>> >>> I have left a stub behind in the FAQ page, which links to the new
>> >>> page:
>> >>>
>> >>> http://alphamanual.audacityteam.org/man/FAQ:Errors#Why_do_I_get_.22Error:_not_well-formed_.28invalid_token.29_at_line_x.22.3F
>> >>>
>> >>> I also hyphenated "well-formed" in the documentation as the error
>> >>> message
>> >>> has such hyphenation.
>> >>
>> >> Hi Peter,
>> >>
>> >> Read as HTML, your links go to the "error opening sound device" pages
>> >> but never mind.
>> >>
>> >> There is at least one other common message for this type of error of
>> >> having &#<characters or numbers>; in the project XML:
>> >>
>> >> "Error: reference to invalid character number at line ..."  I'm not
>> >> sure how
>> >> to distinguish when each message occurs.
>> >
>> >
>> > This is a bit tricky because these are two of many XML read errors,
>> > and  read errors can occur in a number of places. For example, XML
>> > read errors may occur when reading a damaged "EQ Curve" file into the
>> > Equalization effect.
>> >
>> > However, the content of the page
>> >
>> > http://alphamanual.audacityteam.org/man/Error:_not_well-formed_(invalid_token)_at_line_x
>> > deals with the specific case of opening an AUP file, so I think we
>> > would want the help button when either of these error messages occur
>> > in AudacityProject::OpenFile
>> >
>> > This is the full list of error messages, which all mean that the XML
>> > file cannot be read (parsing the file failed) for one reason or
>> > another:
>> >
>> > "out of memory"
>> > "syntax error"
>> > "no element found"
>> > "not well-formed (invalid token)"
>> > "unclosed token"
>> > "partial character"
>> > "mismatched tag"
>> > "duplicate attribute"
>> > "junk after document element"
>> > "illegal parameter entity reference"
>> > "undefined entity"
>> > "recursive entity reference"
>> > "asynchronous entity"
>> > "reference to invalid character number"
>> > "reference to binary entity"
>> > "reference to external entity in attribute"
>> > "XML or text declaration not at start of entity"
>> > "unknown encoding"
>> > "encoding specified in XML declaration is incorrect"
>> > "unclosed CDATA section"
>> > "error in processing external entity reference"
>> > "document is not standalone"
>> > "unexpected parser state - please send a bug report"
>> > "entity declared in parameter entity"
>> > "requested feature requires XML_DTD support in Expat"
>> > "cannot change setting once parsing has begun"
>> > "unbound prefix"
>> > "must not undeclare prefix"
>> > "incomplete markup in parameter entity"
>> > "XML declaration not well-formed"
>> > "text declaration not well-formed"
>> > "illegal character(s) in public id"
>> > "parser suspended"
>> > "parser not suspended"
>> > "parsing aborted"
>> > "parsing finished"
>> > "cannot suspend in external parameter entity"
>> > "reserved prefix (xml) must not be undeclared or bound to another
>> > namespace name"
>> > "reserved prefix (xmlns) must not be declared or undeclared"
>> > "prefix must not be bound to one of the reserved namespace names"
>> >
>> >
>> > Currently, AudacityProject::OpenFile will show an error dialog if any
>> > of the above errors occur.
>> > I don't propose that we document all of these errors as some are
>> > extremely rare, but I'm thinking we should have a common landing page
>> > for any / all of these errors, with a TOC listing the most common
>> > errors.
>> >
>> > THE most common is "not well-formed (invalid token)"
>> > I've also seen on the forum: "mismatched tag" (when the XML file is
>> > truncated)
>> > and the one that Gale mentioned: "reference to invalid character
>> > number" (though I don't recall seeing this very often)
>> >
>> > To recap, what I'm suggesting is that we have a landing page for AUP
>> > parse errors (Errors thrown when opening the AUP file due to the AUP
>> > file being damaged in some way), and that page covers the most common
>> > reasons, the first of which is "not well-formed (invalid token)".
>>
>> I agree the subject of the landing page should be confined to errors seen
>> when (re)opening or recovering the project.
>>
>> I saw that huge list of XML parse errors too when I was searching.
>>
>> If "not well formed" is still the most common error, then I guess it is OK
>> to have a TOC entry for each error type, even though the solution for
>> "reference to invalid character" will often be the same as for "not
>> well-formed" (i.e. remove all the unparsable text). To avoid duplication I
>> assume we would link to the relevant part of the "not well-formed" text.
>>
>> There is another project reopen error now that is "quite frequent":
>>
>> "`aup" is an Audacity Project file.
>>    Use the 'File > Open' command to open Audacity Projects" .
>>
>> This error occurs (even if File > Open is used) when the project is
>> badly corrupted or contains only nulls. I guess the time has come
>> when we have to mention this error in the Manual.
>>
>> If the AUP file is empty (0 kB) then the error is instead:
>>
>> "File may be invalid or corrupted:"
>>  <path to AUP file>
>>
>>
>> Gale
>>
>>
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