:help:How do I locate where in the line this is?

[rewyn]

Okay I'm currently working on a 1200+ page ePub, I just ran it through EPUB checker, it came up with 20+ errors. Yesterday I whittled that down to 2. Those 2 errors are in the same line somewhere but, unfortunately the line is VERY long, it's an entry from the index section.

Now my question is, what/where does the col #value stand for? How do I search via that value so I can know exactly where the problem lies in the long string? Is that a character count? I have tried on fixing it manually, but don't see any errors in the code.

(example: line 71, col 4205)

[theducks]

col value is the column WHEN the error becomes obvious to the checker.
The actual error can be somewhere before

eg
You open a <div, but it never closes. When you hit </body, all tags inside the body must have been closed: <bzzz> Error, but it does not know where it belonged

Kovid is going to add Tag Matching, but that only helps so far

Other less obvious
Open a <h3, close a </p
While you can use a <div pair for a paragraph ... using <p prevents the missing </div problem because you can not start another <p until the previous closes

[rewyn]

Originally Posted by theducks

col value is the column WHEN the error becomes obvious to the checker.
The actual error can be somewhere before

But shouldn't the col marker be contained within the line? and if so is there a way in Sigil to locate the col marker?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by rewyn

But shouldn't the col marker be contained within the line? and if so is there a way in Sigil to locate the col marker?

The CURSOR location is on the status line. You just keep moving it until you get there.

The only time the error message location is WITHIN the line is when the error is detected before the close.

BTW isnt there a better way to do all those anchors.
Break them up into groups with no visual space between the groups.

<div class="wholegroup">
<div class="asmallgroup">stuff</div>
<div class="asmallgroup">stuff</div>
<div class="asmallgroup">stuff</div>
</div>

[rewyn]

Thank for your help, if you notice there were two hrefs that had improper syntax, somehow (eg <a href="./Text/..., instead of <a href="../Text/) one period and not two. Arrgh!

[KevinH]

Create a Report using Sigil's tools and look under links It will tell you exactly which anchor's target is missing which is what is generating your error message.

Also generating one long long line of links is not generally a good idea. You can use Search and replace to split it up sensibly as theducks memtioned.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by rewyn

Now my question is, what/where does the col #value stand for? How do I search via that value so I can know exactly where the problem lies in the long string? Is that a character count? I have tried on fixing it manually, but don't see any errors in the code.

As theducks mentioned, it may be better to have more reasonable line lengths.

In the future, you could also do something like this:

<p>Alexandria, <a href="">123</a>, <a href="">124</a>, <a href="">125</a>, <a href="">126</a>, <a href="brokenlink">127</a>, <a href="">128</a></p>

Save a temporary EPUB, and then run this Search/Replace in Regex Mode:

Search: ,\s
Replace: ,\r\n

After:

<p>Alexandria,
 <a href="">123</a>,
 <a href="">124</a>,
 <a href="">125</a>,
 <a href="">126</a>,
 <a href="brokenlink">127</a>,
 <a href="">128</a></p>

Then next time you run epubcheck, you get a more helpful line number.

Originally Posted by KevinH

Create a Report using Sigil's tools and look under links It will tell you exactly which anchor's target is missing which is what is generating your error message.

Tools > Reports > Links, then sort by the "Target Exists?" column. If it says "no" then you can go take a closer look.

As an example, "page800" accidentally "page80":

[GrannyGrump]

I just wanted to mention -- yes, rewyn, the "Column Number" IS the character count. (I didn't see any acknowledgement of that fact in the thread, forgive me if I missed that)

If you look down on the status bar of the Sigil window, it tells you what LINE and what COLUMN your cursor is currently located.

[Doitsu]

Shameless plug: if you install my epubcheck Sigil plugin, clicking an error message in the validation pane will take you to the character position/column number reported by epubcheck.

Note that epubcheck will often report the position of the closing tag.

[JustinThought]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Shameless plug: if you install my epubcheck Sigil plugin,

//snip!//

Shameless, perhaps. Well-deserved: definitely!