Is 0.8.4 buggy?

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

@Greg: short of putting a bug-free older version of libxml2 in your /usr/local/share/sigil directory, there's not a lot you can do (unless you want to do a lot of custom compiling and potentially mess up your system libs).

I had a 32/64-bit version that worked well for Doitsu when he had the problem. It may get you through until your distro gets enough complaints and patches the libxml2 in their repos. I'll see if I can track it down.

Thanks Diap. I can live with 0.8.4 the way it is. With theducks work-around for splitting the chapters and if the only problem is the multiplication of nbsps it's no biggie. It's the kind of thing that if the version you got for Doitsu is pretty easy to install and eliminates the chapter splitting and multiplication of nbsps that would be great because I have a novel and a short story I'm going to be doing soon, but it's also the kind of thing that I'm afraid of messing things up too. (Not by what you give me but by what I do with it!)

What's weird is the older Xubuntu distros had no issues with Sigil. (I didn't even know about libxml2 stuff. Never heard of it.)

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Hi,

To make matters worse, Qt XML libraries are linked to your external libxm2 so my fear is that it is not a buggy version so much as it is a mismatch between the version the source of QXml in Qt was built for and the version on the person's system.

I certainly hope libxml2 2.9.2 has not put back in broken behaviour just because someone else called it a reversion!

Arrggh!

KevinH

Thanks Kevin. I don't know what's going on. Even my low-tech self recognized the incongruence of the i386 and the 64bit stuff.

I'm going to run that command you gave me on my other computer and see what happens. (As I don't recall that computer having an issue with multiplying nbsps.) But yeah, if the multiplying nbsps and needing a work-around to do the chapter splits are the only issues I'm okay with that.

[KevinH]

Hi All,

FWIW, the original thread about doubling of nbsp is here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...hlight=libxml2

The interesting point is that it contains a test case that doubled by simply moving from BookView to CodeView and back. Greg if you get a free moment, please grab the test case at that issue and try going back and forth form BookView to CodeView after editing in each.

If you did flick from BV to CV and back every time you split a chapter, by the time you have done it for the 10th chapter you would have ended up with each set of 5 nbsp spaced in a row doubling 10 times!

This woudldcertainly explain the huge number of nbsp you saw when you looked at the "corrupted" file.

Please let us know after checking out that testcase if the same problem is happening for you. If it does, then it is certainly a libxml2 issue.

KevinH

[DiapDealer]

Alright Greg, I'm posting a link to the 64-bit version of libxml2.so that was in use on the very system that I created every single one of those "unofficial" Sigil binary packages with (v2.7.8).

If you're game (and after you've used KevinH's advice to verify you HAVE the issue), then just rename the file without the "_x64" (so it's just named libxml2.so.2) and place it in your /usr/local/share/sigil directory.

If you need help with the specifics of achieving that, I'm hoping some kind soul will be able to assist you -- not that I'm not kind ... I'm just a horrible instructor. A man's got to know his limitations.

It's on my google drive.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwu...ew?usp=sharing

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

I was not so much thinking Validate, as BEHAVE (so you can see how bad it looks) A set of (disable/modify) switches in the render engine that the Behave_as selection operates.

The code must W3C Validate, even if the device foos it.
The 'Behave as' view lets you see without having a shelf of test devices

I was thinking it would be good to have code/CSS validated against different platforms/software to see what's in the code that will not work like word spacing in ADE/RMDSK.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Hi All,

FWIW, the original thread about doubling of nbsp is here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...hlight=libxml2

The interesting point is that it contains a test case that doubled by simply moving from BookView to CodeView and back. Greg if you get a free moment, please grab the test case at that issue and try going back and forth form BookView to CodeView after editing in each.

If you did flick from BV to CV and back every time you split a chapter, by the time you have done it for the 10th chapter you would have ended up with each set of 5 nbsp spaced in a row doubling 10 times!

This woudldcertainly explain the huge number of nbsp you saw when you looked at the "corrupted" file.

Please let us know after checking out that testcase if the same problem is happening for you. If it does, then it is certainly a libxml2 issue.

KevinH

Kevin,

I didn't replicate the test case but I went back and looked at all the individual html files in the "corrupted file." The incremental increase of nbsps is exactly what happened. The only difference was that rather that starting out with five nbsps between the three asterisks so:

*nbspnbspnbspnbspnbsp*nbspnbspnbspnbspnbsp*

there were twenty nbsps in between asterisks in the very first html file. (So the evil bug quadrupled the number of asterisks right off the bat.)

Then yeah, they just grew exponentially from there. (If I'd have gone on to Chapter 11 I think it might have overloaded the Internet and caused a nuclear meltdown somewhere.)

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Alright Greg, I'm posting a link to the 64-bit version of libxml2.so that was in use on the very system that I created every single one of those "unofficial" Sigil binary packages with (v2.7.8).

If you're game (and after you've used KevinH's advice to verify you HAVE the issue), then just rename the file without the "_x64" (so it's just named libxml2.so.2) and place it in your /usr/local/share/sigil directory.

If you need help with the specifics of achieving that, I'm hoping some kind soul will be able to assist you -- not that I'm not kind ... I'm just a horrible instructor. A man's got to know his limitations.

It's on my google drive.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwu...ew?usp=sharing

Okay, Diap, thanks. It certainly looks like I have the issue. I downloaded your file and displayed it prominently on my Desktop so I don't forget. I'm going to finish up this book with 0.8.4 as it is because for what I need to do (just proofing and such) it's fine. Then when I do the next book, I'll put your file in. Appreciate it.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Okay, Diap, thanks. It certainly looks like I have the issue. I downloaded your file and displayed it prominently on my Desktop so I don't forget. I'm going to finish up this book with 0.8.4 as it is because for what I need to do (just proofing and such) it's fine. Then when I do the next book, I'll put your file in. Appreciate it.

Let me know how it turns out. You'll probably need administrator rights to copy it to the /usr/local/share/sigil directory. Just don't psych yourself out over it. If it doesn't work, we delete the file and everything goes back the way it was. You're not swimming in any dangerous waters.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

That's a big part of the problem, yes. There's lots of different patched versions of the same base version floating around out there in repo-land. If I can get back to creating a binary Linux installer for Sigil, I should be able to distribute a version of libxml2 that doesn't suffer from this issue. It won't help those who live and die by their distro's package management system, but at some point, you just want the damn thing to work for everybody, you know? Sending the issues upstream for fixing is all fine and dandy in theory. But users don't seem to enjoy the theoretical bugfixes in their favorite software as much as they do the real bugfixes, for some reason.

Ah, so you are trying to eventually get into a situation where you can do something like calibre's frozen linux builds which extract to /opt ?

That would indeed be nice. IMPHO a lot more software should have this option.
If only because of the dreaded Distro Freeze, when they stop updating anything in the name of "stability".

But it doesn't really affect me since ArchLinux doesn't really tend to gratuitously patch software, so it all just works.

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Hey eschwartz. Yeah, it's Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid but it's Xubuntu [...]

I knew that.
Typo/brain fart. Sorry.

[eschwartz]

Wow, I just found out that gnome3 removed the option to "Open as Root" from the Nautilus file browser.
And xfce's Thunar never offered it except with custom scripts?


Linux Mint/Cinnamon keeps on looking more and more like the only sane option that worksforeveryone.
(Because Nemo just had that right-click option all along and I thought it was normal. Apparently the Mint people want you to have reasonable defaults, here as in elsewhere.)


I was going to suggest the right-click open-folder-as-root action.


@Gregg,
But this shell command will do just as well (since you say you put it on your Desktop):

sudo mv ~/Desktop/libxml2.so.2_x64 /usr/local/share/sigil/libxml2.so.2

BTW, that is the sudo (do as root) "move" command.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Ah, so you are trying to eventually get into a situation where you can do something like calibre's frozen linux builds which extract to /opt ?

That would indeed be nice. IMPHO a lot more software should have this option.

That's my plan anyway. It'll probably just be a makeself self-extracting archive with a simple install script to begin with. Execute a sigil-installer.run file and be done. No .debs no .rpms ... one size fits all.

[eschwartz]

Most excellent!

IIRC Sigil once had one of those (InstallJammer) but it wasn't very good.
Simple self-extracting bash scripts are a perfectly adequate solution anyway.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Let me know how it turns out. You'll probably need administrator rights to copy it to the /usr/local/share/sigil directory. Just don't psych yourself out over it. If it doesn't work, we delete the file and everything goes back the way it was. You're not swimming in any dangerous waters.

That's good to know. I'll be back to re-familiarize myself with things when the time comes. Thanks.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

@Gregg,
But this shell command will do just as well (since you say you put it on your Desktop):

sudo mv ~/Desktop/libxml2.so.2_x64 /usr/local/share/sigil/libxml2.so.2

BTW, that is the sudo (do as root) "move" command.

Thanks. I put a screenshot of this right next to the file, so I'll be doubly sure of doing it. (You sure this is just as safe, though, as plopping the file in manually?)

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Thanks. I put a screenshot of this right next to the file, so I'll be doubly sure of doing it. (You sure this is just as safe, though, as plopping the file in manually?)

You do know about using filename completion from a command prompt? (windows has this too)

Start typing a path: tap 'Tab'
It will complete as much as is UNIQUE
add another character (or so) to break that jam: Tab
DOUBLE-DOUBLE check what you see before hitting Enter for anything that would have dire results (eg rm foo*.*)