Internal Error: Huge Input Lookup

[blue_skies]

Hello. I have been using Sigil, off and on, for a long time and never received this error. I can't find information on what it means or what to do about it, and I'm hoping somebody here can help me.

I previously always used Sigil to create and/or edit ebooks on Windows 7. This is the first book I am editing on Linux Mint. Actually, it's just the Linux Mint user manual. (I wanted to read it on my ereader, but the reflow is awful because the text on top of it has at least two words that run together on almost every line. I figured since I have to read it on my computer anyway, I might as well fix it.)

I copied, pasted, and edited about forty percent of it earlier today, and then saved it and turned off my computer. Now when I reopened it, I got this error:

This page contains the following errors:
error on line 249 at column 8: internal error: Huge input lookup
Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error.

I scrolled to the bottom, and it looks like it is displaying the text all the way to where I left off earlier.

The only unusual thing I noticed when I was working on it earlier was this:

I was copying the text from the pdf file and then pasting it into Sigil. For a short while, instead of pasting it straight into Sigil, I pasted it into the Linux built-in Text Editor to remove any formatting, and then pasted it into Sigil. (I used to do that some times in Windows with Notepad.) I started to notice that I couldn't place my mouse pointer in certain lines of text, and instead had to use the keyboard error buttons to navigate over to words that needed to be edited. It wasn't all the lines of text, just one here and there.

It was weird. I never had that issue in Windows. I ended up just going back to pasting straight into Sigil and choosing "plain text". I'm now wondering if that caused the error. I Googled it and also tried to find an answer in the Sigil Wiki, but so far, no luck.

Is anybody here familiar with this particular error? Is there a way to correct it, or do I need to just scrap the epub? It was quite a few hours of work, so I'm hoping it can be saved without too much trouble.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Edited to Add: I am using version 0.9.9, which I just installed today from the repository.

[KevinH]

Is this error showing up in CodeView, BookView, or Preview Windows? Are you just pasting big blobs of text into a single huge paragraph or body tag instead of a paragraph for each.

Take a screenshot of the offending page in CodeView so that we can see what you are actually asking about. That should help.

Kevin

[KevinH]

A google search for your error seems to indicate this is an internal libxml2 error message.

My guess is the code you have appears to be one big blob.

[blue_skies]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Is this error showing up in CodeView, BookView, or Preview Windows? Are you just pasting big blobs of text into a single huge paragraph or body tag instead of a paragraph for each.

Take a screenshot of the offending page in CodeView so that we can see what you are actually asking about. That should help.

Kevin

Originally Posted by KevinH

A google search for your error seems to indicate this is an internal libxml2 error message.

My guess is the code you have appears to be one big blob.

I was pasting it in Bookview, and the error is shown in Bookview. I was copying from the pdf, so only a couple paragraphs at a time (except once when a few extra paragraphs got highlighted)... I had to copy the photos, save them and insert them, so I often was only pasting a small amount of text at once. Everything was broken up into small paragraphs though, and headings.

I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to paste text in bookview. It's been years since I read the Sigil manual, and I never had a problem using Bookview.

Hold on... I'll be right back.

[blue_skies]

Okay. I clicked on Codeview to get the screencap, and Sigil froze up, and froze one of my system's cores at 100%. I had to restart. It's a new computer and I'm still pretty new to Linux. I think I'm just in over my head right now dealing with a new operating system too... so I will probably just delete the epub I was working on and just use Sigil on my Windows 7 computer in the future.

Thank you very much KevinH, for taking the time to respond and offer help. I really appreciate it.

[blue_skies]

I think I will copy the epub to my Windows computer sometime in the next few days and see if I can fix it there without cause system issues.

I have not kept up with what's been going on with Sigil. So no more BookView in Sigil at all any more? Is that correct?

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by blue_skies

I ended up just going back to pasting straight into Sigil and choosing "plain text".

In this specific case, converting PDF to EPUB using Calibre would get more usable code than the copying/pasting into Book View.

This would be one step instead, then having to clean up all the mess, instead of trying to manually copy/paste each page one-by-one.

But be warned, PDF is the worst input format... always try to work from something better if available.

[DiapDealer]

I know v0.9.9 is probably the most recent version of Sigil in your repo, but it's actually quite old compared to the most recent version of Sigil (0.9.17). Even if there is a bug in that version of Sigil's codebase, we wouldn't be able to fix it in a way that would be useful to you.

As to how to possibly recover the contents of the epub in question: epubs are just specially structured zip files. Back it up somewhere, unzip it (might have to change the file extension to .zip for your archive manager to work with it) and take a look a look at the html code at the area in question in that particular file mentioned in the error. Maybe the code in question can be hand edited to fix the problem. Either way, any of the other xhtml files can be imported into a new Sigil epub. Even the contents of the problematic one can be pasted into a new file in Sigil's Code View. Just stay away from the problematic code that triggers the error.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by blue_skies

So no more BookView in Sigil at all any more? Is that correct?

Yes. Not as an integral part of Sigil anyway. We've been developing an application that can be used as an external editor to replace many of the aspects of BookView (including copying content into Sigil from other sources).

Unfortunately, it's not likely that the newest versions of Sigil, or the stopgap app in question--PageEdit--will be available in Mint's software repositories. You would have to compile them yourself.

[blue_skies]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

In this specific case, converting PDF to EPUB using Calibre would get more usable code than the copying/pasting into Book View.

This would be one step instead, then having to clean up all the mess, instead of trying to manually copy/paste each page one-by-one.

But be warned, PDF is the worst input format... always try to work from something better if available.

I never thought of that. I have Calibre on Windows, but haven't installed it on Linux yet. (Maybe I'll just try that on Windows if I have to start over again.) Will Calibre include the images in the PDF? That is the main reason it was taking me so long to convert it to ePub in Sigil.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

As to how to possibly recover the contents of the epub in question: epubs are just specially structured zip files. Back it up somewhere, unzip it (might have to change the file extension to .zip for your archive manager to work with it) and take a look a look at the html code at the area in question in that particular file mentioned in the error. Maybe the code in question can be hand edited to fix the problem. Either way, any of the other xhtml files can be imported into a new Sigil epub. Even the contents of the problematic one can be pasted into a new file in Sigil's Code View. Just stay away from the problematic code that triggers the error.

That is very good to know! Thank you for that information. I will probably give that a try later this week.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Yes. Not as an integral part of Sigil anyway. We've been developing an application that can be used as an external editor to replace many of the aspects of BookView (including copying content into Sigil from other sources).

Unfortunately, it's not likely that the newest versions of Sigil, or the stopgap app in question--PageEdit--will be available in Mint's software repositories. You would have to compile them yourself.

Thank you for clarifying that!

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by blue_skies

Will Calibre include the images in the PDF? That is the main reason it was taking me so long to convert it to ePub in Sigil.

Completely depends on how the PDF was created, but it should.

But what you're saying currently doesn't make any sense. You were copying/pasting out of a PDF into Sigil, but that wouldn't include images...

What's the ultimate goal though, are you trying to create text that's more readable on your reader? Because there are tools like k2pdfopt that will crop the PDFs. Then you don't have to go through all this copy/pasting, or going through the hell of trying to clean up PDF-to-text conversions.

[blue_skies]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Completely depends on how the PDF was created, but it should.

But what you're saying currently doesn't make any sense. You were copying/pasting out of a PDF into Sigil, but that wouldn't include images...

What's the ultimate goal though, are you trying to create text that's more readable on your reader? Because there are tools like k2pdfopt that will crop the PDFs. Then you don't have to go through all this copy/pasting, or going through the hell of trying to clean up PDF-to-text conversions.

I was copying and pasting the text in between the images. For the images, I screen-clipped and saved each one and inserted them individually into the ePub as I went along. So I would paste a small amount of text, get to an image and have to save it before inserting it, and then go back to copying and pasting a few paragraphs of text at a time. Sorry for the confusion.

I was going through all of this because I like to use large fonts, and in this case the reflow was terrible. Since it isn't a very long guide and I was going to read it anyway... I figured I would just make it into an ePub while I was at it. I've never had any problems doing this before. (On Windows anyway. I'm new to Linux. Maybe Windows 7 was just more forgiving of my apparently wrong way of doing this, or I was just lucky to not have any problems before now?)

Thank you for the link. I think I looked at it years ago, but I still needed a larger font on my 6" eReader. I have a 10" one, so I may give it another try next time I boot up my Windows computer and hook up a monitor.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by blue_skies

(On Windows anyway. I'm new to Linux. Maybe Windows 7 was just more forgiving of my apparently wrong way of doing this, or I was just lucky to not have any problems before now?)

The Windows Qt5 that ships with Sigil 0.9.15+ doesn't use libxml2 like the Linux versions do. Since that seems to be where your particular error originates, this could have been a problem for a long time on Linux. We have no real way of knowing.

[blue_skies]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The Windows Qt5 that ships with Sigil 0.9.15+ doesn't use libxml2 like the Linux versions do. Since that seems to be where your particular error originates, this could have been a problem for a long time on Linux. We have no real way of knowing.

I don't have access to my Windows computer right now, but it probably has an old version of Sigil on it. Possibly much older, I'm not sure.