Unknown error

Workarounds and usability notes.

Unknown error

Postby John Robin Dove » Wed Mar 22, 2017 10:04 am

Hi Clifton,

Any idea what this might be referring to please?Image

It says => is missing or not valid.
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Re: Unknown error

Postby Clifton » Wed Mar 22, 2017 10:31 am

The error indicates that a parameter for either an internal Action or a parameter of a PowerPac function could not be interpreted during export. This can happen when the actions editor compiled actions for an object that contained something invalid in the structure.

The solution is to figure out which object is the culprit and rebuild the action(s) that are causing the problem.

Easiest way to diagnose this is to use a backup copy of your book that works and figure out what modifications were made that lead up to this failure. This is usually just one single action is causing the problem and the problem usually creeps in when cutting and pasting actions between objects. The problem could even lie with a sharedAction where pasted actions are invalid when pasted from code taken from another object.

Nice thing to know is that probably only one object or action is causing this. The no-so-nice thing is that you may feel like you are looking for a "needle in a haystack." If you have several pages in the book, you can begin to track it down by exporting single pages until you find one that fails with the error.

On the PowerPac side of things, the latest beta made some changes to the parameter structure for pgAnimateCSS(), so if you encounter this error after installing the latest beta, check you parameters for each occurrence of pgAnimateCSS().

Hope this helps!
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Re: Unknown error

Postby John Robin Dove » Wed Mar 22, 2017 10:47 am

Hi Clifton, thanks for your prompt reply. I think I've found it. Fortunately I hadn't done much today before I the error appeared and I back up regularly. It seems to be caused by my changing 2 fields from word wrap to single-select. Strangely I have a third field that started life as a single-select and this one is not a problem. I'll investigate further. I think I must be asking Powerpac to do something impossible. I'll let you know if I find the eact explanation.
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Re: Unknown error

Postby Clifton » Wed Mar 22, 2017 10:54 am

Glad you are on to the problem.
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Re: Unknown error

Postby John Robin Dove » Wed Mar 22, 2017 12:00 pm

I suspect I am creating a confusion between text of field (when it's a regular field) and whatever the equivalent should be for a single-select field. I don't think it's a Powerpac issue. There's only one line using Powerpac buildComboBoxOptionsList which refers to a different single-select field and this works fine.

Another aggravation is that once the export has failed I find it necessary to delete the objects and make new ones as if the originals had somehow remained corrupted.

I should explain what I am trying to do. I chose a single-select field because a) single selection is exactly what it is used for and b) beacuse it allows me to hide the second part of every line. Each line is a name followed by an unusually long space followed by a comma and a unique code like this: John SMITH ,x24abxdikewuyhd I only want the user to see John SMITH. And this works. If I try to use a no word wrap or single line field it doesn't work because HTML doesn't seem able to handle it. It tries to squeeze in as much text as possible and you see John and the top part of SMITH underneath it! No doubt helpful in some cases but not in mine.

If I remember correctly in native Toolbook you can refer to the text of a single-select field. It seems you can't in the DHTML version. In one of the 2 problem fields I simply want to delete the single line it displays. In the other I need to remove one line and adjust the other lines accordingly. I'm not sure how to use the itemText property because it is an array. I think something should be possible with buildComboBoxOptionsList but I've had no luck so far.

Oops I've just noticed that the same problem is created in the text of this message. There is no long space!
Last edited by John Robin Dove on Wed Mar 22, 2017 12:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Unknown error

Postby John Robin Dove » Wed Mar 22, 2017 12:25 pm

Hi,

Sorry about the message bombardment. I've cracked it! :D CSS and a quick shot of pgStyleObject. I just needed to use ordinary fields and set white-space to nowrap. I still don't know exactly what was happening with the single-select fields but the problem is solved.
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Re: Unknown error

Postby Clifton » Wed Mar 22, 2017 1:07 pm

This file may help with the selection boxes.

DOWNLOAD ToolBook v90 and export straight away.
Then examine the Actions code.
SOURCE_tbk_v90.zip
Manipulating ComboBoxes and Selection Lists using PowerPac functions
(35.03 KiB) Downloaded 89 times
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