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Scribus => General Discussion => Topic started by: Michael6 on June 30, 2020, 01:30:41 AM

Title: Parsing File Error
Post by: Michael6 on June 30, 2020, 01:30:41 AM
My file has crashed with no backup... I go to open it and it says "An error occurred while parsing file at line 845, column 70760235: Unexpected". There is a weeks work in this file I am hoping to recover.  Anyone have the ability to recover it from the last autosave or something similar? It would be greatly appreciated!  :o

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Title: Re: Parsing File Error
Post by: utnik on June 30, 2020, 05:44:36 AM
hi michael

is the 'autosave' file showing the same message? – if it does, it might be hard to recover the file.
when you show me the file, i will take a look at it and try to recognize the error. if the damage is small, i might be able to just delete some affected objects. but there's no guarantee, as i'm not a coder and crashes can do strange things...

utnik

p.s.: the combination of 'a week of work' and 'no backup' should lead to the main lesson to be learned from this crash!
Title: Re: Parsing File Error
Post by: AdmFubar on June 30, 2020, 07:57:19 AM
Out of curiosity, how old is the system you are using? I suspect your hard drive might be going.
Title: Re: Parsing File Error
Post by: Michael6 on June 30, 2020, 10:25:39 AM
Thanks Utnik, I sent you a PM to try and exchange the file.

My computer is only 2 years old AdmFubar.

The same error occurred on another document I would have had opened the same time. Didn't know that until I tried to open it after my post. That one was easy to redo. Really hope I can salvage something from the main file :(
Title: Re: Parsing File Error
Post by: dragonfly on June 30, 2020, 01:25:57 PM
I offer some ideas I have applied to recover corrupted files (not just Scribus).

First make a backup of the errant file, as an insurance policy.

Next download and install XMLCopyEditor a free XML editor.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/xml-copy-editor/

With the original document file safely backed up, open a copy of the *.sla document in XMLCopyEditor.

Since *.sla is really *.xml format you should be able to inspect the inner elements of your file.

There are two buttons in top menu showing "yellow ticks".
Check well-formedness
Validate

Check first that the document is "well-formed" (that is, it follows syntax rules).
Check next that the document is valid.

If one of these fail it may be that the xml syntax is corrupted.

It then becomes a process of trial and error to eliminate corrupt elements in the xml document.

I use a blank template Scribus document as a reference for comparison. That is, a Scribus template without content in pages. 

You can also compare Scribus XML documents (old and current document versions) using meld.
https://meldmerge.org/

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[P.S] I see another related thread here which might offer more recovery ideas (such as splitting up the source document):

http://forums.scribus.net/index.php/topic,3655.15.html

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[P.P.S] Another idea is to comment out blocks of xml elements in the test *.sla document to identify which page or attributes or corrupt syntax might be at fault.

More found here ..

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2757396/how-do-i-comment-out-a-block-of-tags-in-xml


Title: Re: Parsing File Error
Post by: utnik on July 01, 2020, 06:18:06 PM
i had a look at the file. it ended inside a really big embedded .psd image (around 100 megabytes). this image wasn't closed. it might have been even bigger – and could be the source of the crash...
i couldn't really recover the file. i removed the broken image and added the closing lines for a valid .xml file. the file is readable again but the part of code below the image is lost.

utnik