"Error while writing breaks" issue - recurring problems Thread poster: Mariusz Studzinski
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First things first: I'm using Tag Editor 8.2.0.835 (Build 835).
After another half a day devoted to going through a DOC file tag by tag due to the infamous "error while writing breaks" in Tag Editor I'm officially fed up with it. I gave myself a night of sleep to cool down a bit but - suprise, suprise - this morning I'm still in the mood to torture some poor skinny SDL programmer.
I had a 40-odd page, 100 MB DOC file with multiple pictures, section and page breaks and... See more First things first: I'm using Tag Editor 8.2.0.835 (Build 835).
After another half a day devoted to going through a DOC file tag by tag due to the infamous "error while writing breaks" in Tag Editor I'm officially fed up with it. I gave myself a night of sleep to cool down a bit but - suprise, suprise - this morning I'm still in the mood to torture some poor skinny SDL programmer.
I had a 40-odd page, 100 MB DOC file with multiple pictures, section and page breaks and 2 days to translate it. Before importing it into TE I went through it, trying to find all missing paragraph tags to avoid the dreaded "breaks error". Did I manage that? Guess So, I spent the whole Sunday evening (an express job, mind you!) trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with this DOC. Or maybe it's TE? I couldn't just translate it with in Word, cause somehow the Workbench was getting stuck after the while and opening a segment was taking it approx. 3 minutes! I couldn't pre-translate it, cause Workbench tried to convert the DOC to RTF, and the whole convertion process went kaboom when the output file reached the 500 MB size! So I was pretty much determined to deal with TE.
Finally I found it. It was a single missing paragraph tag just after the TOC. One, #%#$, missing tag!
So now tell me: why is it so, that every time I load a DOC file into TE I have a 50/50 chance of saving the target without stupid problems like this? Is it professional at all? Please, folks at SDL - can't you do something to avoid this kind of problems? Any TE internal DOC file validator, or something? I find myslef avoiding TE in time-tight jobs just because I'm afraid I won't meet the deadline due to TE's whims like this. I just don't trust it. A professional tool like this should cope with this kind of issues on its own. Regardless of whether it's the Microsoft's fault or not. Bear that in mind.
[Subject edited by staff or moderator 2008-04-21 09:56] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Heinrich Pesch 
Finland
Local time: 14:40
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
| Try some other software | Apr 21, 2008 |
Along with SDL Trados comes SDLX, which is technically much better than TE. I have not yet experienced the problem you discribe, but this weekend TE and WB could not segment a Word-doc properly and I had to copy and past the matches from Wordpad. With Wordfast there are never such problems, because it is more flexible.
| | | | Jerzy Czopik
Germany
Local time: 13:40
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
| Well known error | Apr 21, 2008 |
And this is a Word structural error.
The file structure in Word does not follow the rules, so TE has problems with it.
You already noticed where to insert the missing paragraph.
So why don't you just search for all breaks and replace them with a break preceeded by a paragraph mark? As simple as it is it will avoid any error while writing breaks. After you've finished the translation it is easy to remove only those paragraph marks, which are superfluous.
Is the Word... See more And this is a Word structural error.
The file structure in Word does not follow the rules, so TE has problems with it.
You already noticed where to insert the missing paragraph.
So why don't you just search for all breaks and replace them with a break preceeded by a paragraph mark? As simple as it is it will avoid any error while writing breaks. After you've finished the translation it is easy to remove only those paragraph marks, which are superfluous.
Is the Word document created in a proper way, there are no problems with translating it. I've tried this so many times, mostly when the document comes from OCR - problems are programmed then.
BTW, you don't have to retranslate the whole file, usualy it s enough to insert the missing paragraph mark in the source document and the corresponding tag in Tageditor - after that you should be able to save the document without further errors.
We will be speaking about such errors during the SDL Trados trainings we organise in Poland in April, May and June. If you are interested, please look at this topic.
Best regards
Jerzy
PS
Heinrich, using another software is not an option. SDLX is not better (or worser) than other software. But for me it is unusuable because of it's way of working. I cannot stand format painting, this is pain in the a... for me. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Helpful as always | Apr 21, 2008 |
Thanks Jerzy, your help is always appreciated.
However, try to look at it from a slightly different perspective. The professional tool, such as TE should just not require this degree of user intervention in the original files and pre-processing. Some users are tech savvy and love to fiddle with tags and the code and some just want to translate and leave all the code twiddling to the tool they paid good money for. I really wonder if it is really so damn difficult for SDL programmers... See more Thanks Jerzy, your help is always appreciated.
However, try to look at it from a slightly different perspective. The professional tool, such as TE should just not require this degree of user intervention in the original files and pre-processing. Some users are tech savvy and love to fiddle with tags and the code and some just want to translate and leave all the code twiddling to the tool they paid good money for. I really wonder if it is really so damn difficult for SDL programmers to come up with a function (or some extra tool) that would scan the DOC file (or TTX), catch such traps as the missing paragraph tags and either inform the user about them or just plain fix them. I know it's taking the Microsoft's blame on onself but Microsoft folks just don't care - they won't change the Word, so that TE would work better with it.
If SDL does nothing in this area people will give up using this software, eventually. If they can't trust it, they won't be using it. It's as simple as that.
P.S. And no, the file I got wasn't OCRed. It was (as I know it) created from scratch. The truth is that I do tend to get these errors quite frequently so I'm a bit obsessed with them. ▲ Collapse
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Vito Smolej
Germany
Local time: 13:40
Member (2004)
English to Slovenian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
One of the first things I do with DOCs is eliminate TOC in the source. Maybe there's ways and means to live with it (and with other word-generated fields) but in my mind it all turns into some kind of a circular-definition nightmare. In my case "out it goes" and it does not come back until I have cleaned the target.
Similar problems - and pretty much the same solution - for footnotes, endnotes,. indeces ...
| | | | Jerzy Czopik
Germany
Local time: 13:40
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
Please visit ideas.sdltrados.com
After you register there (a simple process without having to publish a lot of data about you) you can tell others your ideas or vote for already existing ideas.
Your idea of a verifier prior to creating a ttx file or even better of entering the missing paragraph marks into the Word file will certainly get my vote.
Nevertheless, in the meantime I simply would add paragraph marks before each break in my document to remove them after the fil... See more Please visit ideas.sdltrados.com
After you register there (a simple process without having to publish a lot of data about you) you can tell others your ideas or vote for already existing ideas.
Your idea of a verifier prior to creating a ttx file or even better of entering the missing paragraph marks into the Word file will certainly get my vote.
Nevertheless, in the meantime I simply would add paragraph marks before each break in my document to remove them after the file processing.
Removing the TOC was never necessary for me, however I have to admit, that it indeed tends to cause problems, mostly because the user has created it in a very weird way.
And even if your document was created from scratch, that does not mean, it is properly formatted. I understand that many users may not be technical very savvy, but still Word is our tool and I would at least expect them to be somehow advanced user of it, so being able to correct weird formatting. But the truth is very often, they even not notice bad formatting, let alone understand what styles are and how to use them
Best regards
Jerzy
[Edited at 2008-04-21 17:26] ▲ Collapse
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