"document is not self-consistent"

[Guest]

What does this sybilline message mean? I assume we can leave aside the possibility that FrameMaker has analysed the text for discrepancies and contradictions ...

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

This sounds like something you'd get when using structured FM. What

flavour and version (pxxx) are you using?

[Russ Ward]

Hi Niels,

What were you doing when you got this message?  I might be wrong about this, but I seem to recall that this is the message you get when a book update cannot complete due to your configuration causing an endless loop in the process. For example, imagine that you have a TOC that applies certain tags during generation, but you also have those tags configured in the TOC setup. That is, the tags the TOC is applying to its own content are the same tags that it is querying the rest of the book for during the generation process. In this scenario, the TOC could never finish building, because each addition would automatically require another addition to link to the previous addition, and so forth.

You didn't mention a book update and I could be mistaken about the syntax of the messaging. In any case, no doubt that it could be a bit more descriptive.

Russ

[Guest]

Not moved over to structure yet, though I do have a whole book prepped in DITA to experiment on ...

Russ' description of a possible scenario sounds entirely logical, though I'd be surprised if I'd included to-be-ToC'ed styles in the ToC itself; or is this perhaps related to the book where the .pdf ToC persistently includes h0TOC bookmarks even though these do not exist in the FrameMaker ToC set-up?

A mystery, so far – but I successfully published this month's updated of the Aerodrome Manual, and should come back refreshed to the fray after a few days away.

N

[Tami Settergren]

I got the message "Book is not self-consistent" in FM 11 when updating a book full of revision marks. Didn't get the message when updating the book after accepting all changes. There were plenty of deleted cross-references among the revision marks, so maybe that causes problems.

[RoboColum_n_]

This is what the FM8 help file says:

"The contents of generated files, the page count, or cross-references continued to change while generating and updating files in the book. For example, if a book contains both a list of markers and an alphabetical list of markers, and if both contain hypertext links, the number of markers grows each time the files are generated. If this happens, move one of the generated lists out of the Include scroll list when you use the Generate/Update command again."

[FieryPantone]

Glad to see one of my posts taking on a new lease of life ;-} and even more so to report that I haven't hit that message since summer 2009.

N

[Tami Settergren]

A post with such an apt descriptor as "sybilline" deserves a new life!

-Tami

[TimLMun]

We just upgraded from FM 10 to FM 11.0.0.380, and we now see this message where we did not see it in FM 10.  Similar to a previous post, we have chosen to enable Track Text Edits. The book we are attempting to update has many edits that have not been accepted yet, and we do not want to accept them for a couple of months.

When we update the book, the book attempts to update, times out, and crashes.

We also surfed and found the unhelpful explanation provided by RoboColum(n).  It is "unhelpful" because I have no idea what it means, nor how to fix the problem.  The only "Include scroll list" we know about is the one we set when we generate a TOC.  Is there some other "Include scroll list" somewhere?  When we click "Update," we do not see any such list in the Update Book dialog window that appears.

I guess the bottom line is this: Is FrameMaker 11 incapable of updating a book that has enabled Track Text Edits, when those edits include cross-references?

Thanks!

Tim

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

You probably have busted xrefs in your edits that are sending the Update command into a loop. What RoboColum(n) is referring to is the dialog box that appears when you select Update Book - you're given a choice of what to update and what generated files (like a ToC or IX or LoR, etc.) you want to have updated or not - that's the "Include" scroll list the help is talking about. Try excluding your generated files one at a time to see if that narrows down the offending file.

[TimLMun]

Thanks for the reply Jeff.

When we attempt to update the book, FrameMaker crashes and creates a recovery file of 100% of the files in the book.  The cross-references are broken in 100% of the original files, but are all still connected in the recovery files. So, we have been opening and renaming the recovery files back to the original file names.

We are hoping the crash is caused by trying to update a book while it has Track Text Edits enabled (with cross-references in the edits).

Tim

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Can you post a screenshot of the Update dialog (don’t actually update – just show us what you’ve got selected)

[TimLMun]

Hi Jeff,

We have the following options selected (we have retained all default settings):

• Numbering

• All Cross-References

• All Text Insets

• OLE Links

• Generate Table of Contents, Lists, and Indexes

Inside the "Generate" field, the fm TOC file is the only item in the list.

FYI, this list of selected options does not break anything when the book contains zero text edits.

Thanks!

Tim

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

So try moving the TOC to the not-included part of the screen and try updating.

[TimLMun]

Ok, did it.

I clicked Update, and moved the TOC file down in the Update dialog window.

It seemed to update without any glitches.

However, when I clicked the Save icon, an error message appeared, and it crashed and made Recover files of everything (as it has been doing).

Just out of curiosity, even if your step would have worked, how would we have updated the page numbers in the TOC?

Tim

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

It wouldn’t – I just wanted to confirm that it’s your TOC that’s the problem; you may be stuck until you can accept/reject the changes and fix up any references in the edits.