Documentation about how to set up the Front Matter

Question

I seem at a loss as to how to use the Peripherals tab and the Front Matter tab under View & Edit. The auto generated Front Matter has \periph Title Page|id="title" and \periph Publication Data|id="pubdata" etc. But the id="xxxx" part of these statements make the run hang. It seems to be looking for "title" and "pubdata" etc somewhere. But where? Sorry for a dumb question, but I just can't find the answer. Slide 297 mentions it, but doesn't tell me enough to fix the problem. It seems like there is some implied information I am missing here.    

Answer 1

If you have already seen slides 287-297, then you've already got everything there is to know. If you'd like to watch a video explaining how to do Front Matter, then check out the video link on Wednesday, Session 4 at this https://tiny.cc/ptxp24training document (the password to the videos is just above the table). On second thoughts, the video of Thursday, Session 1 "More on Peripherals" may be more useful - as a revision of what was covered on Wed.

Looking closely at the screenshot above, I wonder if the problem is something as simple as having the wrong quotes around the id=" ... "   It looks to me that they might be smart quotes (copied and pasted from a Word Doc, perhaps) and they MUST be " simple " straight double-quote markers. “This won’t work” but "this will"

If you're still fighting with it, please send in an archive and I'll take a look -- or let me know when you would like a support session over Zoom.

Note that version 2.8.20 was released yesterday and has several important bug fixes, and some minor feature improvements, so be sure to check that out.

Answer 2

Thanks Mark P. The front matter I am using is generated from the "Generate" button, and I haven't changed anything other than the variable values in the user interface. So I am  trying to generate front matter "out of the box" and it doesn't work. Since it is auto-generated, there is nothing like smart quotes in the text, as you suspected. If I remove all the id="xxxx" parts of the \periph fields, everything works fine. Leave them in, and it hangs as in the screenshot of my first comment. So I am thinking that maybe I am supposed to put \periph Title Page|id="title" etc fields in my INT book in  Paratext? But I don't see anything in either the slides or the video you suggested  which actually SAYS to do that. And the slides and videos do seem to suggest that PTX generates the Front Matter without Paratext.  I am more confused than ever.

Comments

Ok, that's good to have ruled out the smart quotes red herring.

If you already have an INT book in Paratext and want to dynamically import any of those \periph sections from that INT book into your FRTlocal.sfm file, you can use:

\zgetperiph|preface\*
\zgetperiph|introduction\*

to import the section(s) as needed. But make sure the option: "Use Peripheral Introductory Sections" has been enabled for it to import them:
 

There is no harm in removing the id="xxxx" parts of the \periph fields. As you say, everything works fine. Those are more important when certain periphs have to be inserted elsewhere in the publication (for example, an 'intnt' periph section gets inserted AFTER the OT and just before the NT starts).

If there's still something that isn't working as you want it to, please send me a small archive (select a small book, and then use the button on the Help tab to make a .zip file). Send it to ptxprint_support (at) sil.org for me to look at.

Answer 3

I wonder if this kind of documentation is helpful. Eventually it will make its way to the How to: section on the main website, with a lot more user-friendly images etc.

Answer 4

You may have triggered a parser bug, although I don't know of any in that area. Try upgrading to the latest and see if things calm down. If not, please send an archive for debugging.

Comments

Just sent an archive.

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Thanks - that has helped us discover what the cause was: a rule in PrintDraftChanges.txt which was turning regular " quotes into smart quotes. It was running on the FRTlocal.sfm file and messing up the id=" ... " fields.