Print Draft Failed without log being created

Question

I filed a problem report a while ago but I also wanted to ask whether anyone has seen this sort of problem or has any idea how to solve it.

For some months now when I try to do Print Draft, I click OK and after the usual thinking about fonts, Paratext returns this message:

“Print Draft failed for Luke
There was an unknown problem encountered while attempting to create a PDF file for Luke.
No marker errors were detected, and no log for this attempt was found.”

This happens whatever the project, and also in Paratext 7.5 and 8.0. My PrintDraft folder for the project ends up with a file “NestedStyles.sty” being created which is 3 bytes long. That’s all. I’ve tried the usual things - holding down shift to reset Paratext, creating a new user account, removing the %localappdata%\Paratext76 folder, and changing my Paratext Projects folder back to the more standard c:\my paratext projects location (It’s normally stored in Z:\Shared Docs\My Paratext Projects).

I don’t know what caused this to fail. I’m now Windows 10. I have avoided the dreaded 1703 Creators Update and at some point relatively soon after upgrading to Windows 10 from Windows 7 it seems my Print Draft ability disappeared like this.

I’m particularly curious about the fact it affects both PT7 and PT8. I haven’t seen this on any other system, so perhaps I need to wipe my virtual machine and start again. I would quite like to know what diagnostics might be possible and what dependencies I could look out for.

Answer 1

According to the log, the PDF file for LUK was created. Are you able to manually find it and open it?

Comments

No. No such file exists. I thought that was odd.

print draft failed for luke.jpg948×344 50 KB

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You’re right that since this is happening on all your project it’s not a simple marker issue. I didn’t read your original post carefully enough.

I notice that the file location is on \\vmware-host\… I’m assuming that means you’re PT on a virtual machine.

I wonder if the problem is a permission problem–that you’re not allowed to write to that folder. Those sorts of problems are quite common when trying to access a host machine from a virtual machine.

This seems strange because all the other files got written there, but I think there might be an explanation. That explanation would be that PT has permission (it wrote the .sfm and .tex files), that the PrintDraft program xetex has permission (it wrote the .delayed, .log, and .parlocs files), but that the pdf creating program called xdvipdfmx doesn’t have permission.

If you’re on a virtual machine, what’s the host OS and the guest OS? Do you have full read-write permissions on the PrintDraft folder (probably for all users)?

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I’m on a Mac and guest is Win10. Full R/W permission is given to the whole My Paratext Projects folder. I first suspected a problem might be due to that and tried moving to the C:\ location temporarily, but that didn’t change anything. Like you I was perplexed because clearly something can write files in that folder, but not the PDF-producing part. I might try Paratext with admin privileges and see whether it behaves differently, though I can’t predict why it should.

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You also might find the C:\Program Files (x86)\Paratext 7\xetex\bin\xdvipdfmx.exe file and set the Properties to force it to run as administrator.

Answer 2

This is most likely caused by marker errors. I’m assuming you’ve already run Checking > Run Basic Checks > Markers.

My PrintDraft folder also has a 3 byte NestedStyle.sty file. However, it’s worth asking if you use any nested styles (normal styles like \qt but nested inside of other styles using \+qt).

However, the main thing you’ll want to do is hold down Ctrl as you run PrintDraft. That should cause a log file and the intermediate .tex PrintDraft files to show up in your folder, and the log file may give some clues as to why it’s failing.

Comments

Yes. No marker errors. I mentioned it does the same on all texts. And the error message itself says there were no marker errors found.
Thanks for the Ctrl key tip. That is just what I was looking for. No nested styles used in any of the work I’ve tried to print draft.

Having done the Ctrl-key thing I now have the following files showing up:
43LUKLDB-draft.SFM
NestedStyles.sty
printdraft-LDB-LUK.delayed
printdraft-LDB-LUK.log
printdraft-LDB-LUK.parlocs
printdraft-LDB-LUK.tex

for example when I did this with Luke in translation LDB. There is no obvious error to be seen. The log file ends this way, for example:

Reading Paratext stylesheet “Z:/Shared Docs/My Paratext Projects/usfm.sty”…
\id \ide \h \h1 \h2 \h3 \toc1 \toc2 \toc3 \rem \sts \restore \imt \imt1 \imt2
\imt3 \imt4 \imte \imte1 \imte2 \is \is1 \is2 \iot \io \io1 \io2 \io3 \io4
\ior \ip \im \ipi \imi \ili \ili1 \ili2 \ipq \imq \ipr \ib \iq \iq1 \iq2 \iq3
\iex \iqt \ie \c \ca \cp \cl \cd \v \va \vp \p \m \po \cls \pmo \pm \pmc \pmr
\pi \pi1 \pi2 \pi3 \pc \mi \nb \q \q1 \q2 \q3 \q4 \qc \qr \qs \qa \qac \qm
\qm1 \qm2 \qm3 \qd \b \mt \mt1 \mt2 \mt3 \mt4 \mte \mte1 \mte2 \ms \ms1 \ms2
\ms3 \mr \s \s1 \s2 \s3 \s4 \sr \r \sp \d \tr \th1 \th2 \th3 \th4 \th5 \tc1
\tc2 \tc3 \tc4 \tc5 \thc1 \thc2 \thc3 \thc4 \thc5 \tcc1 \tcc2 \tcc3 \tcc4
\tcc5 \thr1 \thr2 \thr3 \thr4 \thr5 \tcr1 \tcr2 \tcr3 \tcr4 \tcr5 \lh \li \li1
\li2 \li3 \li4 \lf \lim \lim1 \lim2 \lim3 \lim4 \f
\note-f=\insert247
\fe
\note-fe=\insert246
\fr \ft \fk \fq \fqa
\fl \fp \fv \fdc \fm \x
\note-x=\insert245
\xo \xop \xt \xta \xk \xq \xot \xnt \xdc \rq \qt \nd
\tl \dc \bk \sig \pn \png \addpn \wj \k \sls \ord \add \lit \no \it \bd \bdit
\em \sc \pb \fig \pro \w \wh \wg \wa \ndx \periph \p1 \p2 \k1 \k2 \xtSee
\xtSeeAlso \pr \ph \ph1 \ph2 \ph3 \phi \tr1 \tr2 \ps \psi \fs \wr \pub \toc
\pref \intro \conc \glo \idx \maps \cov \spine \pubinfo \zpa-xb \zpa-xc
\zpa-xv \zpa-d Reading Paratext stylesheet “NestedStyles.sty”…
Reading Paratext stylesheet “PrintDraft-mods.sty”… (./PrintDraft-mods.tex
\printDraftLanguage=\language64
)
\openout0 = `printdraft-LDB-LUK.parlocs’.

(no adjustment list “//vmware-host/Shared Folders/Shared Docs/My Paratext Proje
cts/LDB/PrintDraft/43LUKLDB-draft.SFM.adj” found)
(no picture list “//vmware-host/Shared Folders/Shared Docs/My Paratext Projects
/LDB/PrintDraft/43LUKLDB-draft.SFM.piclist” found)

(//vmware-host/Shared Folders/Shared Docs/My Paratext Projects/LDB/PrintDraft/4
3LUKLDB-draft.SFM [1] [2]) [3] [4]
\openout0 = `printdraft-LDB-LUK.delayed’.

(./printdraft-LDB-LUK.parlocs) )
Output written on printdraft-LDB-LUK.pdf (4 pages).

Answer 3

Ah. I finally found the problem. Very happy.

What I had foolishly forgotten when I copied files from my \vmware-host\Shared Docs\My Paratext Projects folder over to C:\My Paratext projects was that each .ssf file has inside it the link to the directory. This link was in the format \vmware-host… rather than what I actually normally use which is Z:\Shared Docs\etc.

It would appear that xdvipdfmx.exe or something in the system doesn’t like outputting files to a destination specified in that way, but once I changed the .ssf file to refer to the location using the drive letter Z:\ rather than the network-style name \vmware-host then Print Draft worked file.

The only reason I had changed to use \vmware-host\ as the location rather than Z:\ was because my VMware tools had some kind of fit and didn’t want to link the Z:\ drive letter.

Thanks for all your help. Sorry to have troubled you with a somewhat obscure problem.