I am project administrator, but cannot mark \+xt as valid

Question

I wanted to print a test copy (draft, to pdf) of a chapter in Leviticus, after changing the \xt markers to +xt, but the print job was refused due to invalid markers, but I printed it anyway. When I went to the inventory of markers, I found the new markers listed but am not able to check that they are valid.

Answer 1

Please use Help > Report a problem to report the issue to us. It will include some log files that might help in diagnosing the problem.

Comments

I’ll send in another error report on this issue for you to compare with as well. I’m seeing the same behavior in projects that I’m administrator for, both in PT8 and PT9.

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Oops, sorry, I think I just found my answer in another help topic ( Introduction to inventories for checking ). It looks like the validity of markers is set in the style sheet, not in the inventory tool.

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BruceBeatham,

You reported the issue that it is not possible to validate the markers. This has been the way Paratext works. The marker inventory does not allow for validation - it simply provides a list of the markers being used in the project.

LONG EXPLANATION
Validation is handled by the stylesheet (usfm.sty and possibly a custom.sty). When you are looking at Paratext there can be situations where a marker like \v14 shows up as “bold red” to indicate that it is not a valid marker (because it does not appear in the stylesheet). You can also have markers like \xt that show up as “underlined red” to indicate that while \xt is a valid marker in the stylesheet - it does not normally occur in the location you have placed it. So, in the case of \xt you can use that many places in the text to indicate that a reference should be validated, but if you put the \xt in an \io field it will fail because the stylesheet does not allow \xt in that location (there is a marker \ior used for those situations).

There are also situations where a character style gets “nested” inside of another character style. Paratext handles this by requiring the use of the + symbol. For instance, if in a section of text with the words of Jesus I need to add the name of deity, I would have something like this:
\wj .....\+nd God\+nd* ....\wj*

Please note that as we move into Paratext 9 that usfm 3.0 is being introduced with some new features. You can see the usfm 3 documentation online at: https://ubsicap.github.io/usfm/

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BruceBeatham:

It looks like the validity of markers is set in the style sheet, not in the inventory tool.

Yes, I’m sorry. I forgot that the Marker Inventory is just a list of markers and does not allow the user to select whether it is valid or not. Sorry for misleading you both.

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Hi again,

I’m returning to this thread to ask about the best practice for handling these and other marker-related errors that come up when basic checks. Since their validity is defined in the .sty files, it makes me think that configurations need to be done there to resolve errors, but I don’t want to mess around under the hood if there is something I should be changing somewhere else instead.

I had been ignoring/denying marker errors for a while, but now I’m getting a book ready for submission to the DBL and it seems like these errors should be resolved more properly. There are three general errors with markers that I can’t resolve:

• \xt not allowed in Introduction paragraphs (\ip);
• \ior not allowed in Introduction Outline paragraphs (\io#); and
• embedded markers being reported as ‘unknown’ (eg. a glossary link embedded within words of Jesus with a \+w marker).

The stylesheet info in the Advanced tab of Project Properties indicates that it is using the usfm.sty Stylesheet, noting that it is “Customized”. I changed the USFM version to 3, but there was no change in the results of the Basic Checks. When I look in usfm.sty in the “C:\My Paratext 9 Projects” folder, it shows “Version=3.0.2”. Since the Project Properties reports that it uses a “Customized” Stylesheet, I looked at the custom.sty file in my project folder as well. The comments at the top of that file say that it “was created by the upgrade to Paratext 8.0. It is based upon the original style files used by your project. These files have been removed, but a backup of the files has been saved to usfm-color.sty.bak and custom.sty.bak” I don’t see either of those .bak files in my current project folder, but I assume they must have been in the Paratext 8 folder.

I temporarily renamed custom.sty in my project folder (ie so the Advanced tab no longer reported a “Customized” stylesheet when I restarted Paratext). I no longer had the same custom color styling we were used to, but when I ran the basic checks with that setup, the errors with \xt and the \ior were resolved. The +w maker was still reported as an “Unknown marker”, though.

So I took a look through the \Marker definitions in the custom.sty fie in my current project folder, and saw some clues to resolving the Marker errors:

• For the “\Marker xt” rule, my current custom.sty has only the value “x” for its “\Occurs under” property, while in the usfm.sty file I find quite a long list of permissible markers.
• For the “\Marker ior” rule, my current custom.sty has only the value “id” for its “\Occurs under” property, while in the usfm.sty file I find it allowed to occur under the various Introduction Outline, as well as the “NEST” value.
• For the “\Marker w” rule, my current custom.sty has a subset of the values that occur in the usfm.sty file, as well as missing the “NEST” value.

So I made other temporary copies of the custom.sty file; one in which I used all the “\Occurs under” values from the usfm.sty for these three markers, and another in which I just commented-out the informaton for these arkers in the custom.sty file. As expected, I did get my custom color styling back, but the results of the Basic Checks was the same as when I had removed custom.sty: the errors with \xt and the \ior were resolved, but \+w maker was still reported as an “Unknown marker”.

Is there any way to resolve the “Unknown marker” errors for \+w markers? And is editing my custom.sty file as I described above the best way to resolve the “Cannot occur here” errors for \xt and \ior markers in the Introduction?

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Add ip as a marker in the \OccursUnder section under \xt
This is what it looks like in my custom.sty files

\Marker xt
\Description Cross reference target reference(s)
\OccursUnder x f ex ef fe ip ipi im imi ili ili1 ili2 ipq imq ipr iq iq1 iq2 iex p pi pi1 pi2 ms ms1 ms2 ms3 r mr s1 s2 s3 s4 sr # 3.0 Added ex ef fe  ipq imq ipr iq iq1 iq2 iex  ms ms1 ms2 ms3 r mr s1 s2 s3 s4 sr

You can add NEST. It seems to work either way. Someone can correct me if I am wrong but I think NEST is only necessary for backward compatibility.

In projects that have \wj . . .\+w Word|Lemma\+w . . .\wj*. I have no modifications to \w in custom.sty and it seems to work fine.
Are you using USFM 3.0?

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CrazyRocky:

Someone can correct me if I am wrong but I think NEST is only necessary for backward compatibility.

NEST is still needed when applying a style to know if it can be nested (i.e. whether it will add the ‘+’ to the style automatically or not). But that is basically all it’s used for.

Answer 2

Thanks anon848905 & anon291708,
I think what threw me off was the Alert at the top of the Guide for the Markers Inventory window that says “This can only be done by a project administrator.” That made me think that the validation functions were unavailable because Paratext didn’t recognize me as administrator. Maybe it would be good to replace that alert or include another comment to let the user know that valid markers & their orders are defined in the stylesheet.
thanks again,
BruceBeatham

Comments

Yes, BruceBeatham, it was that “Alert” that threw me off too!

anon200667

Answer 3

Thanks for these pointers.

By commenting-out the sections for \xt, \ior, and \w in my custom.sty file to remove any modifications from the standard usfm I was able to resolve 2 of my 3 problems: I’m not seeing any more “occurs under” errors, but still a lot of errors related to \w: “Unknown marker \+w” and “Unknown atributes (lemma): \+w”

CrazyRocky:

Are you using USFM 3.0?

Yes, the project does now use USFM 3. I recently changed it from 2 to 3 while trying to resolve these errors.

In usfm.sty that I have, the \OccursUnder property for the \w section does include NEST at the end. I notice that there is also a line commented-out of that section that says:
#!\Attributes ?lemma ?strong ?srcloc
which makes me wonder if that has to do with the “Unknown attributes error”

Comments

Check to make sure \+w …\+w* is only used in embedded situations like in footnotes and inside of \wj …\wj*. If it is not marked correctly you will get “Unknown marker +w” errors.

The line
#!\Attributes ?lemma ?strong ?srcloc
is an \Attributes property for USFM 3.0. (USFM 2.0 sees it as a comment.)
It defines the “Word Level Attributes” for words marked with \w (Lemma, Strong’s Number, and Source Location). Ex.:
\w gracious|strong="H1234,G5485"\w*
It should not cause an “Unknown attributes error.”
See:

• Word Level Attributes — Unified Standard Format Markers 3.0.0 documentation
• Words and Characters — Unified Standard Format Markers 3.0.0 documentation

Answer 4

Solved it! I realized that not all \+w markers were marked as unknown. When I looked into why certain ones were marked, I found that in those cases there was actually an end marker for the “surrounding” character style before the \w+ markers, and then the surrounding character style was restarted after the \w+* ended. So the \w+ wasn’t actually embedded for some reason. I’m manually making the necessary changes.

Answer 5

CrazyRocky:

Check to make sure +w …+w* is only used in embedded situations like in footnotes and inside of \wj …\wj*. If it is not marked correctly you will get “Unknown marker +w” errors.

Yes! that was it!