[Xerte-dev] Re: Lost Data

Wed Feb 5 16:56:58 GMT 2014

The problem also is that it's not 100% clear if this happens only after the
change that caused the break. So even if we got hold of a restored backup it
probably wouldn't help.

At some point but probably not until middle of next week I'm going to see if
I can automate my own local back up of the user-files folders on one or two
of the Techdis installations. At the moment the backups are off-server and I
don't have access. If I can automate local backups at least I can quickly
get to the working xml as soon as someone reports this.

Cheers

Ron

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 05 February 2014 16:16
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Lost Data

No idea. In the case here the html was all escaped in CDATA, being part of
the main page text - I wrote it to do some custom stuff, which involved
adding a custom button to each page to display a transcript for narration
and a couple of other things. Once I'd sorted it out, I made a prototype and
gave it to the author to duplicate, with a set of pages set up to duplicate
so she could crack on with the content quickly. I didn't experience any
problems myself.

I suspect in both cases, the user has limited html skills. They could easily
have left a tag unclosed, or an attribute without a quote, the sort of thing
that I'm (a bit) less likely to do.

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Smith, John
Sent: 05 February 2014 16:10
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Lost Data

Hi,

I suspect that the custom HTML is your best link to reproducing this.
something in there has probably caused the nodes not to load properly into
the Flash editor and then when it was written back out those nodes were then
overwritten. This is the problem with mixing XML and HTML, unless its
properly wrapped in CDATA blocks. 

Do you have any clue as to what was in the HTML?

Regards,

John Smith

Learning Technologist

School of Health & Life Sciences

Glasgow Caledonian University

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2014 3:59 PM
To: For Xerte technical developers (xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk)
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Lost Data

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone else has experienced the same data loss we had here
last week, and that was reported on the Xerte list yesterday. In both cases,
the user reported 'lost pages'. Looking at the xml it was intact, with a
closing </learningObject> tag: that's the first time I've ever seen data
loss with a valid xml file left over (I would expect it to truncate at the
point the file broke, and safety code should stop that then saving, right?)

Maybe it's just coincidence, but I'm a bit worried there might be a problem
we don't know about causing data to get lost. In the case reported here, I
don't suspect (highly) user error (it's always a possibility). In the case
on the Xerte list I'm less certain. I've asked for more info, but none has
been forthcoming.

Obviously we need to try and reproduce it if possible, or put in place some
sort of safety mechanism. I did notice that both had some custom HTML going
on in the code. Any ideas or insight?

Julian

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