Build 846 - notes crippled in RTF export

[Martin Terreni]

I sent them whtever they required from me. I don't think they asked for all of these, but what they asked for they got.

[«Midnight»]

Perhaps send them an email. See if they could use additional info. After all, you will end up waiting until they can replicate the problem; their research is part of your critical path.

[FreddoFrog]

Here is a Fix that is working for our organisation.

USE AT OWN RISK.  

This has been tested on the full set of documentation we create and has not failed yet!!!.  We do not use any Right-to-Left languages so if you do use them this may work for you.

The steps are very simple...

Open RTF file in a text editor.
Replace all instances of "\rtlch" with "\ltrch"
Save file.
Then open the RTF in Word or OpenOffice and the problem is resolved.

Regards

David

[Martin Terreni]

Brilliant!

[dgo]

Thanks to David for his very helpful tip.

If you are using umlauts (ä, ö, ...) in your notes, some further replacements are helpfull, cause umlauts may appear "crippled" too.

As far as I found out until today, in the rtf file the following (wrong) unicode sequences (incl. trailing blanks) must be replaced with "" (string with length 0):

"\u1460 " (Unicode \'c4 / Ä)
"\u1492 " (Unicode \'e4 / ä)
"\u1522 " (Unicode \'d6 / Ö)
"\u1510 " (Unicode \'f6 / ö)
"\u63632 " (Unicode \'dc / Ü)
"\u63637 " (Unicode \'fc / ü)
"\u63635 " (Unicode \'df / ß)

Regards,
Daniel

[«Midnight»]

Make sure you are using a recent build of EA. [This is probably not an issue as you'd need to go a long way back.]

Now ensure that you are using the Jet 4.0 engine. Open EA - you do not need to open a model - and on the Tools | Options | General page check the option. You must exit and restart EA for this to take effect. Once you do this EA will use the new setting from that point on.

The default Jet 3.51 driver does not not handle Unicode gracefully.

David

PS: The older driver is also obsolete. I've mentioned this to Sparx, suggesting they set the default to 4.0. They have replied that this is an interesting suggestion, but made no commitment regarding implementation.

[dgo]

Thanks for your hint, David.

I've tried the Jet 4.0 option in the most recent version 7.5, Build 847. The umlauts remain crippled in the wrongly generated right-to-left paragraphs, so changing the Jet driver doesn't seem to solve the problem. In EA version 7.1 everything works fine.

Regards
Daniel

[«Midnight»]

Daniel,

Can you send a sample project to Sparx? Ideally this would be a project where the problem occurs with the Jet 4.0 driver in EA 7.5, but not in 7.1.

If you file a bug report via the Registered Users page you can attach a file. [Just zip up the project file and examples of the output.] To reach the appropriate bug report page use one of the following methods. Click the Registered Users link at the top of any forum page; then follow the link to the bug report form that you will find in the first few paragraphs of that page. Or click the Report a Bug link near the bottom of any forum page and follow the link just above the 'public' bug report page to reach the registered version.

The registered bug report is the same as the other report with the exception of the ability to add files and use of a username and password for authorization. [Note that the credentials are the ones issued to you (usually by email) when you received or last updated your EA license.]

David

[dgo]

@David:
I've reported the bug to Sparx and sent them the project file + RTF report. Now waiting for response and solution to get rid of the workarounds.

@all:
With (very) small projects everything seems to work fine - until you call the generator three or more times. Which notes will appear crippled then is unforseeable.

[«Midnight»]

...
With (very) small projects everything seems to work fine - until you call the generator three or more times. Which notes will appear crippled then is unforseeable.

Now that's interesting!

Did you tell Sparx about the 'time delay' on the problem? Or have you discovered this pattern since you filed the report?

[Sunshine]

I've just recently upgraded from build 845 to 847 and noticed the same problem where text is transposed in various forms. Its not just limited to the notes field either. I've observed it occuring in the name and alias fields as well. I can generate the RTF document several times without changing the model and observe different results each time.  Words appear to be transposed in several random ways. For instance the text "Priority outcome 2" in the model comes out as "2Priority outcome" in the RTF document.
The workaround provided by FreddoFrog seems to correct the problem. i.e.
Open RTF file in a text editor.
Replace all instances of "\rtlch" with "\ltrch"

Thanks Freddo

Of course the other workaround is to revert back to build 845.

[Ainsley Haslett]

I am having the same problem as the original post as well as the problem in response #3. I am using EA Build 847 & MS Word (buld 12.0.6331.5000).

When this problem occurs, in the text in the resutling rtf file which is open in MS Word, if you press the right key the cursor goes left and vice versa. Very strange.

The only workaround I found was to regenerate the rtf package by package as it seemed that the error was more prevalent when the rtf came from a master document than an rtf for an individual package.

Happy to send screenshots or examples if you need.

[Sunshine]

I logged the RTF problem with Sparx Systems and their reply is

"... We are aware of the issue and we are trying resolve this for build 848."

Hopefully build 848 isn't too far away.

[Ainsley Haslett]

thanks for that! good luck with the fix lol

[Oliver F.]

thanks for that! good luck with the fix lol

As for the fix it works if one uses it from a binary editor. I tried it from a text editor like jedit and notepad and both crippled the document even further if binary information is included- like bitmaps. So usage of an editor which does not care about character encoding is encouraged.

Oliver