Re: Opendocument export causes error

[Torsten Anders <torsten.anders@beds.ac.uk>]

Dear Jambunathan and others,

Apologies for my very late response in concerning the difficulties loading certain org-files related to Opendocument export (unfortunately, I have very little time for things like research in my job now, and this is a very busy time with assessment marking and everything :)

To summarise at first, the results in my 2nd IELM session (at the end of the message below) differed clearly from those in your kindly provided template -- in several cases symbol-file returned nil instead a path, and for (symbol-file 'org-macs 'require) it returns a different path that in your template. Does that perhaps point towards the problem? 

Here is the full story. Please remember that I cannot not use the OpenDocument export, because -- as far as I understood -- (the correct version of) "org-compat.el" and "org-odt.el" are not loaded. This is perhaps caused by the fact that the Emacs I am using (the latest stable release of Aquamacs, version 2.4) is based on the rather old GNU Emacs 23.3.50.1. Aquamacs is widely used on the Mac platform, so likely I am not the only one with these problems. 

I temporarily fixed my problem by loading the respective libraries manually in my ~/.emacs file as below, but as others may also have this problem this is probably not the best and certainly not a clean solution.

;; TMP hack to get OpenDocument export working again
(load-library "org-compat.el")
(load-library "org-odt.el")


Anyway, I finally ran the tests you suggested (thanks a lot for detailing these!).

> 1. Load Emacs like this.  Adjust the `-L's.  Note also the -Q.
> 
>   emacs --debug-init  -L ~/src/org-mode/lisp  -L ~/src/org-mode/contrib/lisp -Q

Aquamacs started. Clearly, Aquamacs was not fully loaded (e.g., standard Mac short-cuts where not yet defined). Anyway, it output the following message in *Messages*

Aquamacs is based on GNU Emacs, a part of the GNU/Linux system. It is Free Software: you can improve and redistribute it under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later. Copyright (C) 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc. (C) 2011 D. Reitter. No Warranty.
ns-handle-drag-file: Symbol's value as variable is void: one-buffer-one-frame-mode

To double check, I confirmed the Emacs version.

GNU Emacs 23.3.50.1 (i386-apple-darwin9.8.0, NS apple-appkit-949.54)
 of 2011-10-25 on braeburn.aquamacs.org
Copyright (C) 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.


> 2. M-x load-library RET org-odt RET

Loading org-odt...
Loading /Users/torsten/emacs/org-mode/lisp/org-loaddefs.el (source)...done
Debug (org-odt): Searching for OpenDocument schema files...
Debug (org-odt): Trying /usr/share/emacs/etc/org/schema/... [2 times]
Debug (org-odt): No OpenDocument schema files installed
Debug (org-odt): Searching for OpenDocument styles files...
Debug (org-odt): Trying /usr/share/emacs/etc/org/styles/... [2 times]
Debug (org-odt): Trying /Users/torsten/emacs/org-mode/etc/styles/...
Debug (org-odt): Using styles under /Users/torsten/emacs/org-mode/etc/styles/
Loading org-odt...done

> 3. M-x ielm RET

> | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-compat 'require)
"/Users/torsten/emacs/org-mode/lisp/org.elc"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org 'require)
"/Users/torsten/emacs/org-mode/lisp/org-exp.elc"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-exp 'require)
"/Users/torsten/emacs/org-mode/lisp/org-lparse.elc"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-lparse 'require)
"/Users/torsten/emacs/org-mode/lisp/org-odt.elc"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-odt 'require)

nil


I restarted Aquamacs and repeated all above except for the previous ielm session (just in case, as I do not know whether symbol-file has any side effects).

>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-compat 'require)
"/Users/torsten/emacs/org-mode/lisp/org.elc"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org 'require)
"/Users/torsten/emacs/org-mode/lisp/org-exp.elc"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-element 'require)
nil
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-export 'require)
nil
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-e-odt 'require)
nil
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-macs 'require)
"/Users/torsten/emacs/org-mode/lisp/org-exp.elc"

Again, thanks a lot for your help!

Best wishes,
Torsten



On 4 Dec 2012, at 05:33, Jambunathan K wrote:
>> I will go through your detailed list of suggestions a bit
>> later. Thanks a lot again for your help!
> 
> I hope you do revert with your observations on broken setup.  
> 
> In my experience, most users don't :-).
> 
> There is some confusion around the area of macros and autoloads.
> Something is amiss.  Only non-programmers seem to run in to this and it
> has been very difficult to understand what is happening on their setup,
> without their co-operation.
> 
> Here is another suggestion.  A bit easy one though.  This will be
> archived and will serve as a written hint to debug macro/autoload
> issues.  
> 
> When the err happens,
> 
> 1. Load Emacs like this.  Adjust the `-L's.  Note also the -Q.
> 
>   emacs --debug-init  -L ~/src/org-mode/lisp  -L
>   ~/src/org-mode/contrib/lisp -Q
> 
> 2. M-x load-library RET org-odt RET
> 
> 3. M-x ielm RET
> 
>   Here is a sample session both for org-odt and org-e-odt.  Sample
>   illustrates the sequence of events that led org-compat.el to be
>   loaded.
> 
>   The sequence below is courtesy this suggestion/thread:
>    http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2012-11/msg00227.html
> 
> 
>   So the load chain is:
>     org-compat <= org <= org-exp <= org-lparse <= org-odt
> 
>    ,----
>    | *** Welcome to IELM ***  Type (describe-mode) for help.
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-compat 'require)
>    | "/home/kjambunathan/src/org-mode/lisp/org.elc"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org 'require)
>    | "/home/kjambunathan/src/org-mode/lisp/org-exp.elc"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-exp 'require)
>    | "/home/kjambunathan/src/org-mode/lisp/org-lparse.elc"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-lparse 'require)
>    | "/home/kjambunathan/src/org-mode/lisp/org-odt.elc"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-odt 'require)
>    | nil
>    `----
> 
>   So the load chain is:
>     org-compat <= org <= org-element <= org-export <= org-e-odt
> 
>    ,----
>    | *** Welcome to IELM ***  Type (describe-mode) for help.
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-compat 'require)
>    | "/home/kjambunathan/src/org-mode/lisp/org.elc"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org 'require)
>    | "/home/kjambunathan/src/org-mode/lisp/org-element.elc"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-element 'require)
>    | "/home/kjambunathan/src/org-mode/contrib/lisp/org-export.el"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-export 'require)
>    | "/home/kjambunathan/src/org-mode/contrib/lisp/org-e-odt.elc"
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-e-odt 'require)
>    | nil
>    | ELISP> (symbol-file 'org-macs 'require)
>    | "/home/kjambunathan/src/org-mode/lisp/org.elc"
>    `----
> 
> ps: I hope I am invoking `symbol-file' properly.
> 
> --

--
Dr Torsten Anders
Course Leader, Music Technology
University of Bedfordshire
Park Square, Room A315
http://www.torsten-anders.de