Bug 614728

Summary: Publican does not warn about empty <term>
Product: [Community] Publican Reporter: Laura Bailey <lbailey>
Component: publicanAssignee: Jeff Fearn 🐞 <jfearn>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: 1.6CC: jfearn, mmcallis, publican-list, rlandman
Target Milestone: ---   
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: publican-2.2-0.fc13 Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
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Last Closed: 2010-10-08 20:41:53 UTC Type: ---
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Description Flags
fop error on empty term none

Description Laura Bailey 2010-07-15 05:52:25 UTC 
Description of problem:
When a <term/> tag is empty, or contains only other tags (<varname/>, etc.), Publican does not complain of an empty tag, but FOP falls over while building the PDF.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
publican-2.1-0.fc12.noarch

How reproducible:
Every time.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Have a <term/> tag that is empty except for other tags:
<varlistentry>
  <term><varname></varname></term>
  <listitem> ...
or that is just empty:
 <varlistentry>
   <term></term>
   <listitem> ...

2. publican build --langs en-US --formats pdf
  
Actual results:
javax.xml.transform.TransformerException - see output in attached file.

Expected results:
Publican should make mention of the (technically valid) empty tag, or FOP should give a more informative error message.

Additional info:
Comment 1 Laura Bailey 2010-07-15 05:53:48 UTC 
Created attachment 431971 [details]
fop error on empty term

Fop error for empty term tag attached.
Comment 2 Jeff Fearn 🐞 2010-07-27 05:52:04 UTC 
Well it's clearly valid, if crazy, to have an empty term, so the PDF should build.

Fixed PDF build so it doesn't blow up on empty terms.

Fixed in build: 2.1-0%{?dist}.t2
Comment 3 Laura Bailey 2010-07-27 06:05:44 UTC 
Thanks, Jeff. :)

Any chance we can get it to warn when it senses something like an empty term? I can't think of a circumstance in which an empty term would be correct, even if it's valid.
Comment 4 Jeff Fearn 🐞 2010-07-27 06:29:20 UTC 
(In reply to comment #3)
> Thanks, Jeff. :)
> 
> Any chance we can get it to warn when it senses something like an empty term? I
> can't think of a circumstance in which an empty term would be correct, even if
> it's valid.    

I think it would be best to open a discussion upstream to get the DTD changed so that an empty term isn't valid.
Comment 5 Ruediger Landmann 2010-08-06 04:28:44 UTC 
Verified in 2.1.t20

PDF builds fine even with an empty <term>
Comment 6 Fedora Update System 2010-10-06 05:48:14 UTC 
publican-2.2-0.fc13 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 13.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/publican-2.2-0.fc13
Comment 7 Fedora Update System 2010-10-06 05:49:32 UTC 
publican-2.2-0.fc12 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 12.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/publican-2.2-0.fc12
Comment 8 Fedora Update System 2010-10-06 05:49:35 UTC 
publican-2.2-0.fc14 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 14.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/publican-2.2-0.fc14
Comment 9 Fedora Update System 2010-10-08 20:39:39 UTC 
publican-2.2-0.fc13 has been pushed to the Fedora 13 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.