2  Troubleshoot errors

Articles cannot be released if there are errors, and they occur because one or more elements do not have all that is required to enable them.

For this procedure, understanding of the Element block is expected, because using that is how all article content is created and thus also corrected. Especially important is knowing its Visibility status by what colour and thickness borders elements have, what text colour their name is and whether it is stuck through, and what symbols appear in its action bar. The symbols are critical to knowing which elements to drill-down into and what needs to be corrected. The Child navigation bar indicates which children have errors, allowing quick access to them.

Except for very simple elements, like a break or horizontal line, most are created disabled because they need something to be complete, be that enough text or enough child elements. Where text is required, a minimum and maximum number of characters apply. Same for number of children. Some elements, like lists, are created with the minimum children that they must have because they have no choice of child types.

When entering text, there will be an indication of how many characters are required above the text field. If the number is out of the required range, a message is displayed and the text will not be saved until it is correct. As to number of children, the red larger % indicator in the top end of the element block is across all child block groups, so once all current child blocks are corrected and enabled, it only remains to create the missing children.

Maximum child block numbers are usually generous enough that getting close to them would likely make the result unwieldy. Minimums are usually to prevent creating structures that are obviously overkill, like using a list, glossary, procedure or test with only one child, instead of just using a paragraph.

In general, if master locale text is required but missing, the element will show ʘ?ʘ. For a non-master locale, if there is no explicit text for the locale, when the page is normally viewed, the text displayed will fall through the locale hierarchy until text is found, or the master locale is reached. However, when editing, empty non-master text will show an en-dash (–).

To make articles look as close as possible to their rendered pages while viewing and editing, most information about elements is hidden, including errors. However, most errors result in their parent elements being disabled recursively back to, but not including, the article element itself, which is always showing and indicates whether there are errors in the content.

Troubleshooting thus involves drilling down through the document element hierarchy to find which elements have the errors. It is an iterative process traversing the same steps at each level of the drill-down. However, all the errors in the descendants of each element must be corrected before the element itself can be fully corrected.

If using multiple locales, correct errors in the master locale first as that will likely clear the most errors, especially for invalid group child numbers. Errors in other locales will only occur in inline elements, though they will still propagate up the element hierarchy. However, the best practice is to ensure that all errors for a locale are corrected before proceeding to the next, and so can be marked as Done .

Look through the steps to be familiar with them, and know that step 3 might be performed for a child of each descendant down to the furthest descendant and correcting that before being able to return back up the element hierarchy. To get used to the procedure, display this page next to the article while editing it.

Steps△

The role to perform this procedure is: Assigned user.

To correct errors for an element:1Make the element current◪︎by clicking on the element type name – in its element block, action bar, or hover button – for either:

1. a.The article.
2. b.First child element with errors, typically navigated to using the first link with errors in the child navigation bar.

Some elements will show some children at the bottom of its element block, some of which might be shown disabled. Here, the child navigation bar shows that the first child has errors.

2Show children◪︎by clicking on one of the checkboxes for:

1. a.Multiple at the top of the block, if available.
2. b.Children above the article's element block.

The three areas of most use for troubleshooting in an element block are:

1. a.Upper end symbols – indicating the type of errors, as described in action bar.
2. b.Numbers after element type name – the element's child status indicating child numbers and any errors with them.
3. c.Child navigation bar – under the Actions cells.

3Correct the first child element with errors◪︎

by repeating all steps from step 1 for that element.

The child element will be enabled.

4If non-✘ error symbols for the current element, correct them◪︎by, until no more non-✘ symbols, performing one or more of:

1. a.If missing master text (?), add text to field with none.
2. b.If incorrect number of characters (#), edit field in error.
   May have been corrected with master text.
3. c.If link and missing destination (@), add.
4. d.If an invalid number of enabled child blocks (%), enable a child if it needs to be manually enabled, otherwise if a missing child, Append or Insert it.

5If element now enabled, but still errors in the article, continue processing the parent◪︎

by starting at step 1 for the parent.