Can't even start Bookends 8!

[prop]

No problems for a month with 7.7.5. Downloaded ver. 8 and I can't even get it to start! Dock icon bounces a few times and then disappears.

I've trashed the Prefs file in ~/Library/Preferences, but no dice. Any thoughts?

[Wilder Robles]

It has so far worked OK for me!javascript:emoticon(':D')

[Jon]

I've trashed the Prefs file in ~/Library/Preferences, but no dice. Any thoughts?

One problem has come to light -- if the hard drive name has a non-ASCII character (i.e. an accented character) Bookends won't launch. The database name can have Unicode characaters, as can enclosing folders. It seems to be the hard drive name that is problematic. If that is the case with you, removing the Unicode chars from the hard drive name should do the trick. We are working on this.

If that is not the problem, please contact me directly and we'll try to figure it out.

Jon
Sonny Software

[prop]

That was indeed the problem - man are you on top of things!

Love the new version - please keep up the good work - there are a lot of people who really appreciate your amazing program - it has literally turned around the way I compile references and write academic material...

[Guest]

I ran into this problem when using " (double quotation marks) in the name of my harddrive.

As I have a couple of powerbooks and give them descriptive names (e.g., 12"Powerbook and 15"Powerbook), I would really like to be able to use Bookends *and* keep my naming conventions (as they are often on the network at the same time).

Thanks,
Darin

[Guest]

A quick follow-up:

I found that Bookends 8.0 wouldn't launch if I had a non-ascii character in the name of the folder in which the program was stored. So, when I renamed the folder 'BookendsÆ’8.0', it doesn't launch. When named 'Bookends Folder', it works fine.

Best,
darin
Darin.Hayton [at] mhs.ox.ac.uk

[Jon]

This issue is definitely on the to-do (short) list.

[prop]

Jon, Has this startup drive issue been fixed in 8.0.1?

[Jon]

No, not yet. It is an issue with the database engine (Valentina). The problem has been reported to the engine developer, and is on the list of things to fix (there are 4-5 others in the queue as well). They are very responsive, and I'm sure it will be done in the not-too-distant future. It will probably be incorporated into 8.0.2 (at least I hope so).

Jon
Sonny Software

[swisswuff]

if the hard drive name has a non-ASCII character (i.e. an accented character) Bookends won't launch

I ran into this problem, too. I indeed had named my harddrive "magnetschnägg" ('magnetic snail', Swiss German... - using the a umlaut).

I would not have thought that could be an issue in Mac OS X, as pathnames take it from "/" (root level), and so any path would likely be /Users/~/Library/Preferences/..., /Applications/Bookends/... and not really incorporate anything like the harddisk name (/Volumes/... for other drives, sure ..). I'd never guessed that!

So, thank you very much for this valuable forum post. It solved my problem, and I can now proceed to actually >evaluate< the software for linking references into texts!

[Jon]

Glad you figured it out. I keep pestering the db engine developers to fix this annoying issue, and no doubt it will be done.

Jon
Sonny Software