Re: Microsoft Help Compiler Problem

["Ridder, Fred (by way of Hareesh Kumar K N <hari -at- cisco -dot- com>)" <F -dot- Ridder -at- DIALOGIC -dot- COM>]

The mismatched bracket issue you describe can certainly be the cause
of compilation problems, but the byte offset is quite different.  The
error
message indicates that the error is _located at_ a byte offset of X
bytes
from the start of the file. If you're clever enough and/or persistent
enough
and/or compulsive enough to translate the byte offset into a character
count and then count that number of characters into the file, you should

find the actual cause of the problem.  A byte offset is not the cause of
compilation problem, nor is it "caused by" anything in your file; it is
simply a piece of information that is being supplied to you to help you
find the problem. Some general indication of the problem's cause is
encoded in the numerical error code, and there are presumably specific
codes that indicate mismatched brackets or the presence of a special
character, since these are very common types of errors.

Fred Ridder  (mailto:f -dot- ridder -at- dialogic -dot- com)
Senior Technical Writer
Dialogic Corporation, Parsippany, NJ

And to keep our marketing people happy:
Get the Dialogic Edge at:  http://www.dialogic.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hareesh Kumar K N [SMTP:hari -at- CISCO -dot- COM]
> Sent: Friday, December 05, 1997 12:35 AM
> Subject:      Re: Microsoft Help Compiler Problem
>
> Hi,
>
> I've seen this more than once while working with a tech support guy.
> Since
> I didn't have any programming knowledge I just sat there watching him
> fixing the error. So the explanation I'm trying to give you is largely
> based on what I have seen and gathered from the techies. May be of
> some
> help to you. Here goes.
>
> >     Compilation halts with the following message:
> >
> >     Error 4639: Error in file '(our RTF file name)' at byte offset
> 0xDD71
> >
>
> The byte offset, as I understand, is caused by an extra '}' in the RTF
> code. If you open your RTF file in notepad or any text editor, you'll
> see
> the actual RTF code. What you need to look for is, I guess, whether
> the
> braces ({ and }) are used correctly. That is wherever wherever you
> open a
> brace ({) it should be closed somewhere. I'll try to explain this
> below.
>
> Another thing that causes byte offset sometimes is some special
> characters.
> Again, if you open your RTF in a text editor, you'll see black blocks
> in
> the text. This is some kind of a special character, and you have to
> remove
> this. I've noticed this when the files were created in Word 97. (Only
> the
> source .doc files,not the RTF).
>
> Other than these, I've even seen even apostrophes causing byte offset.
> But
> this is a very rare occurance. If someone with programming expertise
> can
> scour through your RTF code, they can easily locate the source of
> error. I
> mean, they will take a few hours less than one without programming
> background.
>
>

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