Questions and Answers


How to get help from the Bibledit community:

  1. Read the questions and answers on this page.
  2. Search the mailing list archives to see if your problem has been discussed before.
  3. Subscribe to the bibledit-general mailing list, and ask the question there.


I get the message "There was a problem in FOP".
This means that there was a problem in FOP, the Formatting Objects Processor. As a result of this, FOP could not succesfully format pages during one of the printing commands in bibledit.
To solve this problem, have a look in the System log. This is accessible through the menu, Help, View system log.
If the first error is a java.lang.OutOfMemoryError, look in one of the following questions for the solution.
If there is another error, ask for more help on the discussion list.


FOP gives a java.lang.OutOfMemoryError
This means that the Java interpreter did not have enough memory to complete the formatting process.
The solution will be to increase the amount of memory available to Java.
The default amount of memory assigned to Java is 64 Mbyte, but for printing a whole project, it needs 256 Mbyte of memory.
To increase the amount of memory assigned to Jave, carry out the following steps.
1. Look in bibledit, the menu, Preferences, FOP, and find the directory where FOP was installed.
2. In that directory, open the file called fop.sh in a text editor.
3. The last line of that file looks something like:
$JAVACMD -classpath "$LOCALCLASSPATH" $FOP_OPTS org.apache.fop.apps.Fop "$@"
4. Change that line to look like this:
$JAVACMD -Xmx256M -classpath "$LOCALCLASSPATH" $FOP_OPTS org.apache.fop.apps.Fop "$@"
(You will note the -Xmx256M. This assigns a maximum of 256 Mbyte of memory to Java.)
5. Save the file.
Comment from reader:
The instructions for Gentoo Linux would be:
Edit the file "fop" in /usr/bin. Add -Xmx256M before -classpath in the line
`java-config -J` -classpath ${cp} ${FOP_OPTS} org.apache.fop.apps.Fop "${@}"
to give
`java-config -J` -Xmx256M -classpath ${cp} ${FOP_OPTS} org.apache.fop.apps.Fop "${@}"


Can I change the location where bibledit stores its data?
Yes, you can. Normally bibledit stores its data in subdirectory .bibledit of the user's home directory.
Changing that is not done from within bibledit, but involves some manual work. This is done for the protection of your valuable data.
To change the data directory to a new location, do the following:
- Quit bibledit.
- Open a terminal.
- Type command cd to go to your home directory.
Let's say we prefer to store the data on /mnt/server/bibledit
- Type command mv .bibledit /mnt/server/bibledit to preserve and move existing data.
(Of course, when there is no existing data, this step is not needed.)
- Type command touch .bibledit-datafolder-pointer to make a new file in the home directory, that will point to the new data directory.
- Edit this file and put only this one line in it: /mnt/server/bibledit
That is it.
Removing file .bibledit-datafolder-pointer will cause bibledit to use the standard datafolder again.