[referencer] Referencer reports <class 'xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError'> when quering ISI

[Stefan Bucher]

Hi everybody
        
I got a problem with referencer. Below you will find the content of the
problem as posted on the referencer launchpad site. If anyone got an
idea how to resolve that - I would be very grateful.
        
I got kind of a large overall problem. Perhaps it is a bug, yet I don't
know. Here is what I did:
I installed referencer from the ubuntu software-center (Natty, Unity).
Then I linked PDF's to referencer to administrate my library and have an
easy and quick access to my literature. A feature I like (according to
promised program features) is the automatic retrieval of literature info
(journal, pages etc.) - but that does not happen...

When I link the pdf - the only data that are taken out of the pdf is the
doi and places the pdf-name as title (as it seems). When I try to
retrieve information (even with correct paper title) nothing happens -
the information in the referencer remains the same. Even if I give more
info like (the correct) year and author, the information are not
retrieved from the net. What is the problem here? (I use VPN-connection
to my university. Access to ISI is possible when I manually access
documents.)
        
I already tried to purge and reinstall referencer --> no change
whatsoever in behaviour.
        
After that I tried to retreive metadate explicitly from ISI by clicking
the respective button in icon bar. The answer was (translated from
german):
        ____________________________
        Exception: <class 'xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError'>
        
        Module: isi-plugin
        Explanation: no element found: line 1, column 0
        _____________________________
        
The terminal output is:
        ________________________________________
        bool Transfer::waitForFlag(volatile bool&):
         Waiting...
        void Transfer::openCB(const Gnome::Vfs::Async::Handle&,
        Gnome::Vfs::Result):
         result not OK
        
        (referencer:5003): libgnomevfsmm-WARNING **: gnome-vfsmm
        Async::Handle::cancel(): This method currently leaks memory.
        bool Transfer::waitForFlag(volatile bool&):
         waitForFlag completed due to transferfail
        PyObject* referencer_download(PyObject*, PyObject*):
         got 0 characters
        
        virtual bool PythonPlugin::doAction(Glib::ustring,
        std::vector<Document*>):
         PythonPlugin::doAction: NULL return value
        __________________________________________
        
The for curiosity I clicked on the Lyx button. Answer there (translated
from german):
        __________________________________________
        Exception: <type 'exceptions.TypeError'>
        
        Module: lyx
        Explanation: exceptions must be old-style classes or derived
from
        BaseException, not str
        __________________________________________
        
Terminal output was:
        __________________________________________
        virtual bool PythonPlugin::doAction(Glib::ustring,
        std::vector<Document*>):
         PythonPlugin::doAction: NULL return value
        __________________________________________
        
Oh, and btw I have this bug
https://bugs.launchpad.net/referencer/+bug/494684 too. Yet, I don't know
how to install the code provided as a patch in that post. I'm just an
ordinary user --> I would need some explanation on how to install such a
patch.

Thanks for your help
Stefan