What causes "invalid attribute view rich text span style IAL" in siyuan-note/siyuan?

Repair the span markup so every ` ` is immediately followed by a complete IAL like {: style="color:red"}

invalid attribute view rich text span style IAL

Error message

invalid attribute view rich text span style IAL

What it means

When re-serializing rich text, the code scans for `</span>` followed by a style IAL and computes the style value/IAL bounds with valueTextRichSpanIALStyleBounds. If the text after `</span>` is not a well-formed style IAL ({: style="..."}), the bounds function returns ok=false and the serializer aborts with this error, since it cannot safely split and rewrite the span style.

Source

Thrown at kernel/av/value.go:1514

		start := strings.Index(markdown[cursor:], marker)
		if 0 > start {
			builder.WriteString(markdown[cursor:])
			break
		}
		start += cursor
		builder.WriteString(markdown[cursor:start])
		for literalRangeIndex < len(literalRanges) && literalRanges[literalRangeIndex].end <= start {
			literalRangeIndex++
		}
		if literalRangeIndex < len(literalRanges) && literalRanges[literalRangeIndex].start <= start {
			builder.WriteString(marker)
			cursor = start + len(marker)
			continue
		}
		ialStart := start + len("</span>")
		valueStart, valueEnd, ialEnd, ok := valueTextRichSpanIALStyleBounds(markdown[ialStart:])
		if !ok {
			return "", nil, fmt.Errorf("invalid attribute view rich text span style IAL")
		}
		valueStart += ialStart
		valueEnd += ialStart
		ialEnd += ialStart
		builder.WriteString(markdown[start:valueStart])
		style, protected := protectValueTextRichStyleEntities(markdown[valueStart:valueEnd],
			sentinel, len(protections))
		builder.WriteString(style)
		protections = append(protections, protected...)
		builder.WriteString(markdown[valueEnd:ialEnd])
		cursor = ialEnd
	}
	return builder.String(), protections, nil
}

func valueTextRichSpanIALStyleBounds(ial string) (valueStart, valueEnd, end int, ok bool) {
	if !strings.HasPrefix(ial, "{: ") && !strings.HasPrefix(ial, "{:\t") &&
		!strings.HasPrefix(ial, "{:\n") && !strings.HasPrefix(ial, "{:\r") {

View on GitHub (pinned to 8641553a1f)

Solutions

Repair the span markup so every `</span>` is immediately followed by a complete IAL like {: style="color:red"}
Delete the malformed span entirely and re-create the styled text in the SiYuan editor
Check for and undo external string processing (scripts/plugins) that truncated or reflowed the IAL
Normalize the content via NormalizeValueTextRich / re-save through the kernel to regenerate well-formed span IALs

Example fix

// before
content = "<span style=\"color:red\">text</span>" // trailing IAL missing
// after
content = "<span style=\"color:red\">text</span>{: style=\"color:red\"}"

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

re := regexp.MustCompile(`</span>\{: style="[^"]*"\}`)
if strings.Contains(markdown, "</span>") && !re.MatchString(markdown) { /* fix or reject input */ }

Try / catch

if err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), "invalid attribute view rich text span style IAL") {
    // rebuild the span content via the kernel's normalize path
}

Prevention

Never post-process rich-text kramdown with string/regex edits
Keep each span and its trailing IAL on one unbroken unit
Regenerate styled text through the editor instead of patching serialized output

When it happens

Trigger: Kramdown source containing a closing `</span>` not followed by a valid IAL block — e.g. truncated IALs, missing closing braces/quotes, nested or duplicated spans from manual editing, or the IAL mangled by earlier text processing. Raised in the span-IAL rewrite path around kernel/av/value.go:1514.

Common situations: Hand-edited kramdown where the {: style="..."} tail was deleted or broken; string manipulation/regex by plugins or scripts corrupting span tails; copy-paste that split an IAL across lines; older exports with a different span serialization.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid ... format", "must be in format X", "does not look like a ..." — invalid argument format errors across CLI tools and libraries — this error's family across 17 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of siyuan-note/siyuan@8641553a1f (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d4db31cc92c21b12. Report an issue: GitHub.