Frame 8 trial woes

[Art Campbell]

Can you create a new document and PDF it?

And have you checked your trial version to see if all patches have
been rolled in? And if not, you probably need to apply any patches.

Are you using the limited Distiller version that came with the trial,
or a separate complete Acrobat install?

Art Campbell
                          art.campbell at gmail.com
  "... In my opinion, there's nothing in this world beats a '52
Vincent and a redheaded girl." -- Richard Thompson
                                                      No disclaimers apply.
                                                               DoD 358



On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 4:43 PM, Emily Berk <emily at armadillosoft.com> wrote:
> One of my colleagues is working for a company that is using Frame 8.
>
> He was having some problems generating a PDF, and, guess what -- his
> doc is due today.
>
> First thing he tried was to export his book and all its chapters to
> Frame 7.  I was not able to read a single one.
>
> SO, I downloaded a free trial of FM 8 and tried to generate the
> PDF.  My PC is a brand, spanking new Dell desktop (arrived this past
> Friday) with gazillions of bytes of RAM and oodles of empty hard
> drive space.  There's almost nothing on the drive except for the
> trial version of FM 8 and Vista Home, which came pre-installed.
>
> I tried to use this copy of FM to export the book and all its
> chapters to FM 7, which I have running on a different PC.  No
> dice.  Still could not read any of the "exported" chapters, let alone
> the book file.
>
> So I gave that up and decided to run FM 8 natively.  The first thing
> I noticed was that Frame 8 crashed pretty much incessantly.
>
> It always goes into an endless loop if I do a find on just the
> document and it can't find the text I've asked it to look for.  I
> then have to go into the Windows Task Manager and kill the FM
> task.  And then I have to either delete all the .recover.fm and the
> .lck files or re-open and re-save all the files in the book.  (This
> does not happen if it successfully finds the text I ask it to look
> for and/or if I have it search the book and it does not find the text
> requested.)
>
> But also, sometimes I won't be doing anything at all, just reading
> the text of a file.  All of a sudden, the screen goes grey and -- crash.
>
> And then there is the persistent Internal Error leading to crash,
> which seems to have occurred in reaction to pretty much every FM
> action I've tried in the last few hours.  What were the triggers of
> this problem?  I really can't say.  But I can say that it happened repeatedly.
>
> Anyway, all this crashing and having to remove all the trashed
> recover and .lck files is why it took me from 7 until around noon to
> get around to trying to generate a PDF.  By noon, finally, I had a
> generated book file with NO errors and no warnings.
>
> So then, feeling optimistic, I tried to generate a PDF.  I first
> tried to do the Save as PDF.  No error messages, but it took a LONG,
> LONG time on a very fast machine.  Finally, I looked at the file
> directory and there was a TEXT file with the same name as the name of
> the book file, but without a file extension, and it was an Acrobat
> log, saying that the PDF generation had filed at page 49.  So, I
> tried again.  Same error.  So then I deleted the chapter that
> included page 49, regenerated the doc, then tried to Save as
> PDF.  Got an error about 10 pages later.   Deleted THAT chapter
> too.  Fixed the broken x-refs.   Tried to Save as PDF.  Log file, no
> PDF.  So then I try to Print to Adobe PDF.  Same problem.  I guess I
> should create an empty book file and see if a PDF gets
> generated.  But I haven't done that.
>
> I'm thinking that maybe the trial version of FM 8 requires a
> particular version of Acrobat and it doesn't have it?  But, my
> colleague has the full install of the FM 8, with the new Acrobat,
> Robohelp, everything, and he couldn't generate the PDF, which is why
> this fell into my lap.
>
> I have been trying to make this work since 7 a.m. and it's after 1
> p.m. now.  Let me tell you the experience has been very frustrating.
>
> Well, he's off to work and has no PDF to submit.  And I have a copy
> of his doc and am wondering if you all have any suggestions.
>
> And, well, wondering if the common experience is that the trial
> version of FM 8 crashes with no instigation at least once every 15 minutes?
>
> -- Emily
>
> Emily Berk
> http://www.armadillosoft.com/blog
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> You are currently subscribed to Framers as art.campbell at gmail.com.
>
> Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com.
>
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to
> framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com
> or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/art.campbell%40gmail.com
>
> Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit
> http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
>