Frame 8 trial woes

Mon Dec 22 14:15:58 PST 2008

I'm using whatever came with the free trial.

At 02:02 PM 12/22/2008, Art Campbell wrote:
Thanks for your prompt reply, Art.  Answers embedded, below.

>Can you create a new document and PDF it?

Yes.

>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.

I downloaded the trial version yesterday, but, no, I did not apply 
any patches at all.

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

I'm using the limited Distiller that came with the trial.  The PC on 
which I installed the trial had no pre-existing versions of the Adobe software.

I think what you are suggesting is that I add each chapter, one by 
one and keep generating the PDF and see what happens, huh?

And I think I will get some lunch, take some deep breaths, and do 
that.  But, sigh.

--  Emily

>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
> >
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Emily Berk
http://www.armadillosoft.com 