Adobe PDF failures ... backwards from what I had recently.

[Syed.Hosain at aeris.net]

> It would be helpful if somewhere in your email you provided your FM
> and Acrobat version levels, and other diag info such as if the files
> are local or networked, how much RAM and temporary file space you have
> on the system, if there are any unusual configurations in the document
> files, etc.....

Oops, you are right, I should definitely have been more informative!
Here we go ... (did I miss anything?)

1. All FrameMaker and Acrobat patches are always in place - was true of
the 7.2 versions as well - since I make sure to check for them
regularly.

2. So, I am currently running: Acrobat Professional 8.1.2 and FrameMaker
8.0p277 - I just checked again using the Adobe Updater from within both
programs (for the heck of it) and there is nothing new available either.

3. My system is a Dell Latitude D820 laptop, 2.2GHz Dual Core Intel
processor, 2GB of RAM and a single 80GB disk - I currently have about
30GB of disk space free.

4. I am running Windows XP SP2 ... latest Windows patches (no new
updates available according to the Microsoft updater).

5. All files (program and documents, etc.) are local on my disk. No
networked files. Since this is a laptop that I take back and forth from
work to home to work on, I do not like to rely on systems or files that
are not present at both locations!

6. No unusual configuration that I can see: Just a directory with the
book and three document .fm files. All in the same directory. No
embedded graphics. No references to other documents or text insets. Lots
of user variables  perhaps (about 400 of them) and many internal
hyperlinks from one section of the document to another section(but not
to another document). Entire book is now about 216 pages long ... first
file is about 6 pages, second is about 12 pages and the third (the one
that crashed FM on its own) accounts for the rest of the pages.

S-o-o-o-o ... my questions again: What on earth is the cause of this
problem described below? What is "Tagged PDF" and why is it so
problematic for FrameMaker - either/both 7.2 and 8.0?

> Both this description and your earlier problems sound like old bugs
> that have been fixed in patch releases of FM and Acrobat.

Hmmm ... does not look like they have fixed it in the latest set anyway.

Z

> -----Original Message-----
> It would be helpful if somewhere in your email you provided your FM
> and Acrobat version levels, and other diag info such as if the files
> are local or networked, how much RAM and temporary file space you have
> on the system, if there are any unusual configurations in the document
> files, etc.....
> 
> Both this description and your earlier problems sound like old bugs
> that have been fixed in patch releases of FM and Acrobat.
> 
> Art
> 
> On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 1:57 AM,  <Syed.Hosain at aeris.net> wrote:
> > Hi, all.
> >
> > Please pardon the long e-mail here!
> >
> > In the past, with FrameMaker 7.2 and Acrobat Pro 7, on the TAGS
menu, I
> > had to *uncheck* the "Generate Tagged PDF" to make it work without
> > crashing.
> >
> > Then, with FrameMaker 8 and Acrobat Pro 8, on the TAGS menu, I had
to
> > *check* the "Generate Tagged PDF" to make it work without crashing.
This
> > last has been working fine since I upgraded months back.
> >
> > Today, for some strange reason, I would get a FM crash, with both
"Save
> > as PDF" and with printing to the Adobe PDF printer. With the same
book
> > that has been working perfectly for quite a while now the past few
> > weeks. An *incomplete* TPS file gets left in the directory - I know
it
> > is incomplete since the file clearly has missing text at the end.
> >
> > (The first time, though, I got a very strange PDF file ... in the
TOC,
> > the numbering was missing in some areas, some TOC lines were
truncated,
> > etc. It started crashing completely from the second run on!)
> >
> > So, I tried:
> >
> >        1. Saving each document in the book as MIF and rebuilding
each
> > .FM file.
> >        2. Deleting FNTCACHE.DAT and rebooting.
> >        3. Copying the old backup .FM files from a few days ago!
> >
> > No luck whatsoever! The .TPS files left behind looked incomplete, by
the
> > way, like they had not finished being written.
> >
> > So, I tried to PDF individual documents (there were three in the
book -
> > one long one and two much shorter ones):
> >
> >        1. Two of the documents (the short ones) would generate PDF
> > files correctly.
> >        2. With the third one, FrameMaker would simply crash and "go
> > away" - without even the usual menu box telling me that it had saved
a
> > file for the Adobe folks to look at!
> >
> > So, I tried the above *uncheck*'ed TAGS menu setting (i.e., went
back to
> > what I used to use with FrameMaker 7.2 for the heck of it). And,
sure
> > enough, now everything is working fine again! With no change to the
.FM
> > documents in the book whatsoever. The crash and failure to generate
the
> > PDF went away - both with "Save as PDF" and with printing to the
Adobe
> > PDF printer!
> >
> > So ... what on earth is this problem? What is "Tagged PDF" and why
is it
> > so problematic for FrameMaker?
> >
> > Z