FM 7.2 File Compare Headaches

[Paul Kent]

FM7.2, Win XP. Pleae respond directly, as I'm on digest. I'll post results with a |solved suffix . TIA for any insights! 





Grrrrr, I failed trying to create a redline for a book I've been maintaining over the last several years. 

I did a File/Utilities/Compare on the old book versus the new book and all initially seemed well. However, I noticed that only 18 of the 39 files created CMP files. My first interpretation was that perhaps there were no changes in the ones that didn't create a CMP file. That turned out to be true for some of them. 




For instance, I noticed that none of the appendices has created CMP files. I know that some of these had significant changes. I began doing file by file compares to create the CMP files. This worked until I came to one particular file. The CMP for that file creates successfully, but when I try to save it I get the following error message: 





An internal error occurred while writing imported graphics in this document. The file has been saved, but has lost some image data. Please report this error to Adobe Technical Support. 
I tried a couple of ways to save the file, but nothing has worked yet. I did not try washing via MIF yet, perhaps that's a good option. 
I also did not try removing all of the graphics or (better) un-linking and importing all of the graphics. 

Also, I'm wondering if the error I encountered trying to save the CMP file is the reason that Frame did not create any CMP files that occur after that file. I'm hoping that once I figure out how to get the problem file cleaned up so that the CMP saves, I can re-run the compare on the two books again to get all of the files with changes to yield CMP files. 




Another thing, can someone confirm that the compare utility does NOT show changes made in tables? I see that these did not get noted in the CMP file. 




Finally, if anyone has any tips for creating and printing a redline I'd welcome a process change. My process in the past has been to: 




    1. Do the compare to create the CMP files 
    2. Create a copy of the book and rename it. 
    3. Either rename the files (for instance bob.fm becomes bobCMP.fm) or delete the old ones import the CMP files. 
    4. Walk through the new book cleaning up all of the phantom deletions/insertions (mostly updates to cross-references) 
    5. Print the whole thing to a PDF. 


I s this the best way to create a redline? Something very much like this has worked for me inthe past, but it is pretty labor intensive (even more so when FM internal errors gum up the works). 



Thanks again, 



J. Paul Kent 
206-383-0539