Need help with crash diagnosis

[Stuart Rogers]

On 25/07/2011 12:54 AM, Combs, Richard wrote:
> FM 7.2, Win 7
>
> I'm trying to create a PDF from a book that has been PDFed many times
> before, as recently as a week ago. Since then, I've made various
> updates throughout, and something has obviously changed for the
> worse. Each attempt to either save as PDF or print to PDF results in
> the same "serious error" crash of FM.
>
> According to the Distiller logs, the job always ends on the same
> page. I can find nothing on that page or the one following it that
> hints at the problem. The changes in that section, IIRC, were simple
> text edits and the removal of a row from a table (maybe some other
> table changes).
>
...
>
> Thus my first question: It's been a very long time since I had such a
> problem, and I can't remember -- is the problem page the last page
> listed in the log file or the page after that?
>
> Here's the end of the log file from the most recent failure:
>
> %%[Page: 53]%%
 > %%[Page: 54]%%
 > %%[ Error: syntaxerror;
> OffendingCommand: --nostringval-- ]%%
>
> Stack: true
>
>
> %%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%% %%[
> Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%
>
> And my second question: Can anyone shed any light on the error itself
> that might help me find the source of the problem?
>

Hi Richard,

AFAIK, the %%[Page: xx]%% message is produced after successful 
distillation of that page, so I would say your problem lies on page 55.
Try printing pages 1-54 and 56-end to test that theory.  Then zero in on 
the offending page.  Are there any conditional tags that might be the 
cause (especially in tables)?  Try converting the table to text, then 
back to a table.  Graphics can be another cause, though you don't 
mention any, so that may be irrelevant.

I recently had a similar crashing problem in FM 9 with a simple 2-page 
file containing a single table.  I ended up creating a new document, 
importing all the formats from the troublesome file, copying and pasting 
the content -- and having no further problem with the new file. You 
could try that approach with your whole file, or just the troublesome page.

HTH,


-- 
Stuart Rogers
Technical Communicator
Phoenix Geophysics Limited
3781 Victoria Park Avenue, Unit 3
Toronto, ON, Canada  M1W 3K5
+1 (416) 491-7340 x 325

http://www.phoenix-geophysics.com