FrameMaker 10 Crashes when I do a Find and Replace of a character format

[Combs, Richard]

Joseph Lorenzini wrote:
 
> If I do a find and replace of a character format across an entire book,
> Framemaker sucks up all the memory on my system and then crashes. I was
> wondering if anyone else has seen this behavior.
> 
> Steps to Reproduce
> 
> 1. create a large book that contains several hundred pages and many
> framemaker files. Ideally, there should be 20 or so files in it.
> 2. through out the book, highlight text and then press ctrl+b. This
> applies a character format override of bold.
> 3.  open a framemaker doc from the book.
> 4. place your cursor in some  body text.
> 5. open the find dialog box.
> 6. Set find to character format.
> 7. In the find char format dialog box, press shift+F8.
> 8. In the find char format dialog box, press shift+F9.
> 9. in th find char format dialog box, set the weight to bold and then
> click the set button.
> 10. in the framemaker doc, find some text that has bold override
> applied to it and then apply a character format.
> 11. Use the copy special to copy the character format to your
> clipboard.
> 12. close all documents.
> 13. make sure the book is active.
> 14. in the find dialog box, set change to "by pasting".
> 15. select the find button.

I don't have FM10, but since I don't see any response on the list, I'll toss out some questions/comments that occurred to me: 

-- After step 7 (setting the dialog to As Is), why are you doing step 8 (setting it to the format at the cursor location)? 

-- In step 10, when you "apply a character format," I assume you mean a defined char tag. Why are you applying it on top of a format override? You realize that you're adding the char tag formatting to the override, not replacing the override? (At least, that's the case if your char tag is properly defined, with non-relevant parameters set to As Is.)

-- In step 11, you're copying *all* the formatting of the selected text, not the char tag itself. IOW, if you select some text that has the Emphasis char tag (defined as Italic + As Is) applied, and that text is in a blue 20-pt Futura heading, what you're copying to the clipboard (and pasting) is blue 20-pt Futura Italic. 

-- In step 12, why are you closing all docs? I suspect this is the nut of the crashing problem. Although earlier versions of FM, IIRC, display an error dialog when you don't have a cursor location. 

HTH!

Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-903-6372
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