Reproducible FM12 file corruption?

[Harding, Dan]

I've been seeing occasional wonkiness (yes, I know... it's a technical term) since upgrading from FM10 to TCS5 (FM12), but I think I have narrowed at least one of them down to the point where the behavior is reproducible on demand, but I'll be darned if I know what is triggering it.

Let's find out if it's just my installation/environment or if it affects others.

I'm running TCS5 under Windows 7, 64-bit Enterprise.

To try to eliminate character & paragraph format catalog issues and template anomalies, once I was able to reproduce the behavior, I tried doing the same in a generic FM file, and am also seeing the behavior there, so that's what I'm going to walk through. I've included screenshots of what I see along the way.

1. Create a new file using the default "Portrait" blank paper.

http://www.taxschool.illinois.edu/images/fm/fm12-1.png

2. Copy in a few paragraphs of generic text (I use www.lipsum.com).

http://www.taxschool.illinois.edu/images/fm/fm12-2.png

3. Save the file.

4. Place your cursor in one of the paragraphs.

5. In the Paragraph Designer, change the Spread to 1% and hit Enter to "Apply".

http://www.taxschool.illinois.edu/images/fm/fm12-3.png

6. Save the file.

7. Press Ctrl+z to undo.

8. WHAMMO! 

http://www.taxschool.illinois.edu/images/fm/fm12-4.png

On my system, the margins change completely, as if room for side heads was added. In my main working file it also put footnotes in the middle of pages.

Also, it's not just any kind of change prior to a save and then undo that triggers the corruption. Simple text edits do not trigger it, however changes in the paragraph and character designers do. It's not just font attributes, but changing paragraph attributes and applying them, followed by a save and undo will also trigger the corruption. Changing the color of selected text via the tool palette, save, undo, will also trigger it.

It appears to be the sequence of (1) anything involving changing *ATTRIBUTES* of text, (2) a save, and (3) an immediate undo, that triggers it. If I do the above steps without a save, the undo does not cause the corruption. It's as if reverting to a pre-save state makes FM go haywire.

Now that I know what triggers the page going nuts, I now know what to avoid doing. I would experience this periodically since I'm a save-monkey, and wouldn't know what the heck was going on.

Bizarre.

Dan Harding
Technical Editorial Specialist
University of Illinois Tax School