Re: FM9 Crashes when Creating PDFs with files that Contain PDFs (WAS: Frame 9 Crashing – Can’t Create PDFs)

[Mike Wickham]

I thought I recalled Dov Isaacs explaining this as a Windows problem, 
rather than a FrameMaker problem. I found the following quote from him 
online, which appears to reference what was later called the 
fntcache.dat bug (and fixed with a hotfix and, later, Windows update), 
and a Windows bug relating to large page sizes and large fonts. I don't 
know if that one was ever fixed and may still require setting a lower 
dpi as a workaround. (I would note that I have no text or image dropout 
at 1200 dpi on Windows 7.)

NOTE: The following is a 10-year old quote:
"(2) There is a known problem with FrameMaker under Windows only in 
which text may disappear from the output page (i.e., selective text 
dropout) when printing to PostScript devices, including Acrobat 
Distiller. Unfortunately, the problem is NOT reproducible from system to 
system or document to document either user sites or within Adobe itself. 
What we do know is that the larger the logical page size in combination 
with higher resolution settings aggravates the problems (i.e., makes it 
more likely that you will actually see the symptom). It is for this 
reason that we most strongly recommend that you NEVER use a Windows 
PostScript printer driver setting higher than 600 dpi with FrameMaker. 
If necessary to print to a higher resolution device, create PDF first 
(with the Adobe Distiller / Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance 
set to no more than 600 dpi) and then do the final print from Acrobat / 
Adobe Reader to the actual print device. In the rare instances where 
there is still selective text dropout, set the driver resolution to 300 
dpi. We know of no situations in which the selective text dropout 
persists at the 300 dpi setting. What are the ramifications of the lower 
resolution settings? The resolution of image data is not downsampled or 
degraded by this resolution setting. Nor is any damage done to vector 
graphics or the quality of text. What it does control for FrameMaker is 
the granularity of spacing, especially of text. Setting 600 dpi permits 
"only" 600 starting positions per inch and interword spacing in 1/600 
inch increments. Images and vector graphics positioning is likewise 
limited to such increments. At 300 dpi, the value falls to 300 starting 
positions and 1/300 inch increments. Anything under 300 dpi is 
absolutely not recommended and could yield some rather gnarly text 
spacing. Again, we recommend you start at 600 dpi and stay with that if 
you have no problems. (Note also that 600 dpi gets around another 
Windows GDI bug in which text formatted in larger point sizes is 
converted to unhinted outlines. 600 dpi allow for text in pointsizes up 
to approximately 100 points to remain as text for printing purposes.)"
On 10/25/2014 10:40 AM, Heiko Haida wrote:
>
> Hi Alison,
>
> I also had problems to print some single pages to PDF in a larger DIN 
> A3 format: The content was displayed partially, the page was not 
> completely shown (without error message).
> First I thought the graphic files were corrupt, as taking out the 
> graphics would at least produce a PDF.
>
> Then I found that the distiller profile was set to 2400 dpi, and after 
> reducing this to 1200 dpi everything was fine.
> I don't like it, but it seems FM has some internal memory problems here.
>
> Maybe this also applies to your problem.
>
> Best regards - Tino H. Haida, Berlin
>
>