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Participant
August 23, 2024
Question

Low performance when working outside the office

  • August 23, 2024
  • 4 replies
  • 451 views

Hello,

I am a technical writer with a moderate knowledge of Framemaker. I am doing a conversion project for a client (FM to ST4).  Last weeks I work from home and the performance of FM dropped dramatically. It takes 1-4 minutes to open a .fm file. Scrolling through a .fm file (no matter how big: from 4-60 pages) is very slow: you watch the page building up almost line by line.

When I work in the office it's working fine.

At home I have no problems with other applications, also the heavier apps like Inventor, I can open several models and work on it without problems.

The client is a small company with an IT department of 1 person, who is willing to help but he says he cannot do anyrhing because the FM application is running locally on my laptop.

I'm looking for advice. Is there anything we can do for better performance?

Thank you in advance,

Liduine

 

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    4 replies

    Jeff_Coatsworth
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 26, 2024

    We had this issue at our company during the pandemic - I solved it by bringing all the files locally. Pre-Covid, I would RDP into a work laptop in the office & work on the files located on our local network servers as if I was "present" in the office at my desk. That way was fine for speed because all I was seeing were screenshots of the "in office" laptop.

    Dave Creamer of IDEAS
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 24, 2024

    Are you using a VPN when you log in? 

     

    David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)
    Bob_Niland
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 23, 2024

    Where the problem is many and/or large imported objects (usually images), and all you need to do is edit, this often speeds things up:
    View🞃Options…
    ☐ Graphics (de-select)
    [Set]

    Community Expert
    August 23, 2024

    Hi,

    FrameMaker should definitely not take 4 minutes to open a file.

    Some questions so that we can better understand your issue:

    Which FrameMaker version do you have? In the Help menu click About. The latest version is 17.0.4.

    Where are your files? Are they local on your PC? Then the scrolling time shouldn't be affected. Or on the company network? Then it could be that it takes more time to download any files.

    How large are your FM files? How many pages? Are your graphics referenced (this is definitely recommended)? Or copied into the FrameMaker file? Which file format?

    Best regards, Winfried

    LiduineAuthor
    Participant
    August 23, 2024

    Hi Winfried and other readers,

     

    The version is 17.0.2

    The application is locally on my laptop and the files (.book, .fm files and graphics) are on the company network.

    I can imagine that this takes some more time, that is acceptable, but not that much. 

     

    About the files: I examined 2, a small one and a large one:

     

    1st File: preface.fm - 3 pages, 69 KB, no illustrations.

    Takes 0:20 minutes to load.

     

    2nd File: description.fm - 16 pages, 1,047 KB, 17 illustrations, all referenced  files (imported by copy):

    - 8 x png

    - 5 x tiff

    - 1 x bmp

    - 1 x eps

    This files takes 3:50 minutes to load

     

    Thank you in advance for your help!

     

    Regards,

    Liduine

     

     

    frameexpert
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 23, 2024

    I think you have narrowed the problem down to a network issue. Are you able to download the files and work on them locally?