Text missing from PDF

I rarely try to import documents into FrameMaker - there was a time when I used it as my daily word processor as well as for formatting! - but I occasionally do import text from Word. I never leave any formatting in place on such docs and clear everything to "Body" before proceeding with an FM format.

My font set is extensive and I have a few that I use frequently - the Stone family, for example. There should be no font-related issues as I've used these for years in a dozen different apps with no problems.

As for OS, I stayed with Windows 2000 for a very long time after Windows NT got too creaky, and upgraded to XP only when I was forced to by... surprise!... Adobe's requirement for it on the video editing side. XP is hardly a new OS and we are way past the point where it should be causing problems on current-rev software.

I'm not sure whether XP is the real culprit, or if it's just that a majority of users are now on XP... and probably got there by upgrading a Win2K system or by haphazardly applying service packs and updates. Anything but a fresh XP install, with all SPs and updates applied before major software is loaded, is likely cause problems.

Additional thoughts-- Have you ever generated a list of fonts and took a look at the page(s) that you have the problems with? Maybe we should have asked if this document was writen from scratch or imported from an existing document or even MS word? I have seen this happen where the imported text looks like it was formated with your document sytles, but you may have missed something (text was using a font from say MS word that is not part of your document). When you create a PDF, the font was not found and and you never embedded it in Distiller, result would be this missing material.

Using Windows 2000 or later (platform that FrameMaker is designed on) seems to work better with FM than Windows XP. Seems that a great number of problems with FM are Windows XP users!

Hi, Bernd:

If you have the time and interest, perhaps you could start a new thread in which you compare the tasks you do quickly in FrameMaker, and which are more tedious to do in InDesign. This could invite some suggestions for workarounds or different work methods, and also become the basis for product enhancement requests for new InDesign releases.

________________
Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

InDesign is just about the most wonderful publication tool I've ever used - each time I learn a new function or feature, it's pretty much how I would have designed it based on 25 years of experience and preference. I wish I'd had something like it ten years ago!

But it's rotten at the long documents and formatted pages that are FrameMaker's strength. I don't know why professional-grade, long-doc tools are forever being left to rot by their makers - Ventura, Manuscript, Sprint, a few others. It's a small but stable market and any software company that gets into it thinking they're going to knock Word out of the box is a gang of idiots. But anyone who gets into it to give a sizeable and specialized base of users that don't want to muck with things like TeX a tool... well, we'll buy every version they make.

*Sigh*.

NitroPress,

just FYI... after it turned out that reducing the pdf/printer resolution didn't cure anything, I found something else which currently works. But as all solutions until now just have been temporary remedies, I'm not sure if it will continue to work tomorrow... but currently I've been able to finish the PDF export of about 20 manuals that refused to do so before.

What I did: once again I deleted all the AdobeFnt??.lst files and (this one was new) additionally the FNTCACHE.DAT file from the Windows/system32 folder. After restarting my PC all PDFs came out as expected.

About ID: I share your thoughts. Things I'm doing within a hour in FM take several hours in ID. This is quite annoying especially during work on early versions of any manual, when infos are changed on a daily basis. Currently I'm working on manuals in several languages, with about 60% of the languages done in FM, the rest is done in ID (was necessary for languages like Arabic). This gives a quite good workflow comparison...

Bernd

Art - Yes, I've seen the Adobe document you reference. It doesn't quite seem to address the real problem, only concatenated problems stemming from the original that can be fixed on SOME systems by mucking with the product versions or settings.

My system was freshly rebuilt from an new OS install up, using all new and current Adobe products including Distiller 7.0 and Frame 7.2 (and nearly everything else they make). Although I verified the steps involved, none of my problem stems from having mismatched or outdated software components. And I think it's something of a fandance on Adobe's part to point the blame that way.

The new, current, supposedly stable apps, free of legacy and third-party issues, are broken. Everything else is window dressing.

There is a Frame support document online that offers troubleshooting suggestions, at http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/329942.html

Also, although I habitually print to a PS file generated by a Xerox 2450 driver and distill that, I've noticed that I have fewer problems if I turn off "Fast WWW view" and set the dpi to less than 600.

I agree with the general thesis however -- this whole area is a major bug that's been dragging on far too long.

Art

Sherman - I've tried every possible path from FrameMaker document to PDF, including hand-cranked processes using a variety of PS print drivers and reducing the resolutions to dot-matrix levels. The fix is very hit-or-miss.

Bernd - your situation is similar to mine. I finally got my critical document to print by using a different PS driver (a Xerox RIP, can't recall exactly which model at this moment.) Then I went to print out a companion document a few days later... same round of problems that I could not fix.

So I went to reinstall Frame 6 on my system... and ran into the "too much memory" problem. I reset the virtual memory down to ridiculous levels (100 MB) and still got errors.

So - I installed Frame 6 on my new system, a dual-Opteron monster with not 2GB, but 4GB of RAM. Perhaps it's the better memory management of that system (with Windows XP64) but I had no problem and printed the document (via print to PS and manual processing to PDF) just fine.

Then I zipped up the Frame 6 installation and dumped it on the older system, where it works fine except for the persistent registry warnings - which I'll fix when I have a moment. However, THE SAME DOCUMENT, when saved from Frame 7.2 into v6 format, and opened in Frame 6, caused the same missing-text problems through several approaches.

I might be stating the obvious, but this is a major, major bug and it lies wholly within Adobe's product circle. It should not have existed with the final release or at least should have been fixed early on... yet here we are more than a year into it with no fix in sight (except a crappy, half-effective workaround).

And I have discovered, to my frustration and dismay, that InDesign makes a very poor substitute for Frame when doing long documents. Part of it was unfamiliarity with things like flowing text over multiple pages, but after an hour's work I still had nothing that looked like my relatively simple Frame document... and I had to spend two hours on the above process to get the stupid thing to PDF so I could get it to the client.

I realize FrameMaker is a minor product and an unwanted stepchild, without the glitz, glamor and recognition of Photoshop or Premiere, but really, Adobe... this clusterf*ck is beneath you!

Nitropress- ran into the same problem weeks ago using FM 7.2 and Distiller 7.x. and was able to solve the problem.

The company I work for has either HP or Lexmark printers, and even a few that do PostScript printing. However, the PostScript printers have never been set up to print asa PostScript printer. When I installed FM 7.2 on a PC, I added a Tektronix Phaser 550J 1200 dpi as my PS printer. In do this I forgot to use HP software and instead used Windows 2000 (in my case) to add the printer. I had no problem with a small FM document. When the document got bigger, I found missing test and throughout the document. I then delated the printer and installed it using Tektronics software from their web site. That fied the missing text.

I know that may people want to generate a PDF directly through FM, but I've been using FM from it;'s first release and find that creating a PS file first and then using Distiller is the best way to be able to control what one gets. Even FM and Adobne support agree. If you think the Adobe PDF printer is the cause, try this suggestion

Maybe a little bit late, but I can confirm exactly the same bug as NitroPress described. My configuration:

- Win XP Pro on a P4/3GHz, 2 GB RAM
- Acrobat 3D
- FM 7.2, latest patches applied (but happens with 7.0 as well)

Documents, that have been saved to PDF in February this year without any problems now come out with large blocks of text missing. I've been trying several things (before discovering this thread), including several uninstalls of Acrobat 3D, installation of the original FM 7.2-Distiller (which always seemed to work), re-installation of A3D ...

I haven't been able to recognize any system behind the erratic behavior. FM-Distiller works - A3D 7.0.7 works - 7.0.8 doesn't - (re-install) - 7.0.7 doesn't - FM-Distiller works - A3D 7.0.7 works ... and stops working some hours later...

Interesting enough: I created a PS file using the Acrobat Printer to be distilled on Mac. Same result. The bug definitely occurs on writing to PS, not in distiller.

I've been doing this silly game for about 3 days. Now, after discovering the 300dpi quality solution, A3D 7.0.7 works again. I hope, for more than the next couple of hours.

Bernd