Fix SaveAs PDF or rip it out....

[Art Campbell]

To amplify another post (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/560103?tstart=0), the SaveAs PDF code is FrameMaker is so unreliable and unpredictable that it shouldn't be inflicted on users...It's even worse that this menu item hasn't worked well for several releases.

It should be embarassing to Adobe that the company can't support this.

Either disable the code so that people print to the Acrobat printer instance, or come up with reliable code...

[Guest]

Art, I don't seem to have a problem when saving to PDF.  I'm a new user of FM and am using FM 9 as part of the Technical Communications Suite (Acrobat Professional is part of the suite).  In addition, I use a plugin to author iSpec2200 compliant documents.  Is it possible I'm not having problems because of the extra tools I'm using, or is the problem you described an intermittant problem I just haven't seen yet?  It would seem if it's a problem with FM code I would be having problems regardless of the additional tools.

Eric G.

[mandrill22]

I am using 8.0p277 and have given up on the PDF feature working properly. My company upgraded Acrobat Pro from 7 to 8; after that, the Save as PDF never worked and FrameMaker kept telling me that the feature was either not installed or I needed to upgrade it. I downgraded to 7 to get it to  work partially and intermittently. Now sometimes it makes a PDF and other times it creates the *.tps postscript file and stops there--I can create a PDF by coaxing the *.tps to move on by dropping it in Distiller.

I used the trial version of 9.0 and it seemed to work OK there.

[Guest]

Well, I use FM 9 and Acrobat Pro 9 Extend and haven't had any issues. Sounds like you need to reinstall FM after upgrading your Acrobat version. Or perhaps your Acrobat needs to be reinstalled or both. Sounds like an IT issue. Sorry can be of more help.

Eric G

[mandrill22]

Thanks! all your suggestions make sense and were the first few things I tried--but without any luck. The only configuration that seems to work (for me and my environment) is downgrading to Acrobat 7.1. Who knows what the variable is? The thing I don't understand is why it produces a PDf sometimes and why it quits with the process after the *.tps file is created. It appears not to be able to communicate with the Distiller engine after it creates the PostScript file.

[ArnisG]

Part of the issue is that Acrobat changed the default location of some files, including the joboptions files, going from v.7 to v.8, so your version of Distiller may not be able to find what it needs in your current configuration and aborts. I also believe that FM needs the info in a specific Registry setting to tell Distiller that a file is available, but sometimes updating to a new version of Acrobat doesn't clean out the old Registry settings properly and the new ones don't replace the old ones.

I've had to use the Adobe CSClean3 and CSClean4 scripts (meant for the Creative Suites, but these do include Acrobat so they fix up that aspect) to clean things up prior to re-installing Acrobat9.

[mandrill22]

To ArnisG:

Thanks! that is useful information and I suspected that some similar issue was causing the problem, because after the update it told me that Distiller was not installed or that I needed to install PDF functionality. Are these scripts available anywhere or do they only come with the CS products?

[ArnisG]

http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cs3clean.html

http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cs4clean.html

http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cs5clean.html

[mandrill22]

ArnisG:

Thank You!

[squidds_de]

If I remember me correctly, Acrobat 7 to 8 changed the PDF Printer. 7 with AcroDist to 8 with AdobePDF. Please check this little requirements.

- Georg

[Arnis Gubins]

More details from a post by Dov Isaacs to the Framers list (7 Dec 2006):

*******

To further complicate things, Acrobat 8 changed the location where

.joboptions files are stored. Acrobat 7 stored the .joboptions files

at "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\Adobe PDF\Settings".

That is where FrameMaker looks for them. Acrobat 8 (actually

Distiller 8) stores the bundled .joboptions files in

"C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe

PDF\Settings"

and each user's personalized .joboption files in

"C:\Documents and Settings\xxxxxxxxxxxx\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe

PDF\Settings"

where "xxxxxxxxxxxx" is your Windows user id.

For FrameMaker 7.2 to work directly with Distiller 8 with the

"save as" feature, you must make sure that FrameMaker 7.2 "sees"

all your joboptions in

"C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\Adobe PDF\Settings".

******

as well as (6 Jul 2009):

*****

To be as clear as possible, the "save as PDF" feature of FrameMaker 7 is not at all

compatible with Acrobat 7, 8, or 9!

*****

[Allen Jack Armstrong]

Hi Arnis.

Thanks for the prompt response.

Wow. I guess the Acrobat and FrameMaker development teams eat in different

cafeterias.

Question: does this get easier with FM9? I'm using 8 now.

Jack

[mandrill22]

I used the FM9 trial version for a month and did not experience any PDF creation problems. However, I had already rolled Acrobat 8 back to 7.1 (due to the problems I had with creating PDFs) so I don't know how it work with Acrobat 8.

[mandrill22]

Allen,

I suspect the FrameMaker team are mostly vegetarians while the Acrobat team is mainly made up of carnivores. This may be the real reason behind the "Save As PDF" (sap?) menu item working like a button that needs to be sprayed with contact cleaner.

Arnis (Post #11) is right about this being just a "convenient" automation of doing a bit manual work. I don't think the original message post was suggesting losing the functionality of creating PDFs--it was just an expression of angst at having paying paid for a button that does not work as well as it used to.

[Allen Jack Armstrong]

Please don't get rid of 'save to PDF'!  It's my entire business.  Everything in the world I sell is a pdf generated from FM.

But it would be nice if it were more predictable.  One day last month it stopped working for me, and I spent an entire day on the phone with your tech support team.  At the end of the day, their answer was, "we don't know why it doesn't work, and don't know how to fix it."  Unsettling.

[Arnis Gubins]

Allen,

One can always use the AdobePDF printer instance and create PDFs from FM. FYI, this is the same mechanism that SaveAsPDF uses behind the scenes, albeit without all of the jumping through hoops and lousy integration. This is what the main complaint is about - it's not always reliable and is not properly designed for print(press) production PDFs.