FM 9 compatible with Acrobat 8?

[rlauriston]

I'm evaluating a trial version of FM9.

I already had Acrobat Standard 8 installed, so I skipped the PDF option of the FM9 install based on past experience with FrameMaker's built-in partial Acrobat distribution trashing Acrobat Proper.

FM9 (as noted in some previous topics here) would not save as PDF. I repaired Acrobat 8, no change. So as to continue with the evaluation, I installed a trial of Acrobat 9, but I don't want to buy it as it has no new features I need.

So is there a way to get FM9's Save as PDF feature to recognize and use Acrobat 8?

By the way, any Adobe types who are following this, your proprietary download manager is horribly buggy and slow, you should dump it. Also, the Acrobat 9 installer is preposterously slow (took overnight), you should switch to whatever you're using for FrameMaker 9, which worked OK.

[Art Campbell]

If I were you, I'd get out of the habit of using SaveAs PDF for both 8 and 9 because it's buggy, and start printing to the logical Adobe printer that's already on your system.

Cheers,

Art

[rlauriston]

>start printing to the logical Adobe printer that's already on your system

People have been telling me to do that for years, but I've found saving as PDF perfectly reliable since at least 5.5 so long as it's set up properly.

[Arnis Gubins]

Robert,

The key words really are "so long as it's set up properly". If you've already got Acrobat 8 installed, then you should be able to create PDFs via SaveAs with the Distiller from that version. The printer instance name is the same (Adobe PDF) and that's all FM needs to know. However, some Registry entries for Acrobat may be messed up (depending upon whether it Acrobat8 was clean install or upgrade or installed in a different locatin from C:\Program Files\...), which prevents FM9 from properly handing off the tps files to Distller. I had that issue during the FM9 pre-release program with Acrobat8. There was a bit of Registry spelunking and cleaning required to get it to work.

[rlauriston]

So per CtDave's answer it's supposed to work, and per your experience making it work reqiores some undocumented hacking. So I guess I could call Adobe support if I had to.

I think the question is moot for me as I'm not going to upgrade.

[Arnis Gubins]

Robert,

You may also get around the hacking by using the CS3Clean or CS4Clean scripts from Adobe. These clean-out Acrobat from the Registry and are used before installation of a new product/upgrade.

As I stated, I had the Acrobat 8 (and earlier versions) in a "non-standard" location, so some items got added/created in the "default" C:\ drive location, but since not all of the components were actually installed there, Distiller got a bit confused.

Just something to keep in mind when you do eventually upgrade to FM11.

[______3]

"If I were you, I'd get out of the habit of using SaveAs PDF for both 8 and 9 because it's buggy..."

I'd just like to add the adjective "nightmarishly" in front of "buggy" in your statement.

It recently took FM9 1/2 hour to create a PDF that FM8 could accomplish in minutes; again using the 'Save > as' "feature"  -- white screen and windows reporting the app as "not responding" the entire time. Where is QA...?

Whan I use the print option I lose the PDF's side-TOC panel -- which user love. Can anyone tell me if there is a setting to make it appear by default as it does when "Save > As" is employed to make the PDF?

[rlauriston]

I eventually got FM 9 to generate PDFs by installing an eval copy of Acrobat 9. After that, I had no problems with Save as PDF.

However, I had to use the print workaround instead of "Save as PDF" because I was using TimeSavers.

I had no problems with that, either, and got fully-functional PDFs including bookmarks (which I presume is what you're referring to by "side-TOC panel"). Did you have "Generate Acrobat Data" checked in the print dialog?

As for slow "Save as PDF," it sometimes help to have the default printer set to Adobe PDF.

[______3]

Admittedly, it was a while ago that I used "Print to PDF" so I am not sure if I had "Generate Acrobat Data" checked or not; however I just tried on a much smaller book it and the resulting output is as desired -- So thank you for that tip!

Thanks also for the default printer tip. It did seem to make a bit of difference, though even with the smaller book Frame went "White Screen of ??? (need agood name here)" on me.

[CtDave]

Some correlation between FrameMaker and Distiller may be useful.

Some snippets from Adobe TechNotes.
"You can create PDF files in Adobe FrameMaker by saving a FrameMaker document as a PDF file or by printing to the Adobe PDF printer. Both methods use Adobe Acrobat Distiller..."

and

"Make sure that you use a version of Acrobat Distiller that is compatible with FrameMaker."

FrameMaker 8.0.4 (p277) is compatible with Acrobat 9 .
FrameMaker 8.0 is compatible with Acrobat Distiller 8.0.x.
FrameMaker 7.2 is compatible with Acrobat Distiller 7.0.
FrameMaker 7.1p116 is compatible with either Acrobat Distiller 6.0 or 7.0.
FrameMaker 7.1b023 and 7.1p114 are compatible with Acrobat Distiller 6.0.
FrameMaker 7 shipped with Distiller 5.05
FrameMaker 6 shipped with Distiller 4.05

And, for FM 9.x we got/have Distiller 9.x

Be well...