FM8 freezes when importing a FM7 file

Report · Jan 07, 2009

I'm evaluating FrameMaker 8 on Solaris (latest patch, 8.0p277) to see if we want to upgrade from FrameMaker 7. I can import many of my files, but on certain files (with a given template), FrameMaker freezes; a part of the file is incorrectly converted and displayed. I then have to kill FrameMaker: not even the window manager controls can close the window. (I'm displaying back to CentOS 5.2 with KDE desktop.) I can open and save the file with fmbatch, but trying to open the saved file with FrameMaker doesn't work either. We did have to copy the fonts from FM7 because the download of FM8 didn't come with the Adobe Type Basics fonts.

Any ideas what might be wrong?

If necessary I can provide a copy of the file and a core dump from killing the process.

Ken Dyall.

Report · Jan 07, 2009

I don't run unix. However, Frame has often had problems with fonts.
Since the problem seems to come from a certain templates. There should
be something wrong with the template. Take one of the bad file and save
it to MIF in Frame 7. What happens when you open it in Frame 8.

Mike

Report · Jan 08, 2009

I'd follow Mike's lead and try to work with opening a 7 MIF file with 8, and also try it on Windows... even if you don't run FM natively on Windows, you can download the eval of that (and patches -- don't forget the patches) and try on a system with better fonts.

More to your point though, I think I'd also try to convert the template because that seems to be the root of your problem.

Report · Jan 08, 2009

That seemed to work fine - I converted a few of the files to MIF and they opened OK; when I tried to open the corresponding .fm file I ran into the freeze problems. Thanks for the suggestions.

It's likely that it is the template. I had no trouble opening a document that had the same fonts but a different template. I tried defining a character style rather than using an override for this one font, but that made no difference. I also had no trouble opening files that often produce warnings about different font metrics (one bug I'd really like to see fixed!); it also made no difference whether the file contained a table or not.

Ken.

Report · Jan 08, 2009

Ken,
One other thing to check...
The big change in 8 was the switch to Unicode character/font support.
If you have some characters in the 7 files that are incompatible with Unicode, which you may if you use upper order characters for accents or equations or drawing, that may be the trigger.

Art

Report · Jan 08, 2009

It's certainly a possibility, because we do use accented letters. I did have an issue with one of the fonts, in which the mapping for the o-umlaut character was different on Windows and Unix (weird, I know). However, that font converted OK in another file, so I'm thinking that that's not the problem. Thanks for the tip, though. I'll keep an eye out for font issues of that sort.

Ken.