Framemaker 12 freezes

[FrameMaker-dk]

FrameMaker 12.0.3.424 unstructured running on Win 64 as part of techsuite 5 is causing me a lot of problems. I am runnig on a brand new machine with 32 gb of ram but it still seems FrameMaker runs very slowly when creating pdf's. Lately it has started behaving weird too. When printing to pdf it does produce a pdf, but the print window showing progress does not shut down making it seem that the printing process is still ongoing. Some files which it printed like a breeze a month ago, now takes for bloody ever.

It seems to me that some sort of change has happend to the elements which goes into printing. Maybe there has been an ufortunate update to Distiller. Maybe MS has made an ufortunate update to windows print engine. I don't know, but something has changed I can't figure out why, but it certainly seems to affect printing to pdf in FrameMaker 12.

Does anybody share my experience?

[Bob_Niland]

How large do the .tps files get prior to completion?

[FrameMaker-dk]

about 170 kb and the job dies

[Arnis Gubins]

Bjørn, are you using the SaveAsPDF or printing to the printer instance? The recommended route is to use the SaveAsPDF nowadays. Also, depending upon which option (CMYK or RGB) you use, the behaviours in creating the PDF will be different. Unless you're creating press-ready PDFs, use the RGB option.

Other factors that may affect performance are not having the AdobePDF printer instance as the system default during an FM session (use the Sundorne Communications - SetPrint utility to ensure), insufficient disk space in the system TEMP/TMP folder, outputting to a network vs. local drive.

[FrameMaker-dk]

Hi Arnis

No, I am using Print to pdf and rgb. I do have the pdf printer instance and I output to a local drive. The insufficient disk space trigged me. I have some 22 gb free disk space which I beliieve should be ok. But you mention that I may have insufficient disk space in my tmp folder. Is it possible to adjust that space? I have always been under the impression that windows merely adjusted the space dynamically... I remember that some years ago I had a lot of trouble with print files growing very huge, but 22 gb is pretty much space. I tried using SaveAsPdf but the printing process merely froze and I had to reboot the computer.

I really don't get this. Printing to pdf worked excellent and superfast last week, and I have changed nothing. I suspect that a windows update or Adobe update has changed "something" - but what?

regards

Bjørn

[Arnis Gubins]

The system TEMP location is specified in your Windows environment. You can't really adjust the size of the folder, only where it is located. If it's on the same drive as everything else, then it still has up to 22Gb to play with.

If you're using the Print function, are you making any selections in the "PDF Setup" beside the Generate Acrobat Data... option? Which joboptions file is specified?

Is it just the one book that misbehaves or any book?

Try printing to a postscript file first and then manually running Distiller on the output. If the printing to the .ps file still hangs or takes a long time, then there might be an issue in one of the FM files of the book or possibly with the printer instance (try creating/printing PDFs from other apps to verify).