Import filter for Pagemaker does not support non-english charcters in references

[Guest]

Hi all,

we found that when importing from Pagemaker, all referenced images that contain non-english charcters (such as German umlauts) in their file names are lost. Apart from this, the direct import works quite well for us, therefore we would like to use this workflow if we can find a solution for the lost images. In some chapters, 95% of the images are imported correctly, in others almost all are lost.

Is there anything we can do about this? If we rename the images (exchange problematic characters by fixed string), is it possible to correct the references in PM with some sort of search&replace function? These are really a lot of images, so doing it manually would be a bad option.

[Guest]

FYI, I found out how to do it. I renamed all images in the directory, then I opened the Pagemaker in a hex editor and using search & replace altered the concerned string. Luckily in this case it was mainly one certain word that caused problems. Then after opening in Framemaker (all images in place!) I ran a search & replace again to change back any occurances of the string in the normal text.

[Bob_Niland]

I found out how to do it.

For the benefit of others who might encounter this or similar filename issues, it would be nice to know the root cause.

On what operating system (and when) were the filename originally created?

(and what version of PM was used)

On what OS, and with what version of FM are you trying to import the PM file?

I presume that there is no issue with the filenames per se under the OS, but just during FM import?

My guess would be that PM is using some legacy encoding for references to file names that include extended latin characters, and that encoding does not translate at FM import.

[Guest]

Hi, nothing special there. Windows XP, newest versions of all software

involved (PM7, FM 10). There is no problem in PM, also the conversion to

Indesign does not drop the references. I work locally. The root cause

really seems to be that the import drops references that contain these

chraracters. They are not notified as missing images in Framemaker, it

is not possible to restore the file path.