Imported PDF comments in FrameMaker (v9.0p255) misplaced

Report · May 26, 2011

Hello there,

Just wondering if anyone has found a solution to the problem with imported PDF comments being misplaced in a FM9 document?

I followed all the guidelines... Saved as tagged pdf, did not change the source file, etc.

I am using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro (v9.4.4), the edits were made in Adobe Reader.

I saved the PDF from a book file containg 3 separate files.

When I import the comments, only the first page of the second document imported correctly, all the comments on the remaining pages are misplaced by 3-5 words. This is an 80-page document with 20-30 changes on pretty much every page- I really don't want to have to do this manually.

Now, in a FM training class last month our instructor (Arnis Gubins) mentioned that Arial Unicode can create all sorts of issues within a document and recommended not using it. This document has Arial Unicode as the body text.

Any help would be appreciated, otherwise I think I may be working on edits for the next several weeks... {sigh}.

Thanks,

Tina

Report · May 27, 2011

The FM file(s) has to remain unchanged while the review is taking

place -- it can't be edited between the time you generate the PDFs and

re-import the comments.

So in practical terms, you need to either spin a new set of files from

your development tree or plan on tracking edits manually.

Art Campbell

art.campbell@gmail.com

"... In my opinion, there's nothing in this world beats a '52

Vincent and a redheaded girl." -- Richard Thompson

No disclaimers apply.

DoD 358

Report · May 27, 2011

Thanks Art, but the original files were not touched since I saved the tagged pdf.

I am the only one who would have access to them...

The edits were made to translations by one of our customers, they do not have FM, so the tracking edits options is not applicable in this case.

Thanks again for your help.

Tina

Report · May 31, 2011

Hi Tina,

What type of "comments" are being misplaced - the insertions/deletions?

Do they seem to progressively move further away from the required source locations over several pages (in the same file/chapter of a book) or is the offset constant?

What font is being reported in the PDF (File > Properties > Fonts tab) - Arial, ArialMT, Arial Unicode or a mixture?

If you have backup copies (I hope), try converting all of the tags (in another copy) to use Arial instead of Arial Unicode. Then try re-importing the PDF to this revised file. (Remember how I showed you to do this in one fell swoop). This might take care of some of the offset issues in case the double-byte Arial Unicode was messing up the positioning.

If this doesn't help. then you may [unfortunately] have to do a lot of manual clean-up and editing. I would recommend that you use a back copy in FM and then manually apply the edits (copy & paste comments or insertions, and do the deletions) from the marked PDF.

One long shot might be to download the FM10 trial and try using that. AFAIK, there were updates to this aspect (PDF commenting/review) so it may behave better.

For others curious about this feature, see the following Adobe blog:

http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2011/05/handling-pdf-review-comments-in-framemaker.html

and also look in the FM10 Reviewers Guide for a video on this:

http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/products/framemakerserver/pdf/fm10_fms10_complete_reviewers_guide.pdf

Report · May 31, 2011

Hi Arnis !

The comments being misplaced were insertions & deletions and seemed to be misplaced by a constant (approximately 3-5 words off). The fonts are a mixture of Arial Unicode and Helvetica throughout the document. In one of my attempts I did change the font to Arial, but at first it appeared not to have any affect...

Then when I reviewed in closer detail ...it seems only the comments in first 5 pages (of the second file/main text in the book) were offset. I was pretty surprised to discover that starting on page 6 they imported perfectly until the end of that file. The text in the first 5 pages is in a table, but there are tables later on in the document that didn't have have any problems with the imported comments, so I am really not sure why this happened ? Something may have caused the table to shift...

The only change that could have happened (outside of the document), is someone may have updated a graphic that was also linked to my file. Although this should not have affected text flow (most of the graphics are in the first few pages as well).

It still saves me a lot of work since most of the comments were in the second file (first file was just the cover and TOC). The last file in book had none of the comments imported, because FM developed an "internal error" and would shut down before it completed the import. I wasn't too concerned with the last file, the comments were minor in comparison to the main text file.

When I have a chance I will try to troubleshoot, for now I will accept the edits I know are safe, then manually go through the rest.

Thank you for your help !

tina