No PDF bookmarks generated from structured FM90 book

[cedar2010]

We used an FDK based application to nightly build/generate structured FM books from XML files and then save these books as PDF.

This automated process worked fine as long as we employed FM70 and FDK70.

After an upgrade to FM90 and a recompilation of the application with FDK90 some things went awry. Most of the issues we could solve ourselves, but there remains the main issue that the application will no longer generate PDF bookmarks.

Our application will only generate PDF bookmarks, if the automated process is interrupted after the conversion of XML files to an FM book and before saving the book as PDF. Now the PDF Setup dialog has to be selected from the FM menu for each file in the book (even without actually changing any setting there) before the process can be continued by calling our customized "Save as PDF" function (based on the FDK's saveas sample).

Without opening the PDF Setup dialog no PDF bookmarks will be created. We already experimented quite a lot - without any results (which is quite frustrating).

Has anyone experienced similar problems? Or even better solved them?

Or does anyone know how to trigger the PDF Setup dialog from an application?

Any ideas are welcome...

[Michael_Müller-Hillebrand]

Cedar,

Some ideas:

Does the application save the files created from XML to disk before doing the Save As PDF?

Have you made sure that the template you use with your structured application already has the appropriate settings?

- Michael

[cedar2010]

Hello Michael,

thank you for your hints.

Yes, the application saves the generated book before calling the Save as PDF function.

And the templates we are using seem to be correct (at least the Generate Bookmark box is checked).

Apart from that will the application also set the FP_PDFBookmark property to True for book and documents.

Should the template's PDF settings be identical with the PDF properties configured by the application?

If we save the generated book by selecting "Save as PDF" from the File menu, enter path/file name and acknowledge

the PDF Setup dialog, the PDF is saved correctly.

-cedar

[Michael_Müller-Hillebrand]

Am 11.08.2010 um 16:10 schrieb cedar2010:

If we save the generated book by selecting "Save as PDF" from the File menu, enter path/file name and acknowledge the PDF Setup dialog, the PDF is saved correctly.

I had a similar process automated (not for nightly builds, but creating PDFs for many languages one after another) and the customer does not complain. It was with FrameMaker 8, though.

It seems you have to strip down your process into segments to isolate the step where the necessary bits are not set correctly.

- Michael

[Van Kurtz]

Cedar,

I do not use the FDK nor program FrameMaker in any way, so this may be a stab in the dark.

Over the years, I came to the conclusion that PDF settings for a book are NOT stored in the book file. It seems to me that FrameMaker uses the settings for the book from the first file in the book. I may be wrong, but that is my conclusion. Thus, I typically open the first file in the book and print it with the PDF settings that I want. Then when I open the book file to print it, the PDF settings are what I want. This last statement is to be taken with a grain of salt: Typically, when I print the book the first time, settings are not entirely correct; I change them and print; the next and subsequent times, the settings are correct.

So, you might try printing your template file manually with all the PDF settings you want. Then see what happens when you do it programmatically.

No guarantee that this is the answer. Just giving you experiences when doing it manually.

Good luck,
Van

[hovernut]

We too are experiencing the same problem and trying to figure out a way to trigger the PDF Setup dialog. It appears to be the key to getting bookmarks. In addition to getting no bookmarks, is anyone else finding that the F_ApiSave() to PDF is leaving all the .lck files?

[ArjoHP]

Was a definitive answer to these problems ever found? I too am experiencing a lot of problems migrating code that worked fine in FM7 to FM10.