RoboHelp crashes when importing Frame book

[soxmann]

Greetings, thank you all in advance for any assistance.

TCS 3.0, Windows 7, 8GB RAM, enough horsepower.

Importing a FrameMaker book into a new help project consistently crashes RoboHelp. I have used this exact setup to import other, longer, more complicated books without issue. I have even imported earlier versions of this book numerous time without problem.

A few months ago I needed a new version and it started this crash routine. On a different chapter each time. Sometimes it would crash right away, other times it would nearly complete the book before going down. I was finally able to import the book and have been making updates in parallel with both programs rather than going through this import crash issue again.

It is at the point that the new changes make this workflow untenable. The only thing I could think of that makes this book different than the other one was there are a number of tables where I pasted icons in rather than importing them by reference. Since the reference was not practical in this instance, I recreated all of the tables in Illustrator and imported the .ai files by reference.

Still crashes every time. I tried going through the temp folder to see if I could find a trace of the problem. The fm files seemed to convert properly, the mif files look fine. There are a lot of small PDF files that represent icons imported by reference that are separate from the other icons.

Any hope out there?

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

I generally find 3 things will resolve your issue:

1. Make sure your Fm files open and generate without missing resources (no suppressed alerts via Preferences, either!!!)
2. Link into a new Rh project
3. Create your mappings from scratch

I did my 700 page Fm book using pasted graphics for screenshots and button icons, so that is not likely your problem.

-Matt

Matt R. Sullivan
co-author Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Generally importing has been safer than linking in prior versions of TCS. There's got to be something within this FM content that's causing it to choke.

Can you share your FM content? I could have a quick look at it to see if I spot something really obvious. If you can't, that's ok.

Is the FM content on a network drive? Sometimes path lengths get too much for RH to handle. Also make sure that your RH project is in a structure like c:\projects\project_name\ - short & local is good for the RH end of things.

You might also try making a copy of it, take it apart and import it piece by piece until you narrow down the chunk that's causing RH to blow up.

Have you been in contact with Adobe Support about this?

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

BTW, you can see a 1-hour overview of my typical Fm > Rh linking workflow at

Exploring TCS Integration Sess 2: FrameMaker > RoboHelp Integration

[soxmann]

Thanks for taking the time to help with this folks!

I am importing the files from scratch into a blank RoboHelp project.

I may be able to send you the files Jeff. Let me try some of these ideas first though so I don’t waste your time if it is something I can debug. But send me your email address and I will be in touch.

My files are local, both the Frame and RoboHelp files are first level sibs in the same directory.

I will dissect the project, but I find it interesting (and harder to debug) that it chokes in different locations each time. I have tried this process on a fresh boot with no other applications open, so it should not be a resource issue. It never exceeds 53%.

We don’t have a contract with Adobe support, my employer will not pay for a call. My boss would, but it is above him.

Again, thanks. I will give this another go in Thursday.

[soxmann]

FYI, I never was able to solve this. Adobe support was friendly but generally of little value. I ended up upgrading to TCS 4, which was able to publish.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I'm sorry I didn't have enough time to play with your content in FM10, but it upgraded fine into FM11, updated without issues and was imported with no issues into RH10.

[soxmann]

Thanks for helping Jeff. I just noticed, however, that the graphics were all converted to blank jpgs. I am about to post that problem. Did the graphics come out in your files? You can check the 1.3.2.1 topic that had a screenshot with numbers that sourced as an Illustrator .ai file.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

This in the WebHelp output or the resulting RH topic files? I just set up a new project and pulled it all in again and I think I’m seeing the screen you’re taking about – it’s the Network Control topic with the big black 1, 2, 3, 4 marker dots all over the image? They look fine in the topic – I’ll generate & see if they look fine in the help output.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Yup – looks fine in the WebHelp too