PhrameMaker 7.0 Phont Phunnies, and regular FM crashes when printing

["Chuck Martin" <cm -at- writeforyou -dot- com>]

I am running into so significant problems and am seeking some help. I did
some searching and couldn't find anything that seemed to directly address my
problems. I also did some searching on frameusers.com. Here's my situation:

I'm doing a contract at a small company, which means I'm the only TW here. I
also haven't used Frame for production work in a number of years (since 5.x,
and that was on Macs). I have a notebook computer running Windows XP Home.

While waiting for a boxed version of FM 7 to arrive, I've installed and am
using the demo version (320MB!). I need to first produce PDF files, and then
HTML files.

I know on a high level that FM "sees" fonts in part based on the printer
driver. When I began working on this book, I was getting regular messages
that Times and Helvetica couldn't be found and it was substituting instead.

Fine, or so I thought. Besides, I wasn't actually using those fonts anyway
(or so I thought). In the process of dealing with this, I decided to create
my own template from scratch, a somewhat simple one and define all the
paragraph tag fonts (I used Times New Roman and Arial for pretty much
everything).

I also found that FM 7 requires Acrobat 5.0.5, so I downloaded and installed
the update from the Adobe site.

I have 2 Acrobat-related printer drivers: Acrobat Distiller and Acrobat PDF
Writer. I assumed that setting Acrobat Distiller as my default printer for
this project would be the right thing to do. No go. When I try to open
documents when that is set as the default, I get a FM Console error: it
can't find 2 variations of Helvetica. The same with Acrobat PDF Writer.

I also have a couple of PostScript printer drivers installed, one a color
PostScript printer driver. If I use one of these as my default, I get no
missing font notices when I open documents. But if I try to use one of the
Acrobat printer drivers, switching to it when I try to print the book, I get
a failure, saying that the documents can't be opened. Strangely, I used to
be able to print the individual documents using the Distiller printer
driver, but now I can't do that either (FM hangs).

So I went to a workaround: print to a PostScript file, the use Distiller
itself to create the PDF. So I use the PostScript printer as my default
printer driver, which I have set to print to a file. But 9 times out of 10,
FM 7 crashes near the end of producing the .PS file. Oh, it writes a file
out all right, but it is corrupted somehow because Distiller can finish
producing it.

On the rare occasions when FM doesn't crash (and it crashes near the end of
producing the .PS file), Distiller produces a very nice PDF file, and I'm
happy. But in this whole process, I am happy rarely, and I cannot figure out
what's going wrong.

I am reluctant to call tech support; I doubt they provide support for the
demo anyway, even though I have plenty of crash log files with memory and
stack dump data. Besides, their tech support is paid support, and I really
resent having to pay for their failure to produce quality code (and with
paid support, a revenue stream for the company, there is little real
incentive to improve the product).

I should note also that I have ATM installed, although I don't know if that
makes a difference. What I am surprised about is that on none of my
computers do I have the Times and Helvetica font files (I thought they came
with ATM). I don't know if this makes a difference. Maybe I'll have to shell
out to buy those fonts to clear up these problems? (I'm not making great
rates on this contract, so spending money left and right to solve these
problems isn't an option I want to make the highest priority--but hey, I'm
glad I am working right now.)

Thanks in advance for any help.

(For those who might suggest that this belongs in the framers group, I've
posted it there twice, or so I thought, and it has not appeared. Plus, I've
seen Frame-specific questions here in this group--and I've typically
received prompt and useful feedback from the people here.)

-- 
--
"I don't entirely understand it but it is true: Highly skilled carpenters
don't get insulted when told they are not architects, but highly skilled
programmers do get insulted when told they are not UI designers."
     - anonymous programmer quoted in "GUI Bloopers"

Chuck Martin
User Assistance & Experience Engineer
twriter "at" sonic "dot" net      www.writeforyou.com



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