FM 10.0.2 Patch released

[Arnis_Gubins]

A new patch is being pushed through the Updater right now. The new version is 10.0.2.419.

The SaveAsPDF CMYK option should be reasonably reliable now, but please run a preflight before submitting to a print provider.

From the Read Me file:

1. Following CMYK Workflow issues are fixed:

1.1 Custom spot colors were not preserved and were getting converted to process colors.

Further library process colors were being converted as spot colors.

1.2 Tints for spot colors were not visible in the generated PDF. Tints were not getting honored

for graphic objects and table cells for both spot and process colors.

1.3 Some fonts were getting replaced with Times New Roman font or were not rendered

properly. Most of these font issues and glyph rendering issues are resolved.

1.4 Kerning applied to the character style was not honored in the PDF.

1.5 Some page layouts were not honored in the PDF.

1.6 Provision for custom prolog file for PS was not there.

2. ‘SaveAsRTF’ command for a file containing unrendered graphics objects and structured window

open resulted in FrameMaker crash.

3. If the tagged view was ON, FrameMaker crashed on placing the insertion point between </

step> and </steps> and then pressing <ENTER> in task topic.

4. If the DITA cross-reference panel was open, the history panel was not populated on making

changes in a DITA topicref.

5. Right aligning a paragraph for which auto-number is set to ‘End of Paragraph’ earlier resulted in

disappearance of the auto-number.

6. ’Select All’ command was not selecting more than 100 Multiple Composite Objects in default

auto spell check mode.

7. View-only operation was not working for virtual documents with DFS SDK 6.5 SP3.

8. List sorting was case sensitive in FrameMaker 10. This is changed to case insensitive to match

the previous versions of FrameMaker.

9. F_ApiDeleteUndefinedAttribute and NextElementDFS are exposed in the Scripting interface.

[yves.barbion]

Hi Arnis

Thank you for posting this. Apparently, this information is not here yet:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=22&platform=Windows

Kind regards

Yves Barbion

www.scripto.nu

[Arnis_Gubins]

Yves,

I did say that the update is being pushed by the Updater. Things aren't always in sync between the website and the development teams.

If you have the Updater turned off in your environment, then use the Help > Updates... option.

[ReactionAtWork]

Delighted that progress is still being made with FrameMaker development; quite a few important things seem to have been fixed. But it's a disappointment to see nothing on the list about fixing the problem of hopelessly slow printing to the Acrobat PDF printer (detailed at length in another thread 757124). This problem must surely be affecting a huge proportion of FrameMaker users on a daliy basis?

[Bob_Niland]

But it's a disappointment to see nothing on the list about fixing the problem of hopelessly slow printing to the Acrobat PDF printer ...

Is that an assumption because the problem wasn't mentioned in the patch notes?

Or has an affected user tested .2 and observed no improvement in performance?

It strikes me that some of the now-fixed color and font rendering bugs might had a performance hit.

[Arnis_Gubins]

The slowness tends to be installation specific. Try the patch and see if there are any improvements.

[Ted_Williamson]

I'm using 10.0 on a Windows XP Pro PC and my very intricate FM graphics seem to make the 10.0 version crash a lot. Converting to mif and back using 10.0 did not fix the problems, so  I have had to downgrade many of my books back to FM  7.1 so I can work on them without crashing so much.

Will this 10.0.2 patch make this problem go away?

Thanks,

Ted

[ReactionAtWork]

Latest 10.0.2 patch appears to provide no improvement for printing: 171 page document, printing to Adobe PDF printer...  10 minutes, 45 seconds.

[Be.eM]

ReactionAtWork wrote:

Latest 10.0.2 patch appears to provide no improvement for printing: 171 page document, printing to Adobe PDF printer...  10 minutes, 45 seconds.

Well, "171 pages" doesn't say too much about the document. It makes a huge difference if you have lots of graphics or not. 10 minutes for an EPS-heavy document of this size is not unusual.

However, one thing I have noticed with several FM installations in various environments (Parallels VM + Win XP, Parallels VM + Win7, PC + XP): There is a dramatic difference in PDF writing speed depending on WHERE you save the file (local, network) and - if network - which type of network connection you're using. I'm getting the fastest results (by far) from a VM where the server is connected via \\192.168.xxx.xxx\foldername, means: via IP address.  Outperforms local saving as well as e.g. saving via Parallels *.psf connection. I'm not what you'd call an experienced network admin, I have no detailed knowledge about networking at all, but I was really surprised by the resulting speed once we had configured one machine this way. That was speeding up by factor 5-10. 

Bernd

[ReactionAtWork]

Well, "171 pages" doesn't say too much about the document. It makes a huge difference if you have lots of graphics or not. 10 minutes for an EPS-heavy document of this size is not unusual.

Be assured, 10 minutes is very bad for a modern application installed on a modern PC, when it is only writing out content created using Adobe software and technologies (FM, AI, EPS, PDF) - to my local hard disk. For comparison, a very old version of Interleaf/QuickSilver (that I have to keep installed on the same PC), prints out a typical 200 page document, heavy with TIFs, imported WMFs, and native graphics, to exactly the same Adobe PDF printer installation....  in less than 30 seconds.

I switched to FrameMaker many years ago and much prefer its interface and features, but its snail-like printing speed still cripples productivity, especially when there are 40 manuals to output to PDF!  I don't want to hijack this thread - all the details are already in http://forums.adobe.com/thread/757124. I just hoped this patch would correct this severe printing problem.

[Dov Isaacs]

The problem of performance when creating PDF from FrameMaker is a bit more complex than it might seem. Ironically, if you print to most PostScript printers, the job will spool much more rapidly than the job to the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance used for creating PDF via distillation of PostScript.

The problem is two-fold:

(1) The Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance uses the standard Windows PSCRIPT5 PostScript driver, but also uses a driver plug-in that intercepts and processes all calls to the driver by the application program via GDI. This processing involves both font issues as well as passing either the generated or passed-through (via EPS) PostScript to the Distiller process in the background. The overhead of each of these calls is fairly high in terms of relative CPU time.

(2) FrameMaker calls the driver with a large number of calls through GDI. This is necessary due to the nature of the way FrameMaker performs line layout which is significantly more sophisticated than let's say, Microsoft Word. Each one of these calls incurrs the overhead per (1) above.

Thus, if you have a fairly complex and/or long FrameMaker document and don't have a fairly well-endowed system in terms of CPU, memory, and disk, you are likely to experience this performance issue.

The only way that you are likely to see this problem totally eliminated is if FrameMaker ever is modified to generate its own PDF directly in the manner that InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop do via Adobe's Core Technology libraries without any intermediate PostScript to get in the way. (Note that this is definitely not any announcement of any upcoming feature!)

          - Dov

[Bob_Niland]

... uses a driver plug-in ... large number of calls through GDI ...

Is some or all of this running in separate threads?

If so, it seems like having a true multi-core CPU (not just hyperthreading) might improve performance.

Of course, if it is separate threads, but FM is waiting on them, then never mind

[Dov Isaacs]

Unfortunately, separate threads wouldn't help in this instance. The bottleneck is in the driver/plug-in interface being called so many times and these calls must be totally serial in nature.

          - Dov

[ReactionAtWork]

Many thanks Dov!  It's great that somebody from Adobe has finally explained the slow printing problem. I do so hope that the next major FM release isn't filled with more superfluous features, but does have the built-in PDF generation capabilities you mentioned. Adobe simply can't allow a high-end application like FrameMaker to be so bad at one of its fundamental duties - creating PDF output.

[Dov Isaacs]

Depends on what you folks, especially large companies with large numbers of licenses, demand!

          - Dov

[Mike Wickham]

Depends on what you folks, especially large companies with large

numbers of licenses, demand!

And if you want to demand it, one place to do so is here:

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

To follow on Mike's excellent advice: For those who despise long links with punctuation, you also can get to that page via http://www.adobe.com/go/wish.

Numbers matter, so lobby all your cohorts to co-submit bugs that you think are relevant.

[Bob_Niland]

TW: Will this 10.0.2 patch make this problem go away?

Is there some reason why you can't perform a backup, set a Restore Point, apply the patch and try it?

R@W: patch appears to provide no improvement for printing:

At the risk of forking the thread, since this isn't patch-related, is there any improvement in net throughput if you print to a PostScript file, then separately Distill? (you'd at least get the FM GUI back in use sooner).

[JonBe]

This update does not appear to resolve any of the recent bugs I have reported to Adobe.  Still at least some bugs and changes are being looked at and Adobe seem very responsive to bug reports.

Arnis,

I preserved the updater zip file but could not find the readme file.  Can you post a copy?

Jon

[Arnis_Gubins]

Jon,

The Read Me file (PDF) should have been placed in the FM10 root folder after the update. Anyway, the content of that file is what's posted at the start of this thread.

FWIW, the patch file is now available on the website:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5297

[JonBe]

Arnis,

Many thanks!  I am not sure how I missed seeing such an obviously named file!

On the patch front there are different downloads depending on the version of 10 you have, just to confuse things!

For 10.0.0.388 or 10.0.1.402 - http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5296

And 10.0.1.408 - http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5297 - I am not sure how you would get to this build, maybe it was the trial download?

Jon

[Arnis_Gubins]

Jon,

There was a limited beta for the CMYK fixes.If you use the FM internal updater it will grab the correct patch for your version of FM10.

[SQUIDDS]

FrameMaker current release/build: 10.0.2.419

If you have

10.0.0.388 or 10.0.1.402 take http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5296

10.0.1.408 take http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5297

Note: 1.408 is the last relase/build of TechSuite 3.5, not a beta.

Note:
For companies it's better to take Adobe Application Manager Enterprise to deploy FrameMaker, TCS oder CS.

Then it's very easy to deploy the UpdateBuilds like FM 10.0.2 and other patches in one build.

If you need more information, then contact me.

- Georg

[Arnis_Gubins]

Clarification:

This update is a cumulative update that contains changes of both FM10.0.1 and FM10.0.2. Thus this can be applied to both FM 10 build (10.0.0.388) as well as FM 10.0.1 build (10.0.1.402). This will help FM10 users who have not applied the FM10.0.1 patch, to directly move to FM10.0.2

One exception to this are the users who are on FM10.0.1.408 build – these are users who have gotten FM from TCS 3.5  or have downloaded it after TCS 3.5 release. For these customers there is a different FM10.0.2 Update. This can be had from - http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5297

However, the best  way to apply the update is through Help à Updates… , as the you don’t have to worry about which patch to apply.

[rscottme]

Hi-

I'm having an (hopefully simple) issue since updating to 10.02. Prior to the update I was able to Save as pdf and Distiller ouput the file without issue. After the update when I save as pdf a .tps file is created and I must then manually distill. The creation time for the .tps file is unbelievably slow when compared to the same book being saved as pdf before the update. I have been looking through the forums and I haven't found a resolution. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.