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That voodoo that you do...creating PDFs from FrameMaker 8
Monday, June 02, 2008 — posted by Terry Smith
This post assumes that you are a hard-core FrameMaker user. You've been warned.Okay, so I've been creating production-quality PDFs for years, and I'm well versed in the contortions that are sometimes required to produce a pristine PDF file from a FrameMaker book. Even so, I struggled to make PDF files for Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8. The irony.
(I am running Windows XP, Service Pack 2, on a zippy machine with 3 gigabytes of memory, latest versions of FrameMaker 8 and Acrobat Distiller 8.)
The biggest problem I encountered was dropped-out text in the PDF files. Things would go along swimmingly in the PDF file for a few pages, then headers or a few callouts might disappear. At other times, maybe I would get one page of text, then seventeen pages with graphics and symbols, but no text. It wasn't predictable, even within the same file. Sometimes the FrameMaker files didn't have any graphics and only a few pages of text, but text still dropped out. The book is large and packed with graphics. I knew that I must use Save As PDF if I wanted to retain the Flash and 3D capabilities that FrameMaker 8 offers, so my old go-to solution of printing to a PostScript file and then distilling that into a PDF was a last resort (and one that didn't always help).
Most of the time, I could solve the problem (at least for awhile) by following the standard prescription that gets passed around frequently on the framers listserv:
1) Shut down FrameMaker. (Who am I kidding? Shut down all applications.)
2) Delete fntcache.dat, a file located in the Windows directory. After deleting the file, check again that it's gone. It's stubborn.
3) Restart Windows after deleting fntcache.dat (never before).
4) Immediately open FrameMaker and create the PDF file by selecting File>Save As PDF.
5) Create the same PDF a second time to the same place.
For a single file (not a book), that was often enough. If I opened my mail program (Thunderbird) or other applications, I would probably have to repeat those steps. Eventually, I was able to get good results most of the time for single files (not books) with the preceding prescription after I uninstalled almost all the fonts on my machine, ran MSCONFIG on each startup to make sure no unnecessary programs were running, turned off links, and always printed each file in the book separately. Oh, and deleted any fm*.tmp files that FrameMaker has left lying around and also any logs and *.tps files that Acrobat Distiller left after crashing. As always, I made sure that Adobe PDF was my default printer in FrameMaker so that the symbols I saw on screen would match my PDF output.
Of course, I needed to create book-size PDF files with every possible feature enabled, so printing the book to separate files and disabling important items like links was not acceptable. I kept looking for a sure-fire way to do that without losing any text.
Then, suddenly, I created a PDF file of the entire book and everything worked perfectly. What was different? It took me awhile to realize that I had changed an Adobe PDF print setting while printing that one time, but I hadn't changed its default setting so the change would stick. This is an old, fairly well-known fix, but I missed it.
Of all the things I tried, this is the setting that made the most difference for me (although the other things helped):
1. Open the Printers and Faxes control panel, then select Adobe PDF.
2. Open Properties.
3. From the General sheet, click the Printing Preferences button.
4. Click the Layout tab, then click the Advanced button.
5. Under Graphic, change Print Quality to 600dpi. (Mine was set on 1200dpi.) Save your changes.
(An aside: there is a place to specify the dpi when you select Save As PDF. That setting is unrelated and won't help solve this problem.)
Setting the graphic print quality to 600dpi doesn't affect screen captures (which don't have that much information in them) or line art (which uses math to render the best possible view on screen). If I were printing lots of pictures (probably photographs) that needed a really high quality, this setting wouldn't be appropriate. I suppose one could argue that you should be using InDesign if your graphic layout is that fancy.
One more thing: I wasn't expecting FrameMaker's behavior when I created the PDFs. When I would select Save As PDF from the book file, FrameMaker's status line showed the usual messages about opening and closing files in the book. FrameMaker has been doing that for as long as I remember, so no surprise there. However, after the last message in the Acrobat Distiller window said the PDF was complete, FrameMaker was still involved somehow. After a few moments, FrameMaker opened each file (I mean really opened it and really displayed it, not silently opened it while displaying a message in the status line)and resaved it. Fine, that's what FrameMaker wants to do, I won't argue. I waited until I was sure FrameMaker had finished whatever it was doing before I opened the PDF file. It looked good! I edited the document information a bit and tried to save the PDF file, but a message was displayed that said the file was in use. I tried closing Acrobat Distiller. No effect. Eventually, I was able to determine that FrameMaker still had a lock on the PDF file, so closing FrameMaker allowed me to save the PDF file. (Notice that my earlier procedure of saving to PDF to the same file twice in a row wouldn't work for a book, because FrameMaker wouldn't let go of the PDF ever until I closed FrameMaker.) A little nutty, but I can get it to work consistently now, so that's good.
Thanks for letting me share.
Update: A hotfix is available. It works. You have to request the hotfix to get it: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=952909.
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