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* ** The original document was also posted to framers@omsys.com and framers@frameusers.com with the Subject 'When will Adobe come clean on FrameMaker 7.0 gray boxes?'. This follow-up clarifies some of the responses to this post which would otherwise mislead people as to the nature of the problem. ***

All:

Some of the responses to this issue call for comment.

      *** hedley_finger@myob.com.au wrote:





      But a number of people using FrameMaker 7.0 on various versions of Windows
      are experiencing grey boxes when there is plenty of memory and few other
      applications running. This phenomenon appears to be triggered by one or
      more of the following factors:




If you have just come in, see my earlier lengthy discussion of the phenomenon
in the Adobe FrameMaker forum
<Sean 1/7/03 6:19am </cgi-bin/webx?50@@.1de74332/0>>
(you may need to register) or in the archive at <http://www.frameusers.com/>.



      *** "Stuart Rogers" <srogers@phoenix-geophysics.com>





      I NEVER had graphics gray box problems with FM 6; I CONSTANTLY have gray
      box problems with FM 7. I posted to this list about them in mid-October,
      asking Dov Isaacs for comments. Subsequently I received correspondence
      from Pamela Ruhl at Adobe, who said:





      "I'm the development manager for FrameMaker. My team is currently investigating
      an issue with imported graphics on FM7. We are interested in your specific
      problem. Do you have a sample file that we could have?"




Despite what some people have said, there is a real problem, which has been
acknowledged by Adobe, at least to Stuart. It would have been courteous for
Adobe to acknowledge the problem to other people who have reported it. And,
for us there is the far from trivial matter of shelling out for 16 X a product we
can't use ... we have abandoned FM7 and gone back to FM6.

      *** "Sharon Burton-Hardin" <sharon@anthrobytes.com> wrote:





      These issues have been in Frame since Frame 3, when FrameMaker owned it.
      They, in my experience, are all related to video memory, not machine RAM.
      The FrameMaker company actually recommended several graphics cards to
      help and they did. I don't know if Adobe has a similar list somewhere.





      And lots of large graphics in every file will eat up that memory faster
      than a hungry teenage boy. Then you also see the grey boxes. Simply close
      Frame and restart it, or reboot. A pain, I know but if you don't have
      excellent graphics cards with lots of memory...





      If all your computers have these problems with Frame 7, my best guess
      is that all computers have the same hardware.




No, it's not a video card or video memory problem, or else we would have seen
it with FM6. In fact the problem appears on a computer with AMPLE memory: 256 Mb
and NO other applications running. It also appears on computers from different
manufacturers, using Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP.

      *** "Bruce Wolf" <bwolf@scheidt-bachmann-usa.com> wrote:





      We have these three issues in Frame 6. Adobe did try to help us, but we
      have not found a solution.





      > > @ The graphics are imported by reference. > @ There may be a very
      large number of graphics imported by reference > into a file. > @ The
      greyed out graphics may appear as such in printed output or in a > generated
      PDF.




Bruce, if this is occurring with older versions of FrameMaker you may have
insufficient RAM, too many simultaneous applications running, or problematic
video cards or insufficient or faulty video memory as Sharon suggests.

      *** Jim Drew <ciaopubs@earthlink.net> wrote:





      Frame 7 development work is complete. Any "fixes" will need to wait for
      whatever the next cycle of FrameMaker is.




Well, no. Adobe have ALREADY issued one patch. And we will have to consider
asking for a refund as FrameMaker 7.0 is not fit for the purpose for which
we purchased it.

      That said, gray box graphics have been a problem for years. They inevitably
      relate to memory issues. FrameMaker gets a limited amount of memory allocated
      to it. Lots of graphics eats up lots of memory. Imported graphics mean
      that the filters get fired off to show those graphics, and filters take
      memory. Changing conditions may well mean refiring those filters (I don't
      know).





      Further, the memory requirements for Frame 7 are greater than for Frame
      6. And there were new filters produced for Frame 7.




I don't know about FM7 but in the past FrameMaker did its own memory management,
completely separate from any memory management provided by the operating system.
For example, in FrameMaker 4.0 I have had 48 files open simultaneously, each containing many
screen dumps and averaging 30 pages each.

FrameMaker pages the least recently active files to the hard disk; that is why there is a
short lag when you click in the window of a document at the back.

When it is running low on memory, FrameMaker tries to page as much as it can to
the disk. Then it starts to grey out graphics. In versions up to 5.5 there was
a bad memory leak. When a document was closed, its memory allocation was not
recovered so, over time, FrameMaker ran slower and slower, until you had to
restart it.

But the problems that many people are having with FrameMaker 7.0 are nothing to do
with insufficient memory, memory management, or memory leaks. The grey boxes
appear as soon as you begin working on a SINGLE, freshly opened document on a
computer with plenty of disk space and RAM.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications/Technical communicator and FrameMaker mentor
MYOB Australia <http://www.myob.com.au/>
P.O. box 371 Blackburn VIC 3130 Australia
12 Wesley Court Tally Ho Business Park East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia
<mailto:hedley_finger@myob.com.au>
Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421, Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

(C) MYOB Limited 2002