🚀 go-pugleaf

What printer do you have set as your default when you are working in FM?

I have it set to the Microsoft XPS Document Writer

Aha -- that's very likely the problem. I believe that the XPS Document writer is a "competitor" of sorts to Distiller, so it doesn't surprise me that it wouldn't create an output that Distiller could process.

FM is particularly sensitive to which default printer is used, and the best of all results are generally obtained by 1) having the Acrobat printer instance, or 2) as second best, having a Postscript printer of any sort, set as the default. FM used to specify that it must have a PS printer installed, I believe that's still the case with FM8].

That's one of the reasons that FM comes with a setup for Acrobat Distiller and that it installs Distiller as a printer on the system. [caveat: I'm an XP user, not Vista, so some of the names may be different on Vista]

So, if you do have a printer called "Adobe PDF" or similar, set that as your default printer before you open FM. Also, be sure that you set up Distiller so that it knows where your fonts are located.

There's a great freebie called SetPrint that will automatically set the Acrobat printer as the default for FM opens, here: <http://www.sundorne.com>

Please let us know if this resolves your problem making PDFs --

No that's not it. It has always been set to that. I have never had a problem before. I have changed it to Adobe PDF and it doesn't make a difference. It doesn't use that driver when you choose Save As PDF.

Charles,

At many times and in many places in these forums, users have been advised NOT to create PDFs by selecting Save as PDF. I have never done it, so am not sure why it has problems.

Instead, PRINT the book or document or selected documents to the Adobe PDF printer. Doing that creates a PDF. In the print dialog box, you can also specify the job options for Distiller by clicking the Properties button. If you want to distill from Distiller directly, then you can save the print file to disk, which is the Postscript output.

But I have heard that saving to PDF is not the best way to create PDFs.

Good luck,
Van

Again no. This also creates the same Error. Maybe the entire Postscript engine is corrupt? I get to Printing Page 1 of 4 in the TOC (8% complete) It printed the chapter before. I have Reinstalled FrameMaker and I still get the error on anything I print or Save As PDF.

Well, I believe I have finally figured out the problem. I was correct in assuming the Postscript engine had a problem. I did a repair install of Acrobat 8 and it seems the AdobePDF.dll file some how became corrupt from something in one of the chapters. I believe it could have been an old TIF file that was moved from Mac to PC. A similar corruption better known to Photoshop EPS files with clipping masks. I'm guessing it was the DLL because when I did a repair it specifically asked for it and I had to extract it from the .CAB file (I had the downloaded version) and it asked for the CD. After running the Repair install on Acrobat all my problems went away.

BTW the printer is still set to the MS XPS Writer and I have no problems.

I'm getting that error now, too, and my repair of Acrobat 8 didn't help. I can't print to the Adobe PDF printer instance, either.

System: Dell box, Windows Vista Business with SP1, 4 GB RAM (but only 3 GB used), FM8p277, DITA-FMx 1.00.26, Acrobat Professional 8.1.2.

Try doing a full re-install. If that doesn't work, I have also felt it could be a problem with a FM update. You could reinstall both apps and don't allow them to update.

Adam,

The first thing to check is whether the Adobe PDF printer instance is linked to a File port or not, in the operating system. The port is required, but occasionally disappears. If the printer isn't linked to a port, you can create one or do an uninstall/reinstall of Acrobat.

But I'd disagree slightly about the need for a whole reinstall because the problem is most likely in Acrobat, not Frame, because the printer instance is unrecognized...

So I'd try first just uninstalling the Acrobat instance and re-running the Acrobat installer. But leave Frame alone for the time being.

Art

Charles, Art -

Thanks for the replies. I do appreciate them!

As it turns out, after I submitted the log of the crash to fmerrors@adobe.com (as the dialog box in FM instructed me to do), I got email from an Adobe employee pointing me to a blog entry about this problem. I replied and asked if it would be alright for me to post that link here. As of yet I have not received a reply, but I figure since it's a blog entry accessible via the Internet it's meant for public consumption. To wit:
 <http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2008/07/hotfix_for_framemaker_1.html>

I applied the hotfix and it fixed my problem. :) I hope this will help others who have the same problem.

--Adam