When will Adobe come clean on FrameMaker 7.0 gray boxes?

[hedley_finger@xxxxxxxxxxx]

All:

When FrameMaker begins to run out of memory, it economizes by displaying
graphics as grey (USA: gray) boxes.  This is normal, fail-safe behaviour.
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:

@    The graphics are imported by reference.

@    There may be a very large number of graphics imported by reference
into a file.

@    Conditional formats are being used to selectively conceal or reveal
graphics; changing a condition to visible can cause a concealed graphic to
display as a grey rectangle.

@    Editing text near a graphic can cause it to go grey, as can pressing
Ctrl-z to undo an action near a graphic.

@    Horizontal lines may appear across TIFF graphics.

@    The greyed out graphics may appear as such in printed output or in a
generated PDF.

@    The problem is not solved by applying the 313 Mb "patch" to the
original FrameMaker 7.0p492 release to update it to 7.0p576.

@    Closing and reopening an affected file temporarily restores the greyed
graphics.

@    Copying a greyed graphic and pasting it may restore it, although some
people reported that copying or cutting a normal graphic and pasting it
caused it to go grey.

@    At least one person reported that replacing Office XP with Office 2000
(?) fixed the problem.

The following discussions of this problem appeared in the FrameMaker forum
at Adobe's Web site (<http://www.adobe.com/support/forums/main.html>, then
click the 'Adobe FrameMaker: All platforms' link):

@    Gray boxes in FrameMaker 7.0 -- bug? (part 1 of 2),
     Forum name: FrameMaker Archive, Posted By: RMR   -
     Oct 30, 2002 03:54 am

@    Gray boxes in FrameMaker 7.0 -- bug? (part 1 of 2),
     Forum name: FrameMaker Archive   -   Message #1, Posted By: RMR   -
     Aug 24, 2002 05:30 pm

@    FrameMaker 7.0 Graphic Display Problems,
     Forum name: FrameMaker Archive, Posted By: Roger B. Bartel   -
     Jun 24, 2002 12:26 pm

@    FrameMaker 7.0 problems with conditional text,
     Forum name: FrameMaker Archive, Posted By: Roger B. Bartel   -
     Jun 22, 2002 01:57 pm

@    Framemaker can not display imported graphics,
     Forum name: FrameMaker Archive, Posted By: Mats Broberg   -
     Jun 17, 2002 06:55 am

A considerable number of people responded to these threads with additional
accounts of similar problems and there were a number of people who posted
this problem to the two framers mailing lists.  At MYOB we have purchased
(I think) about sixteen v.7.0 upgrade licences from v.6.0 and also applied
the 7.0p576 'patch'.  But, because of these problems, we have reverted to
6.0 since early November 2002.  That's a lot of licence fees wasted.

The problem was reported to a senior member of the FrameMaker team at Adobe
but so far we have not had even an acknowledgment let alone any discussion
of the problem and when it might be fixed.

Could anyone else who has experienced this problem suggest a permanent
solution (if there is one)?  Or at least just raise your hand; when Adobe
sees how many people are experiencing this problem they just might do us
the common courtesy of addressing it.

[Windows 2000, FrameMaker 6.0p405, FrameScript 2.1r3, Enhance 2.03, Acrobat
4.05.2, mif2go 31u33, WebWorks Publisher 7.02, IXgen 5.5.h, HTML Help
Workshop 4.74 build 8702.0, HTML Help 1.31]

Regards,
Hedley

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Hedley Finger
Adobe Certified Expert, FrameMaker 5.5.x
Technical Communications/Best Practice Mentor
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd  <http://www.myob.com.au>
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood 3151   Australia
Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421  Fax. +61 3 9222 9880  Mob. +61 412 461 558
<mailto:hedley_finger AT myob.com.au>

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