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Re: FM7 crashes when trying to open a file



At 05:59 AM 9/21/2004, Bill Marcotte wrote:
I have a file that crashes FrameMaker when we try to open it.
The file uses structure and conditional text and I'm presuming that is the
reason this is happening. I *can* open the file if I turn off structure, but
then I lose the structure. I count my blessings as at least I can get my
content back, but now I'm in fear of this happening again.

I've tried the file on several systems and the same things happens. Other
files that have cross-references to this file also crash when opened,
presumably because they are trying to check the cross-reference to the bad
file. (They open fine if I rename the bad file and FM reports unresolved
xrefs.)

Bill,
Sounds like you have a corrupt file. FM crashes when you open files that cross-reference the corrupt file because it is trying to open the corrupt file to update the cross-references.
If you were able to open the structured document, I'd recommend saving it to MIF and reopening it, but since you can't open it, that recommendation is useless.
Do you have a backup version of the file? If so, you might want to use File > Utilities > Compare Documents to compare it to the unstructured current version and edit in recent changes. That approach might be easier than adding structure back to the current version.
It's hard to say how the file became corrupted. I have seen situations in which a condition tag winds up applied to one of an element's boundaries but not the other. Hiding that condition will therefore yield a poorly-formed FM structure; since FM expects every element to have both boundaries, crashes can result. However, I have not seen this problem in FM 7.x. In previous versions, I could avoid it by always editing conditional structured documents with all conditions showing.
--Lynne




Lynne A. Price
Text Structure Consulting, Inc.
Specializing in structured FrameMaker consulting, application development, and training
lprice@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.txstruct.com
voice/fax: (510) 583-1505 cell phone: (510) 421-2284




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