Intermittent Issues
May 3rd, 2011 by laurenThese are always a challenge. What can make things occur at one time and not the other, and more importantly yet more confusingly why? There does not seem to be an online guide that can instruct someone on any product how to go about troubleshooting for an issue that happens sporadically. My guess is that these happen mostly at the software level. (Don’t worry: Engineering and Development. We still like you). So, in my role, the process of investigation begins. In researching this subject, I realize that in the world of Software Support, that in addition to taking a mechanic’s role, we often take a bit of an investigative role. I don’t usually have a specific order of questions, but one could say it is a 4W (minus the “Who”, because it is obviously happening to you) approach. So, let’s begin with “Where”. The accompanying question to where would be to be able to isolate it to where it occurs, and does this occur on just one or more systems.
Next we follow up with “When”. Inspecting the log becomes essential at this point. On the log screen you will see various stages of output generation. Let’s say that you run across issues during the Image pipeline. If your inconsistent errors are consistently happening at the Image pipeline, most likely there is something going on with the graphic generation, which leads into the “What” question. So, in our example we determined that it happens at the graphic pipeline. So, what aspect of the graphics are we trying to isolate? Is it an issue with the Rasterizer? These are things that can be tested by using by-reference images in your input. Once you determine what is the cause of the graphic culprit, you can begin to ask the final question, “Why?”. These can be as simple as needing to close a dialog box, however if you cannot figure out why it occurs, then chances are you will not be able to resolve this. Sometimes, you might get lucky and the issue goes away, but we want a better success rate than chance.
Ultimately, the goal in Support is being able to reproduce and isolate issues. Given system specific issues, isolating is an absolute must. How can we fix something that we know nothing about? If you have submitted a case, and it seems like we are asking many questions, there is a reason for it, and the reason is that we are trying to help you as quickly as possible. Also, feel to share any troubleshooting insights that you have.
Installation Frustrations
April 13th, 2011 by laurenThese can happen any time, whether it is the dreaded “Object reference not set to an instance of an object” or your project encountered a problem and needs to close. They aren’t the greatest and can cause hours of issues. The first thing that Support personnel usually think of to resolve an issue is to reinstall the software. This, unfortunately rarely works for Mac or Windows programs. I find myself getting into the trap of even trying cleaning the registry which seems to be in the same camp of doesn’t do much. I find that taking a scalpel to the unneeded junk in your system is the best way to get rid of the error. It sounds scarey, but what you are getting rid of is temporary files will do the trick. Recently, I was having difficulty opening any project due to this error:
Somewhere between the Riveter and the Bear
April 5th, 2011 by laurenI have no problems with being compared to sort of a mechanic. I fix things, and if I can’t fix things, chances are they are broken at the Engineering level, so I have to go back to the people who create the parts. Despite usually being outside the Scope of Support, I like to break the rules, and sometimes break the product, and have some fun with XSL projects/customizations. Ideally, my job would be represented by this image:
Localization Tidbits
December 13th, 2010 by laurenThis is one of the more complicated aspects of support for ePublisher as it in encompasses every part of the process: Input (which version of FrameMaker are you running), Generation (what language and what operating system are you using) and Output (does the format have the proper support of Unicode, for example). David Shaked, of AlmondWeb, has a great wiki article here on what you should do for localizing information through the process of input -> output. Also, sense we primarily have web-based outputs, we have to take into account the browser that you are using. Firefox can handle different languages and wingding fonts then Internet Explorer. This can be a challenge, but if you have access to VM’s and the language packs, it will make troubleshooting a little bit easier.
Fun with Format Traits Info!
October 27th, 2010 by laurenHere at WebWorks, we would love to help everyone get ePublisher to do everything possible and make all of your wildest dreams come true. Most of the times we can at least come up with a compromise or direct users into a forum where they can find the information or experiment via the Wiki, or one of our many events such as Study Hall or Power Hour. Sometimes, however, with the magic of XSL and our Format Trait Info you can do amazing things. Today’s example comes from a desire to have certain HTML elements emitted with paragraphs via our interface. By the way, this is an extension of this article except that you do not need to take into account the Page.asp modifications as we are just adding some HTML given a certain paragraph style. Read the rest of this entry »
Wrangling the 3-way merge
October 20th, 2010 by laurenEven after nearly 3 years with WebWorks, I often find it difficult to tackle issues such as override migration. People have different styles in doing this, but universally the preferred method is using some sort of diffing utility to bring over the customizations. Normally Standard Support does not cover this, but if the project looks like something that can be handled with a relative amount of ease, I will try to assist as much as possible. Recently, I had a case of someone using FTI modifications in the Page Styles options panel for language codes. In this example, I am using Araxis Merge, just because it is the one I am familiar with, but you can play with Kdiff or Beyond Compare, if you like. Read the rest of this entry »
Where did my FrameMaker items go?
October 5th, 2010 by laurenSomething that you may notice when you are trying to edit pages, specifically when you are trying to delete pages is that this option is not available:
This is a symptom of not using the complete menu options in FrameMaker. Go to View -> Menus and select the option for complete to see all of your options reappear:
From there you should be able to see the correct options.