Checklist for FrameMaker to RoboHelp Crashes

  

Background on FrameMaker, RoboHelp, and TCS2 Integration

 

Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite 2 (TCS2) has some amazing integration features. The implementation of these features is much more intuitive and stable than in the initial release of the TCS. 

However, folks (including me) still seem to experience crashes far too often. I suspect that this often has a lot to do with hiccups in opening and updating FM source files (missing fonts, unresolved XREF’s, etc.) 

The next time you crash, go through these steps and you’ll likely be back on track in less than 15 minutes, with a stable system to boot! 

Linked Frame file checklist

If I’ve missed anything, or if you disagree with the steps below, please comment & help to make this a more complete list! 

I see 2 things that seem to increase the # of crashes: 

1. If your FM book and all chapters are not open and freshly updated, RH seems to choke on it more often. This means all missing resources (fonts, graphics, xrefs) should be resolved such that the book updates without any errors or dialogs.
2. Intial mapping of styles, and their first application to the content. I can’t prove this, but it seems that the noodling of the mappings can affect the odds of that first conversion.

So how to stop it?? 

1. When mapping FM styles to the RH equivalents, you can export the .isf after you do mappings, but before you apply settings. Then, if you have a crash, you can quickly import the .isf back into the project.
2. If your project crashes after restarting your computer
   • Crashing on opening- Delete the .cpd cache file and re-open
   • Repeated crashing when Update All is invoked-
     1. Update individual chapters in book, then Update All (then, if that doesn’t solve it)
     2. Create new project
        • Import FM book again, opening and updating all files as noted above
        • Import .isf
        • Update All by right-clicking on the FrameMaker book file within RoboHelp in your Project Files pod
     3. Consider creating a new RH project, and importing a new “dummy” FM file with only a few paras and headings to verify that the software is working properly

**Addendum: Both Ashish Gupta and our Aussie pal Mark at tcs-users@googlegroups.com noted that the RoboHelp 8.02 update seem to crash their systems. Uninstalling just the 8.02 patch may provide some relief on some systems.  

 Let me know if this works for you! 

-Matt

Tagged as: Adobe, adobe certified training, adobe evangelist, FrameMaker, framemaker training, RoboHelp, Single Sourcing, TCS Integration, TCS training, technical communication suite, topic based authoring