InDesign 5.5 on Mac OSX 10.8.2 crashes - XML-related?

Question

Hi all,
One of our compositors has had repeated problems with InDesign CS 5.5 crashing. Our workflow generally entails importing well-formed XML for book designs, and it usually works fine. On occasion, this one compositor has experienced frequent crashes, by which I mean InDesign closes and generates an error (I don' t know if this forum permits attachments, I have a long problem report file I could upload). Once this problem starts with a given file or set of files, it's almost impossible for him to work on them for more than a minute or two without InDesign completely bombing out (it doesn't hang, it disappears instantly). We've subsequently tested these files on other systems with different OS versions, but the same version of InDesign and the crash occurs there as well. So it seems that once the problem starts, it's associated with the file itself, and not necessarily the specific system in started on.
We've tried saving these files as IDML and working on them in that form, but the same problem occurs. We've tried many things to resolve this (new system, new OS, reinstall CS), and we're at a complete loss for how to finally fix it (though I just bought some paid support incidents with Adobe, so I guess we'll turn there next). I was hoping that someone in this forum may have experienced and resolved this sort of issue before and can shed some light on it.
Any help will be very appreciated.
Greg

Answer 1

Hi, I'm the "compositor" ("desktop publisher") mentioned above as having the chronic crashing problem. Since our production department of nine InDesign users has not yet upgraded from 5.5, we don't get official tech support, but we hope to find some answers to our questions here.
If the "bad link" suggested above in relation to "AGM" appearing in the first lines of the problem report is referring to links between text frames or to placed images, that's an area that's too highly controlled and routinely checked too often to be suspect. The crashing problem has been too persistent for too long (over a year) to have been triggered by something as relatively detectable and easily fixed as that. (Perhaps you're referring to some other kind of link?)
When a crash happens, it seems to occur spontaneously (seemingly "out of the blue") when in the middle of working on a job -- since we publish books, usually in the middle of a "chapter file," and (here would seem to be a clue) only in a file into which text that has been converted to "clean XML" has been imported. No problem with any other kinds of text imports -- but XML is what we use.
What happens is the sudden appearance of the "spinning beach ball," which can last for quite a few seconds at first, but there is no way out, and no going back -- inevitably the job disappears from the screen, the program crashes, and the "problem report" appears on the screen, giving you the choice of clicking on "reinstall" (automatically sending the report to Adobe) and "restore" the file to the screen; or "OK," which closes the report and requires you to open InDesign again manually. I usually end up restoring, to save lost time, but the more I reopen the program, however I do it, the more frequently the crash happens again. At first it might take a relatively "complex" procedure (e.g., moving a text or art frame from one page to another, or just navigating from one page to another) to cause the crash. But the more times it happens, and with increasing frequency, the less it takes to do it (e.g., cutting and pasting, or deleting), until finally just opening the program precipitates another crash, by which point it's impossible to get anything done.
If you regard it as a kind of "grand mal seizure" or "convulsion," you could compare the initial signs of a crash about to happen -- e.g., a bar of color overlaid on a running head at the top of a page, to indicate its being "tracked," will suddenly extend off the page and to the edge of the screen, and presumably beyond -- to the "aura" or feeling of impending doom experienced by a victim before being seized by a convulsion. That's a fairly invariable visual foreshadowing of a long series of ever more frequent crashes that can then be counted on to continue happening throughout the file structure of an entire book.
Much theorizing has gone on about the root cause of this incredible waste of production time, but no one as yet has been able to attribute it to anything that can be "fixed." Instead, the crashes come and go at will -- sometimes lying dormant, often returning with a vengeance, and lingering perniciously until a book finally gets produced, at a cost of several times the amount of production time that it ordinarily ought to take.
Does this sound like some kind of "viral" behavior? At this point that's my best guess.
Thanks,
William
(CUP_DTP)