Cross-references crash FrameMaker 11

We recently upgraded from Tech Comm Suite 3.5 to 4.0 (with FrameMaker 11), in a Windows 7 environment.
We have had several instances--on different workstations with different people--of FrameMaker 11 crashing when people are trying to create a simple cross-reference.
In a typical situation, the person has successfully created one or two cross-references, and then FrameMaker completely and abruptly shuts down the next time the person tries to create one.
FrameMaker creates "recover" files when that happens.
Has anyone else seen this behavior, and do you know how to prevent it?
Thanks in advance!
Tim

This is my biggest (in fact, probably my only) source of crashes in Frame11. It usually seems to be preceeded by me trying to scroll through the entries in the list of paragraphs, and then when I try to select one, the list jumps back up several entries so I can't get the one I want. I've sent half a dozen crash reports to [email protected] from this one.
More than anything else, I wish they'd let you resize the Cross Ref pod so you don't *have* to scroll in it so much - I might have about a hundred entries to choose from, and monitor screens the size of France. Yet Frame only lets me see half a dozen lines at a time. But then, it's forever 1994 in the Frame GUI

Similar Messages

Updating numbered Cross references crashes InDesign in both CS6 and CS4

I have a large medical journal that has over a hundered references, which I cross-referenced with the thinking that the client may well insert or amend the refernces. I was correct and now the customer has several references to go in I have updated the first in its numbered list at the end and gone to "update cross-refernce" and InDesign crashes. I have tried this in CS6 and CS4 but both crash.

This happens often, particularly with cross-references across documents that are managed with an InDesign book file. One common suggestion, in addition to updating the installed software with the latest patches, is to open all the files in the book before updating; this may or may not always succeed. Search this forum for cross-reference crash to see other suggested solutions.
Some of those posters may mention the commercial third-party Cross-References Plug-in for InDesign, from dtptools.com, and the poster's experience with it. It is reputed to be much more reliable than InDesign's built-in cross-references. It includes an option to convert the ID cross-references to its own, and that's reversible. There's a free trial. There's also a free reader plug-in for users who will need to open and edit documents that contain the plug-in's cross-references. The reader plug-in permits users to edit content in the documents without affecting the cross-references. HOWEVER, to edit or creatge new cross-references, users need the full plug-in.
HTH
Regards,
Peter
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices
mccoole1 wrote:
I have a large medical journal that has over a hundered references, which I cross-referenced with the thinking that the client may well insert or amend the refernces. I was correct and now the customer has several references to go in I have updated the first in its numbered list at the end and gone to "update cross-refernce" and InDesign crashes. I have tried this in CS6 and CS4 but both crash.

Word cross references not converting to hyperlinks

The cross references (i.e. {REF Welcome \h}) to bookmarks in
my Word document are not converting to hyperlinks in the HTML when
I have "Convert references into hyperlinks" checked when importing
the Word document (either in doc or docx format). This did work
with the older version Robohelp 5. Is there a setting I'm missing?
Thank you!
Pat

You said you've tried mapping styles.
I solved a similar situation. This involved a FrameMaker book imported by reference to RoboHelp. A cross reference to the paragraph style "Figure Title" was not getting converted.
I realized that in RoboHelp, I had mapped "Figure Title" to "None" or no output. (I do not want figure titles appearing in the online output, only in print).
Therefore, since the style was not mapped, the content was excluded and the cross reference did not get converted.
A different situation, but perhaps it can point you in the right direction.
Try changing the cross reference in FrameMaker to the next nearest heading, table title, or figure title. See if that makes a difference.
Make sure all the styles from each of your FrameMaker files is mapped to a RoboHelp style.

FrameMaker 11 trial version crashing on save and cross-reference insertion

Hi everyone,
I've recently started a new position. My prior background was heavily DITA, and I'd describe my FrameMaker experience as late beginner or early intermediate. The new position uses FM exclusively though, so I've been on a steep learning curve lately.
I'm using the trial version of FrameMaker 11, downloaded about two weeks ago, until the PO for my full FM 11 license is processed. I'm working in book and document files that have been upgraded, I believe, from FM 9 to FM 10 and then from FM 10 to FM 11. All of my colleagues are still using FM 10, with a mind to upgrade to FM 11 in the spring as our new budget comes through (I am, so to speak, the FM 11 guinea pig for the group).
My workstation is a brand new HP Elitebook laptop running Windows 7 64-bit (I believe our IT department downgraded it from Windows 8). Windows is fully up-to-date. My trial version of FM 11 is 11.0.1.382 and also up-to-date as of this message.
My issue: FM 11 randomly crashes several times a week, sometimes once a day or so, sometimes when I try any of the following:
Saving all files in a book (using Shift + the File menu command)
Saving individual document files (generally using the Save icon in the tool bar)
Attempting to insert a cross-reference (placing the insertion point within the document, then opening the Cross-Reference tool in the right-hand side bar)
The crash takes the appearance of FM freezing for several seconds, then the dreaded message window opening with the words "FrameMaker has detected a serious error and must quit", with columns of error codes below.
I've googled and binged and not found anything for this issue in FM 11, so I thought I'd post here. I have tried the following, based on somewhat similar discussions I've seen for crashes in earlier versions of FM)
Mif-washing the files
Working in the Structured FrameMaker interface instead of the Unstructured
Neither of these has worked. FM 11 trial continues to crash. It doesn't happen often; I'd say that I'm able to successfully able to perform the above tasks 20 times or so, with the crash on the 21st. But on a busy day, that's a few crashes a day.
To mitigate damage, I have autosave set to every two minutes and gotten in the habit of only having one or two documents open, instead of all in a book, to minimize the number of recovery files I need to process.
After one of the initial crashes, I did as Adobe asked and forwarded the crash report to them for troubleshooting.
My colleagues are watching all this very closely, and my troubles might influence our decision to upgrade from FM 10 to FM 11. So any insight into this issue would be appreciated!
Cheers,
Eric

Eric,
The multitude of unesolved x-refs may due to the font issues when updating the book. During an update, if the files aren't open, FM tries to open them in the background but if it encounters an error like a missing font, it skips the file and then any x-refs to that file are unresolved. This can cascade to make things look really worse than they are.
What is your default printer when you start FM? It should be the Adobe PDF prnter instance. If not, then you might want to insatll the Sundorne SetPrint utility (http://www.sundorne.com/FrameMaker/Freeware/setPrint.htm) thta will automatically set this for your FM sessions only.
One other place where fonts can hide is in table definitions. The catalog stores the font information (and not just the explicit paratag) of the cells in the header and first row. As Jeff mentions, you need to check the MIF file in detail. An excellent tool for quickly browsing your MIF is Graham Wideman's Mifbrowse (http://www.wideman-one.com/gw/tech/framemaker/mifbrowse.htm).

How can I get XML cross-references to translate to Structured FrameMaker?

I've been using Structured FrameMaker from the beginning, and have designed many EDDs, and about 10 years ago I did some translation of SGML into Structured FrameMaker (7.2) which worked well.
Now, (with FrameMaker 10), I've had to design an EDD to translate XML documents into Structured FrameMaker.
In my EDD I've a CrossReference element called XRef; this has an attribute of ID, which in turn has a value of IDReference and has Special AttributeConrols of ReadOnly.
My target elements in the EDD all have an ID attribute with a value of UniqueID.
My XML document's target xref element has an attribute of linkend, and in XML this works as I'd expect.
When I pass the XML file through the EDD/Template, everything works except that I get an ID = no value, which, of course, results in no display of the cross-reference data in the document.
Oddly, in structured FrameMaker, my element of link, with an attribute of linkend, works as it should, and displays the data. It may not be important, but the value for linkend is IDReference not UniqueID, and this displays correctly (I changed this attribute's value to Unique ID in my EDD and it made no difference to the XRef value in my document).
After making all these EDD changes, I've been careful to save the changes, import them to all files in my book and finally update the book.   Everything hangs together - except, of course, that the cross-reference doesn't work.
I'd sincerely appreciate any help or advice other users might have because I'm quite frankly stumped.

Russ,
Sorry about the delay in replying; got sidetracked trying to fix some FrameMaker 10 problems; on occasion, it laughs and crashes if we copy an element in a document and paste it to somewhere illegal. This doesn't happen all the time, but it might be something someone might do, so it was interesting to know.
Anyway, back to cross-references.
In our r/w rules we have:
"linkend" is fm attribute "ID";
Can we also have a similar line under the cross-reference element as:
element "xref"
     is fm cross-reference element "XRef";
     attribute "linkend" is fm property cross-reference id;
     attribute "role" is fm property cross-reference format;
At the moment the second line is:
.....attribute ID is fm property cross-reference id;
I tried adding the attribute "linkend" is fm property cross-reference id; (so that I had both linkend and ID) bit but this made no difference.
In general use cross-references work, in that it picks up data in one place in the document, e.g. WorldWideWeb, and repeats it elsewhere.   So in our xml file we have a link element with an attribute linkend which, when it's processed (ignoring the handshake code used to link the two - which could be something vague like 12345vvdog), repeats whatever is the target.
Conversely, for a cross-reference, in xml they use an xref element which also has a linkend attribute (similar mysterious secret handshake behind the scenes) which is deemed to point to a list of references.   This looks like it might be the stumbling block in that it links to an area in the xml document which is used as an internally generated list of references. Apparently this is only built when the xml book equivelent is finalised, so is not, like the link and linkend coupling described above.
I've passed this back to the xml people, and they are investigating a different way of preparing their cross-reference to a list of references (I'm now thoroughly confused with all these references - good thing the weekend's just around the corner).
I appreciate all you help and advice, I'll admit that this is a lot more difficult to understand than straight-forward EDD element creation along with their respective attributes.   Life used to be so much more simple back then!
In sum, what I thought I was doing was allowing an ID attribute with a value of IDReference in my elements, this was deemed to allow for FrameMaker cross-referencing.   In Structured FrameMaker, on its own, this works just fine; it all fell flat on its face when trying to import xml.   I tried to see whether the xref element's ID attribute could also be a UniqueID, but as just about everyone has said, this is a silly idea.   I was just trying stuff to see whether it might make a difference - you'll not be surprised to see that it didn't!
For the moment, I have attributes called ID with a value of IDReference, and I understand you're all suggesting to leave it at that.
If I understand correctly, I could eventually use an IDRef attribute if I wanted a UniqueID value to be used, though I'm not sure what a UniqueID is used or useful for, so will file that for future use.
Again, thanks for the advice and help.
Chris

TCS2 - FrameMaker Cross-reference formats completely ignored...

In RoboHelp I have changed all my cross-reference formats to <paratext>. However, this mapping seems to be completely ignored. What file drives these styles? I can run a template in FrameMaker to strip out the page numbers and autonumbers, but this setup should work in RoboHelp.
Anyone having the same problem?
Thanks,
[email protected]

I think you need to use <$paratext> in the FM to RH mapping (via the edit button)

Indesign CS6 crashes every time I try to insert a cross reference.

Each time I try to insert a cross references the who program crashes and shuts down.
Does anyone know why?
Adobe Design and Web Premium CS6

See Remove minor corruption by exporting

InDesign CS6 Crashes When I Make a Cross-Reference

I've downloaded CS6 from the Cloud, and have been quite happy with it, until yesterday when I attempted to do a simple cross-reference to create endnotes. I use Bob Bringhurst's method — http://blogs.adobe.com/indesigndocs/2009/03/endnotes_in_indesign_cs4.html , and when I get to Step 4, InDesign crashes. I've pasted the crash report on pastebin.com http://pastebin.com/pbeSWU0t . I'm on a MacBook Pro, running system 10.6.8. Thanks for any and all help. I've created a goofy work-around that will get me through this job, but is not going to work in the long run.
Note: The first thing I did was replace the preferences. This did not help.

Sorry, I had meant to reply earlier, unfortunately I didn't have much to say.
Yes, it looks like it is crashing in an area of the code that deals with hyperlinks/crossreferences.
That is unfortunately not a surprise
So I think you get to open a case at http://adobe.com/go/support or file a wishlist bug at http://adobe.com/go/wish. Sorry.

How to fix crashing when PDF and procedure for cross reference?

I'm using Frame 8. When I try to PDF my book, Frame crashes. I have tried PDFing the individual chapters, but that didn't work.
Also, I'm trying to create either a cross reference or hyperlink. I have a paragraph that says "For more information, see the Setup section in Chapter 1" The Setup section in chapter 1 is a heading 4. I've tried using the instructions in the Frame help, but I don't understand them, and I don't know whether I need a hyperlink or a cross reference. Can I get simpler explanation and how-to?
Thanks!

Several things could be causing the crashing during the PDF creation process.
1. Have you applied the MS hotfix mentioned here?
http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2009/07/repost_hotfix_for_framemaker.html
2. In your PDF Setup, make sure that you have Tagged PDF turned off and in the Links panel enable "Create Named Destinations for All Paragraphs".
Try it again and also make sure that you have applied all of the FM8 patches in sequence.
You can use either cross-references or hypertext links to create the jumps, though cross-refs are easier to do and maintain.
1. To insert a cross-ref to the Chapter 1 Setup section, you first would need to have Chapter 1 open along with the document that you are currently working on.
2. At the location where you want to insert the cross-reference, select the Special > Cross-Reference menu option.
3. For the first time that you use a cross-reference, you have create a format for it. In your case the "For more information, see the" and "section in" are constant strings and the section name "Setup" and "Chapter 1" are the variables.
    a) Click on the "Edit Format" button in the Reference section towards the bottom of the window. This will open a new dialogue window allowing you to create a format for use.
     b) In this window, give the format a name so that you can easily identify it, such as "More info in Chapter section".
     c) Then you have to enter in the "Defintion" line what you want the cross-ref to say, which could be (without quotes) "For more information, see the <$paratext> section in <$paranum[Chapter]>." The items in the angled brackets are building blocks used by FM to pick up content from the specified destination when you make the cross-ref. The first one <$paratext> specifies to grab the content of the paragragh that you point to (in this case it should be "Setup" section heading. The <$paranum[Chapter}> item will grab the autonumber value from the Chapter tag (or use whichever one that you have for chapter numbering at the start of each chapter).
     d) Once you're satisfied with your format, click on the Add and then Done buttons. This will save thgis format in the cross-ref catalog.
4. To actually insert the cross-ref, select the target document (e.g. Chapter 1) from the drop down list for "Dcoument:".
5. Then under the Source Type (the down arrow below the Document), make sure that you have Paragraphs selected.
6. In the left column you will see the paratags available in the Chapter 1 document.
7. Pick the paratag type that contains the Setup section title (heading 4 ?).
8. In the right-hand column you should then see all of the heading 4 tags in Chapter 1.
9. Select the Setup in this column.
10. Check that the Format line shows the one that you created earlier ("More Info in Chapter Section") and then click on the Insert button.
You're done.
If you don't like the formatting or it's picking up the wrong content, then open the cross-ref dialogue again and edit the format to get what you want.

Preserving Chapter Cross References when going to Structured Framemaker

Hello,
I am trying to preserve all of my cross references that link from chapter to chapter, within the same book. If I convert files one at a time, then FrameMaker has trouble finding the link in the destination chapter - because that chapter has not yet been converted to Structured FrameMaker.
I have not tried Batch Processing, but I am sure I would get the same results.
With that said, what must I do to these external chapter cross references, so that they convert over to Structured FrameMaker?
Thanks in advance for your response.
Regards,
Jim

Jim,
Like Russ, I have had to redirect the cross-references manually following conversion; HOWEVER, I have also noticed that existing IDs in the unstructured version seem to get put into the converted element as an attribute. In other words, if my EDD defines a Title element with an Id attribute and the unstructured document contains a title paragraph that is the target of a cross-reference, then upon conversion the corresponding Title element has TWO attributes, one is named Id and the other ID. Id has no value, but ID does. The structured document does not validate and I have to delete the ID attribute to make it validate.
This leads me to believe that had I named the attribute ID in my EDD, then it would be assigned a value upon conversion; however, I have never tried this. If I had, FrameMaker would likely create the Title element with two attributes, both named ID!!!
Take it for what it is worth,
Van

Crashing with cross-references

We are still crashing when trying to work with cross-references. Running CC 9.2.1. Is another update coming to fix this?

We are having the same problem. Whenever we open a file that was created using Cross References Pro, in a previous Indesign CS version, InDesign CC crashes immediately. I have installed all of the recent 2014 updates, and the problem continues to happen. The Cross References Reader will not install on my system, as I only have InDesign CC now, and it will only install on systems with up through CS6.
Please find a solution ASAP, as we cannot open our old documents to make any changes or reference the links.

Converting cross references from Frame

I am importing my Frame files by reference in RoboHelp (using
Technical Communication Suite). I have mapped my "Heading &
Page" cross reference style to the <$paratext> building block
to drop the page numbers from the cross references. I cannot for
the life of me get these to import correctly. When I import the
chapters, the cross references still contain the page numbers. In
addition, they are not hyperlinks, as they are in Frame.
Double-clicking on the imported cross reference links does nothing.
I am desperate to get these to convert properly - I have 34
chapters to import from my user guide!!

Yes, I applied all of the patches and same problem.
What I did yesterday afternoon was to save the source FM file
as MIF and take a look at the markers. The cross reference markers
that were failing to move over had an \xod at the end. I posted in
the Framemaker forum and discovered that this was the hexadecimal
for a carriage return. As for why there would be a carriage return
at the end of some of my cross reference markers I have no idea and
I assure you it was not because I hit ENTER.
However, I have been having some success this morning in
deleting the cross reference markers and reinserting them. Of
course, this messes up all of the other cross reference pointers
throughout the book. It may be that if more than one cross
reference is made to a single source (e.g., the marker is used more
than once) the \xod appears. I am not yet sure. In between the
time-consuming and focus-grabbing Force Updates and the frequent
RoboHelp crashes during the Force Update process it takes some time
to discover. Framemaker never had a problem keeping track of my
cross references \xod or no.
I still have the problem of two cross references right next
to each other causing a Fatal Error when I try to compile. So I
have to add some spurious word like "and" and it won't even let me
make this word white. So I basically have to rewrite my source
document.
Any patches planned? Also, please consider an upgrade to the
server hosting this board: it is extremely unresponsive.
Thank you,
Z.

How do I preserve cross reference text when exporting to XML?

I am exporting my Framemaker documents to XML. However, when I open the raw XML, the reference formatting is obviously gone. So instead of seeing, say, see Figure 6. I now see, see .
Is there some way to preserve this on export?
Help would be much appreceated!

Josh,
The normal behavior is to have an empty element with the ID/IDRef markup that allows the xref element to be resolved again afterwards, by whatever post-processing step you put the XML through. The text of a cross-reference is a FrameMaker formatting artifact (not unlike a paragraph format, etc.) and is intentionally discarded during export. If you reimport the XML with the empty element, FM will re-resolve the xref, and then will restore the text using whatever format it originally had (the format name is also stored as markup).
If you want to preserve the element tag of the xref, I don't think there is any way to preserve the text, unless you write an import/export API client. You could possibly use an XSLT stylesheet to repopulate the text in some cases, but this seems like a process fraught with many complications.
If you do not care about the element tag, the manual says that you can just unwrap it, then you'll get the xref text. Here is a (rough) snip from the Structure Developers Guide:
Translating FrameMaker cross-reference elements to text in markup
You may not want your FrameMaker cross-reference elements to remain elements in the
markup representation—you can choose to translate them to text instead. To do so, use
this rule:
fm element "fmtag" unwrap;
where fmtag is the FrameMaker element tag for a cross-reference element.
All of this does beg the following question, though... why do you want to do this, especially if the text is referencing figure numbers, page numbers, etc. that have no relevance in the markup? Normally, it is expected that preservation of the markup is the essential thing, allowing the text to be regenerated later by whatever process uses the XML (perhaps including FM). If you drop the element tag, the actual link will be permanently lost.
Russ

Cross-reference failure when converted to PDF

One of my clients uses FrameMaker 7.1 to author their product documents, and convert everything to PDF before releasing it. I often see problems where cross-references within the document work in FrameMaker, but do not work as links in PDF, even though they show as links and the cursor in Acrobat changes correctly as it should when pointing to a link. I have now encountered a FrameMaker file where the cross-references worked as links in the first revision of a PDF, but a random selection of them didn't in the next revision, even though no changes were made to any cross-references in the original FM file. It's not an issue with my PC or that of the person who generated the files - we have tried the conversion on multiple installations and they all produce the same result. To fix it we've had to locate each failed link in the PDF and put it right manually in the FM source file. Has anyone else encountered this? Any thoughts on the cause?

DxCooper (not your real name, I guess),
The rigid approach is to check in the PDF Setup dialog, last tab "Links", whether the option "Create Named Destinations for All Elements and Paragraphs" is selected. This helps but the size of the PDF may increase considerably.
Another thing which may help, especially (but not limited to) if the documents originally were authored in previous versions of FrameMaker, is the use of what is described in the prose of the above mentioned dialog: Optimize the PDF size by running the described routines once for every file. As far as I remember you can select a book file for that feature.
HTH,
- Michael (who feels better, if he can write to people with a name)

Cross-reference to chapter in book

I have an eighteen-chapter book, where all the figure numbers, table numbers, and the first- and second-level numbered headings are prefixed with the chapter number. It would be a nightmare if (as is possible) the chapters were to be reordered later in the day. So I put each chapter in a separate ID document, put all the documents in a book, and made liberal use of the 'Chapter number' text variable.
My question is: what do I do with cross-references like 'See Chapter 9'? How can I treat these so that they will automagically update if Chapter 9 gets moved to become Chapter 13? As far as I can tell, using the cross-referencing feature doesn't work with text variables, so I can't just point it at the chapter number at the beginning of the relevant chapter (which is, once again, the 'Chapter number' text variable).
Any ideas?
Also, slightly irrelevantly, I notice that InDesign is prone to crashing if I try and cut text containing a text variable. Is there a known bug?

I have an eighteen-chapter book, where all the figure numbers, table numbers, and the first- and second-level numbered headings are prefixed with the chapter number. It would be a nightmare if (as is possible) the chapters were to be reordered later in the day. So I put each chapter in a separate ID document, put all the documents in a book, and made liberal use of the 'Chapter number' text variable.
My question is: what do I do with cross-references like 'See Chapter 9'? How can I treat these so that they will automagically update if Chapter 9 gets moved to become Chapter 13? As far as I can tell, using the cross-referencing feature doesn't work with text variables, so I can't just point it at the chapter number at the beginning of the relevant chapter (which is, once again, the 'Chapter number' text variable).
Any ideas?
Also, slightly irrelevantly, I notice that InDesign is prone to crashing if I try and cut text containing a text variable. Is there a known bug?

Cross-references crash FrameMaker 11

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