Jump to content

FusionPro VDP 9.3 Now Available


Dan Korn

Recommended Posts

  • 1 month later...
Thanks to everyone for the input. We currently have new builds of FusionPro VDP 9.3 (9.3.12) for both Windows and Mac in QA testing. With any luck, we'll be able to release these some time next week. (If you have an immediate production need for the new version before it's released, please contact Support. Note that templates created with a pre-release version of the software may not be compatible with MarcomCentral, Digital StoreFront, or other web-to-print systems.)

 

Any update on expected release date for 9.3.12? We are using it with "other web-to-print systems so I am hesitant to contact support for a pre-release patch, but I am eager to take advantage of the fixes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't see it mentioned anywhere here, so I'll throw this in since we are currently using the pre-release 9.3.12 version. We haven't noticed any real issues but there are a few minor quirks that have popped up.

 

1) The rule editor window is displaying fonts at an unreadable size (extremely small). The problem seems to be that no font is selected in the editor window settings. Opening the settings dialog and selecting a font fixes this. This is after upgrading systems that had displayed properly previously.

 

2) Files like the "cfg" and "msg" now seem to be Unicode instead of ASCII. We had some users open a cfg in notepad.exe to make changes and it appeared to them as one, run-on sentence. I had them open it in another text editor (Notepad++ in this case) and it displayed fine. Maybe the line terminators have been changed from CRLF to just CR? We also have some VBscripts running externally that parse msg files looking for certain data. I had to alter the scripts to force the text streams to be read as Unicode, otherwise they were returning gibberish as I assume they were defaulting to read ASCII.

 

Neither of these are necessarily "broken", as we've taken care of both. I just wanted to bring them up as much for clarification as reporting any issues.

 

(I'll need to update my signature from 8.2.7 to 9.3.12)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Any update on expected release date for 9.3.12? We are using it with "other web-to-print systems so I am hesitant to contact support for a pre-release patch, but I am eager to take advantage of the fixes.

It's just as valid a build as 9.3.6. It just hasn't been released, mostly for business reasons. There are no known regressions from 9.3.6, other than the issue with the rule editor font size that tobarstep mentions below. However, some of the "other web-to-print systems" out there may be set to not accept jobs from 9.3.12; you'd have to ask the vendors of those other systems about that.

I don't see it mentioned anywhere here, so I'll throw this in since we are currently using the pre-release 9.3.12 version. We haven't noticed any real issues but there are a few minor quirks that have popped up.

 

1) The rule editor window is displaying fonts at an unreadable size (extremely small). The problem seems to be that no font is selected in the editor window settings. Opening the settings dialog and selecting a font fixes this. This is after upgrading systems that had displayed properly previously.

We are working on a fix for this.

2) Files like the "cfg" and "msg" now seem to be Unicode instead of ASCII. We had some users open a cfg in notepad.exe to make changes and it appeared to them as one, run-on sentence. I had them open it in another text editor (Notepad++ in this case) and it displayed fine. Maybe the line terminators have been changed from CRLF to just CR? We also have some VBscripts running externally that parse msg files looking for certain data. I had to alter the scripts to force the text streams to be read as Unicode, otherwise they were returning gibberish as I assume they were defaulting to read ASCII.

This is 100 percent by design. All the log, intermediate, and other files written by FusionPro are now 16-bit Unicode files. The major change in FusionPro 9.2 was the addition of support for Unicode throughout the system, including Japanese and Chinese file name and UI support. The Notepad app in Windows Vista and later should be able to display these files properly, although if you're running XP, you may need to use a different text file editing/reading app.

 

Note that there may be some line ending inconsistencies in certain files, especially in log (.msg) files which have had lines with \n or \r characters written to them via the Print() function in JavaScript, although files such as CFG and DIF files should all have consistent line endings.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is 100 percent by design. All the log, intermediate, and other files written by FusionPro are now 16-bit Unicode files. The major change in FusionPro 9.2 was the addition of support for Unicode throughout the system, including Japanese and Chinese file name and UI support. The Notepad app in Windows Vista and later should be able to display these files properly, although if you're running XP, you may need to use a different text file editing/reading app.

 

Note that there may be some line ending inconsistencies in certain files, especially in log (.msg) files which have had lines with \n or \r characters written to them via the Print() function in JavaScript, although files such as CFG and DIF files should all have consistent line endings.

 

OK, that makes perfect sense with what we've seen. We upgraded to 9.3 from 8.7 so this was the first time we'd seen the files as Unicode. Now that we've made the adjustments to our scripts everything works just fine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

I was not able to reproduce the following problems:

  • Imposition selection in compose window does not "stick", if after selecting a file you select another tab

 

I get this happening when I change the data source. So if I have a proof file and set the imposition and compose it is fine. If I then change the data to a live file the imposition file is no longer there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

I am happy to announce that we have an update to FusionPro VDP 9.3 with support for Adobe Acrobat DC and Adobe InDesign CC 2015, on both Windows and Mac.

 

You can download FusionPro VDP 9.3.21 for Windows and FusionPro VDP 9.3.22 for Mac from the downloads page:

http://marcom.com/resources/support-training/fusionpro-downloads/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, that'll teach me for assuming a release has less bugs than the previous. One machine I was testing on with Acrobat DC will not compose at all. FP locks up, with no status in the message box of the composer window. The other machine with Acrobat XI I cannot compose multiple jobs and expect them to "queue" up like previously. And the imposition issue I had 11 months ago is still there. I sent an email to support this morning, and have heard no response yet. I seriously am lost at this point with FP.

 

[support did get back to me, they changed email addresses though to @marcom.com and my spam filter assumed it was junk].

Edited by ScottHillock
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Are there release notes that explain what enhancements are specific to 9.3.21.

Follow the link at the start of this thread to the FusionPro VDP Software Version History page:

http://marcom.com/resources/support-training/fusionpro-vdp-software-version-history/

Or, follow the link at the start of this thread to the FusionPro VDP Software Download page, and click on the link for the release notes:

http://static.pti.com/release_notes/fp_v9.3.22_releaseNotes.pdf

Still hoping the imposition not "sticking" has been addressed as noted in my previous post.

I'm not able to reproduce that problem from the information provided. Please provide specific steps to reproduce it. Starting a new thread would be good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, that'll teach me for assuming a release has less bugs than the previous. One machine I was testing on with Acrobat DC will not compose at all. FP locks up, with no status in the message box of the composer window.

We haven't seen this in our QA testing, nor have we heard reports from other users. Can you please specify the exact versions of Acrobat and the operating system?

The other machine with Acrobat XI I cannot compose multiple jobs and expect them to "queue" up like previously.

That was never really intended to be a feature of the Fusion Pro VDP Creator/Desktop software. Queueing multiple jobs is a feature of the Producer (FP Direct) product.

And the imposition issue I had 11 months ago is still there.

As I said to Don, we need more specific steps to reproduce that problem.

I sent an email to support this morning, and have heard no response yet. I seriously am lost at this point with FP.

 

[support did get back to me, they changed email addresses though to @marcom.com and my spam filter assumed it was junk].

Sorry about that. The change has caused me problems as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've sent a video of the imposition setting not sticking to support again (I had also done it previously).

 

As for the queueing issue I'm having I'm really hoping I'm reading your statement wrong and you are not saying you're removing a feature (even if it was unintentional).

 

It was a blind queue where you couldn't see what was next, or pause, or shuffle jobs in the queue around. This difference and the fact that FP Direct is a server product differentiates the products enough that I don't think you should be removing functionality to nudge us into upgrading.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...
If our creative dept is saving resources (fonts, images, etc) to a separate folder and is accessible, can't we just point to that font without installing them into our c:\windows\fonts directory, reloading in FP Acrobat, restarting FP Acrobat?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
If our creative dept is saving resources (fonts, images, etc) to a separate folder and is accessible, can't we just point to that font without installing them into our c:\windows\fonts directory, reloading in FP Acrobat, restarting FP Acrobat?

No. I don't know of any program that doesn't at least require fonts to be installed to the operating system (generally in the Windows\Fonts directory on Windows). And FusionPro needs to load fonts before it can use them.

How do I start a new thread?

Go to the main forum page, select a subforum, click on it, then you will see a "New Thread" button to click.

I see the FPExpression folder in the installed directory.

 

How do we utilize it?

You mean the FPExpression folder inside the FusionPro folder? You can't utilize that, at least not directly. It's an unlicensed, command-line-only version of FP Expression, that's there so that FusionPro VDP can Preview jobs which use FP Expression templates, such as the Frodo Travel tutorial. But the FP Expression images will be watermarked unless/until you install a licensed copy of FP Expression. Once you install a licensed copy of FP Expression, it will appear in its own folder under Program Files, and you can use it to design new FP Expression templates, as well as to create Expression images in FusionPro VDP jobs without watermarks.

Are there some examples on Expression?
Yes, there are manuals and tutorials included with a licensed FP Expression installation. There's also more information on our website, including a template gallery.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...