Mac OS X Mavericks Support

Following up on the Maverick error:

Is Maverick OS supported with Fusion Pro yet?

Like I said a few days ago, we're hoping to have a release with Mavericks support later this month, and for now, Support may be able to provide you with a beta with partial Mavericks support.

I has been months now since this issue was first posted and the response back was that it was still being tested. How long will it take for PTI to test this and get it working with OS X Mavericks. I am a third party trainer of the software and don't always have the luxury of working with a client who has not already upgraded to Mavericks and we need to be able to support these clients. Please provide an update on it's support.

Thanks.

I has been months now since this issue was first posted and the response back was that it was still being tested.

We were indeed investigating Mavericks-related issues late last year, but we were not able to begin development work to address those issues until this year.

How long will it take for PTI to test this and get it working with OS X Mavericks. I am a third party trainer of the software and don't always have the luxury of working with a client who has not already upgraded to Mavericks and we need to be able to support these clients. Please provide an update on it's support.

All I can do is apologize again for the delay, thank you again for your patience, and, in EFI's case, for your partnership, and reiterate what I posted last week, that this is actively being worked on. We have a build of FusionPro 9.2 for Mac in QA testing right now. I am personally still hopeful that we will have a release by the end of this month, but I cannot guarantee any release date.

As I have also mentioned multiple times in this thread, Support may be able to provide a Beta build with partial Mavericks support.

OSX 10.10 is right around the corner guys......hope PTI works very hard on that too.

Where are you getting information about 10.10? All I can find are rumors that it might be previewed at WWDC in June. So as far as I know, there's nothing we can do about 10.10 right now.

I personally hope that, once a pre-release of OS 10.10 (or OS 11, or whatever the next version of Mac OS will be), is made available for developers, that we will be in a better position to start evaluating it and finding potential problems sooner than we were able to do so for 10.9. But that's not all up to me. Any comments about our development schedules are welcome, but this forum is not necessarily the best way to reach anyone who has any control over that. That said, I can assure you that I'm personally doing what I can to try to convince the people in charge of such things to move maintenance higher up in the priority list for future development work (versus new features).

It would be great if, whenever Apple comes out with a new release of OS X (or Adobe comes out with a new version of Acrobat or InDesign, or Microsoft makes more changes to Windows), that we were able to drop everything and just work on supporting it. But things don't always work out that way. (I suppose that the one thing we could do to get ready for the next version of OS X is to update some of the other older Mac technologies we're using, but it's hard to justify making changes like that based on guesswork.)

Anyway, as for Mavericks, after several production candidates, we have what I sincerely hope is a releasable build of FusionPro VDP 9.2 for Mac in QA right now. Barring any serious issues found with it, look for an announcement later this week. (Yes, I said "week," not "month" this time.) This will include (almost) full support for Mavericks, as well as support for InDesign CC. (The "almost" is related to support for the FP Producer Monitor app on Mavericks, which I'm working on now for a follow-up 9.2 release.)

Anyone who has been clever enough to check the version history or downloads pages for FusionPro VDP will have noticed that FusionPro VDP 9.2 for Windows, with support for InDesign CC, is already available. Such a clever person may also notice that FusionPro 9.2 adds support for Japanese and Chinese in the user interface, and may be able to figure out that adding such support has dominated our development efforts for quite some time, which would also likely be one of the main reasons for the delay with Mavericks support.

That's about as candid as I can be about things, or even possibly a bit more candid than I really should be.

Thanks again to everyone for your patience with Mavericks support. We really are almost there.

For anyone that hasn't already checked, Version 9.2.25 for Mac is now available on the downloads page of PTI's website. I'm downloading as we speak.

Dan, thank you for the information. Looking forward to finally getting up and running using the new version!

Mavericks is now supported via FP VDP 9.2!

Download the installer here

It the update to 9.2.xx free for 9.0.3 users?

Or do we first have to go through 9.2?

erling, yes the update is free for all users of 9.x.

I just submitted these issues to Support (or at least I think I did. The support form is not finishing the submission process for some reason). If you are not experiencing these issues I would stay on 9.0.3 until the next update. I know PTI has been working hard to get the Mavericks compatibility and new language features pushed into recent updates, and may not have gone through their total QA procedure on the latest updates.

I'm using the latest version of Fusion 9.2.26 on OSX Mavericks and I'm having some issues.

1. - When using the Variable Text Editor, the field names are listed in Alphabetical order. Previous versions of Fusion Pro, as well as in other parts of the current version (preview pane, etc.), list the field names in the order that the database has them in.

2. - Last locations are not saved/used. In previous versions when composing a job, if I were to click browse to enter a new file name, the Finder save dialog box would take me to the same folder that is defined. Given this folder structure Job#> Mail files > exportedfolder. Previously, clicking on Browse would take me to the exportedfolder (if it was the last place an output file was saved to). On the current version most of the time I’m taken to the “Mail files” folder. This may be more related to an OSX Mavericks issue? But it does slow down our workflow, and could lead to errors.

3. - Fonts not translating from InDesign to Fusion. In my InDesign document there is variable text that is calling out NissanAG-Regular and NissanAG-Medium. When exported to FusionPro, both instances are looking for NissanAG (according to the Font Usage dialog).

4. - Fonts not loading correctly in Fusion. In the fonts.ini the fonts are not being called out correctly. I might have 3 lines for NissanAG-Regular. One being defined as regular, one as bold, and one as italic. The bold instance is translating to NissanAG-Medium, the italic instance as NissanAG-BoldItalic. Same applies for Condensed, Black, Extended versions. I’m having to edit the fonts.ini to remove all of the bad callouts. I know the Bold and Italic Styling is there to support the tags of <b> and <i>. However, I’d prefer an advanced option of sorts. If I want to use a tag to define a bold/italic style of a font, I can specify the exact font.

ScottHillock,

I have also sent some sample files to support and am waiting to here back. I am still running a demo version of 9.2.26. Creative Cloud CC and OSX 10.9 Mavs.

Charting feature doesn't appear to be working 9.2. This is a big issue for me since, I have a few jobs I run weekly that require simple bar graphs. If I open an FP document created in FP6.2, the graphs themselves work, as long as I do not open properties in 9.2. The title text on the chart doesn't print and instead prints a couple of lines of the source code, but the actual graph looks correct.

I've been told if I revert back to VDP Creator 9.1 and OSX 10.8 and go back to Creative Suite 6, the charting should work.

I even tried a work around to cover up the fact the chart titles returned code instead of the actual chart title, I got the result I wanted, but not only do I get an error (from the charting) on every record, the document with the graph, 9.2.26 will also not process more than 500 records. For example, if the project is 6,000 records it will process 469 records then report "Processing Complete." But the processing "wheel" on the FusionPro Composition System will just keep rotating forever.

I also noticed the field names in the text editor were alphabetical, didn't know if it was a "bug" or new "feature".

Understandable that upgrades of this nature are going to cause some issues here and there, but something as big as "charting doesn't function properly" is a big deal.

I'm trying to be neutral here, but I have spent months getting my bosses to agree to an entire system upgrade (long overdue), they finally agreed and now I have to go back and tell them we either have to revert to an older system (OSX 10.8 and Creative Suite 6) or just keep using our older versions of software(CS 3 and FP6.2).

I am sure the people at PTI are doing their best to resolve these issues and will get them all working at some point, but for now, I would avoid running VDP Creator 9.2, Creative Cloud CC and OSX 10.9 Mavs at this point. If you can.

Thanks everyone. We are aware of all of the issues described here (with one exception), and we have a new build of FusionPro VDP 9.2 for Mac with fixes for those issues, and a few others, in QA right now. With any luck, we'll be able to release the new build very soon.

The one exception is the "Last locations are not saved/used" issue that Scott mentioned. I'm not able to reproduce that, and I'm also not sure what the design requirement is in this regard.

The change to the order of fields displayed in the Text Editor was unintentional, and had previously been fixed in FusionPro 9.2 on Windows.

The chart dialog problems definitely should have been caught by our internal QA testing. Those are fixed now, and we have also gone back and examined our QA process to ensure that the UI is tested more thoroughly going forward. (Adding support for Japanese and Chinese UI to FusionPro VDP 9.2 necessitated code changes in some features and functionality that had previously not been touched for many years.)

Regarding the font issues, we had to make some changes to the way that fonts are handled so that font family names appear properly when running in Japanese and Chinese. We are also trying to move away from older "QuickDraw" font names on Mac, to use the same standard font names shown in the Font Book app. These changes were tested against a fairly large set of fonts by our QA team. But, we unfortunately do not have access to every possible font out there. However, with feedback from users via Support, we have been able to identify and fix the problems. Or at least, we've been able to fix the problem with all the fonts that have been sent to us.

The upshot is that, in the new patch release, when running under English locale on Mac, fonts should load basically the same way, with the same names, as in prior versions of FusionPro. In a future build, some of the font names may differ slightly as we transition away from older QuickDraw font names, but for the most part, the transition should be seamless, and font names used in FusionPro templates will be automatically "upgraded" as necessary.

The new build also adds support for the FusionPro VDP Producer (FP Direct) Monitor app on Mavericks, which was the last bit of functionality that needed to be ported for Mavericks. (Users of Producer may see some performance improvement in the Monitor app on Mac as well, even under older versions of OS X.)

Thanks again to everyone for their patience while we get these issues worked out, and apologies for the trouble caused. With the build being tested now, I think we've finally closed the gap on critical functionality from previous versions.

Any ideas on a release date with the patch that fixes the fonts issues. I'm constantly having to re-create layouts I have set up in 9.2 back into the version 6. Client wants to change a font to one 9.2 wont recognize (HelveticaNeue font family is a big one).

Anytime I choose helvetica Neue light, it either displays and prints it as helvetica Neue light italic or a couple of times it has been gibberish. It allows me to select the correct font and everything displays corrected in the variable text editor. But changes the font when previewing or printing. And then if I go back to variable text editor, it has changed the font to an italic or bold version.

Any ideas on a release date with the patch that fixes the fonts issues.

The new build for Mac, FusionPro VDP 9.2.31, is now available. You can download it here:

http://www.pti.com/downloads/fusionpro/

This should load fonts the same way as in older (pre-9.2) versions of FusionPro VDP. We have validated it against all the fonts that were sent to us by customers.

It should also fix all of the other problems brought up in this thread (with the lone exception of Scott's "Last locations are not saved/used" issue). In addition, it adds support for the FusionPro VDP Producer (FP Direct) Monitor app on Mavericks.

"This should load fonts the same way as in older (pre-9.2) versions of FusionPro VDP."

If only this statement were true......

"This should load fonts the same way as in older (pre-9.2) versions of FusionPro VDP."

 

If only this statement were true......

Is there a specific problem you're having? If so, we can probably help. If not, then I'm not sure what you're getting at.

The only issue I still have with fonts is that the names do not translate correctly from InDesign to Fusion. So every new job I need to manually define the fonts for all of the text. Along with the usual stuff that doesn't translate over (ex. paragraph spacing), and settings in InDesign that are not the same in Fusion (ex. Superscript percentages).

Also, there's an issue with tabbing between fields in FusionPro dialogs (weird and non existent orders). An example, selecting records to compose, placing your cursor in the first box, and then trying to tab over to the second one does nothing. When editing the superscript percentages, the order of tabbing between input fields seems almost random.

Thanks Scott. Are these new issues in FusionPro 9.2, or were they issues with previous versions as well? Not that we don't want to fix problems even if they're older, but problems which existed prior to FusionPro 9.2 aren't directly relevant to this particular thread.

The only issue I still have with fonts is that the names do not translate correctly from InDesign to Fusion. So every new job I need to manually define the fonts for all of the text. Along with the usual stuff that doesn't translate over (ex. paragraph spacing), and settings in InDesign that are not the same in Fusion (ex. Superscript percentages).

You're touching here on a much larger issue, which has to do with differences between how InDesign does things and how FusionPro (not "Fusion") does things. There are also differences between how InDesign and QuarkXPress handle things like font names and spacing, and differences in how InDesign and Word handle things, etc. Unfortunately, there is no universally agreed-upon "right" way to do something as complex as typesetting, and none of the makers of any of these typesetting engines have access to the exact algorithms that other vendors use. So, FusionPro and InDesign are never going to do everything exactly the same. That said, we do try to pull over as many settings as possible from InDesign. Again, though, I can't do anything without specifics, so if there's a particular problem you're having, please collect up the files and send them to us.

Regarding font names, there are some fundamental differences in how InDesign and FusionPro deal with them. FusionPro uses a text model based upon font families, where a font is called out by its family name, and then a particular style, or face, of that font family is specified by the use (or absence) of <b> and <i> tags (or by the equivalent buttons on the Text Editor dialog) to call out Regular/Normal/Plain, Bold, Italic, or Bold+Italic style. This is similar to the text model used by RTF/Word and HTML, so that text can be emphasized in bold or italic regardless of the font family in effect. InDesign, on the other hand, uses a font instance model, where a particular style of a font is called out explicitly by name (i.e. "Arial Bold Italic"). There are also some differences in how InDesign and FusionPro handle the font instance names. I'm currently working on some changes to font loading which should alleviate some of these differences, but it's impossible to know whether the changes are correct for every possible font out there. That's why I encourage you to submit fonts you're having trouble with to Support.

Also, there's an issue with tabbing between fields in FusionPro dialogs (weird and non existent orders). An example, selecting records to compose, placing your cursor in the first box, and then trying to tab over to the second one does nothing. When editing the superscript percentages, the order of tabbing between input fields seems almost random.

This also touches on a larger issue. You might notice that, unlike most Mac apps and dialogs which support "Full Keyboard Access," so that you can tab between all controls on a dialog, not just text boxes, and work with them using the keyboard (like on Windows), some of the dialogs in FusionPro do not support this. This is due to the older Carbon architecture used by our Acrobat plug-in. This architecture is somewhat dictated by Acrobat itself, which is also a Carbon application. One of the longer-term projects we're working on is converting these dialogs to use newer technologies, which will eventually enable us to end our reliance on Carbon and use newer Mac APIs such as Cocoa. Although it's always a moving target with Apple and OS X.

Again, though, I don't think any of these issues are specific to or new in FusionPro 9.2.

Dan,

I was referring to having to alter the .ini file on certain fonts even on 9.2.31. No worries, we are moving away from FP so hopefully my headache will end or get even bigger.

I was referring to having to alter the .ini file on certain fonts even on 9.2.31

Which fonts? And what exactly is not working that you need to modify the fonts.ini file? And, more to the point, did these fonts work correctly without modifying fonts.ini in previous versions of FusionPro?

If you want help, you can be more specific, and contact Support with the fonts, and we'll take a look. Otherwise, my guessing skills aren't good enough to figure out what the problem is and what fonts you mean.

No worries, we are moving away from FP so hopefully my headache will end or get even bigger.

If you want to use a different product, that's your right.

If you just want to complain, that's your right as well, but doing so here is not adding any value to this community. You've been a valuable member here for a long time, so please don't force me to put on my moderator hat.

Ok. Not intending to make waves here or cause any discord. How do I go about deleting my profile?

I don't think you can delete your profile on a vBulletin forum. Doing so would break up any threads to which you have contributed.

You can edit your profile to change or remove any information that you no longer want to be visible. You can also just log out and not post anymore if you no longer wish to participate.

If you want to discuss this further, please send me a Private Message, as all of this metadiscussion is off-topic for this thread. (Yes, I know my signature says I can't respond to PMs, but this is in my capacity as a moderator.) Thanks.

Dan, yes most of the issues are new in FusionPro 9.2, and were not there in 8.x. Some fonts used to translate over correctly, while others did not. Now, almost none do. For example, Futura Std Book used to be applied correctly, while Futura Book would not. Now neither does. Also, sometimes correct paragraph leading, space after/before are brought in when paragraph styles are used. If no paragraph styles are used leading is not brought in at all. And if text has paragraph styles overridden, the overridden settings are not used, just the settings from the defined style.

Again, for the tabbing, this worked correctly in FusionPro 8.x. In FusionPro 9.2.31 tabbing from one input box shows unexpected behavior.

Can you guide me to the best place to reach support. I have tried in the past to submit issues and have received no response. I'm not sure if that's because the issues were actively being worked on and a fix was posted a couple days after, or if the old form on the website was not the correct place (I see it has now been replaced with a simple mailto: link).

Hi,

I am working with FusionPro and I am trying to set it up for my new mac (OSX 10.9.4, 2.2GHz, Intel Core i7) and I am having issues.

I installed FusionPro 9.2.31, the plugins are there (both Indesign CC 9.2.2 and Acrobat 11.0.0) but the tools in Acrobat are corrupt: All I can see are the words FusionPro and an arrow - when I open it I see a tiny orange bit of the FusionPro logo but no tools.

I need the problem to be solved as soon as possible, could you please provide me with some support?

Thanks!