XMetaL 8.0 with Acrolinx Plugin: Troubles with Win8

[pmasal]

McAfee is using XMetaL 8.0 with Acrolinx Plugin v3.2 build 882 from 2013-06-19Z, revision 210335. When we check out/edit another DITA object, all the toolbars become undocked and hidden, and file menu disappears from XMetaL. The only remaining toolbar is the Acrolinx toolbar. This does not occur when the Acrolinx plugin is not installed. The problem is likely with saving the user's XMetaL configuration. When I exit XMetaL, delete both instances of XMetaL 8.tbr, and access XMetaL again, everything is fine (with the Acrolinx plugin installed).

Just Systems provided a fix for this, in the form of a new XMetaL80.exe, but it only seems to work with Win7. With Win8, we get a dll error. Is a similar fix available for Win8?
Thanks!
Paul Masalsky, McAfee

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[XMetaLOldTimer]

This issue occurs when using the SDL/Trisoft CMS to edit DITA documents.  SDL/Trisoft deploys the DITA customization files to the desktop and this interferes with the global toolbar changes that Acrolinx makes at startup.  If SDL didn't deploy these toolbars to the client system, there is not problem.

I proposed a workaround to another customer but I never heard back on if it worked or not.  Basically, you need to run the software and create DITA documents outside of SDL so that the Acrolinx changes get written into the DITA .tbr files under the per-user area.  Then, you need to upload the modified .tbr files to the SDL server.  Kind of painful, I know but I am not aware of any other workaround at the moment.

Regards,
Addam

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[pmasal]

Thanks Addam! I heard that Acrolinx is working on a potential fix. Also moving to XMetaL 9 might solve the issue, but SDL doesn't claim support for XMetaL 9 in Live Content Architect 2013, so we'd be on the hook for an upgrade there. We'll figure something out…
when you say “upload the modified .tbr files to the SDL server,” do you mean that each user's .tbr file would need to reside on their application server? Or just one set of tbr's for everyone?
Paul M.

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[XMetaLOldTimer]

when you say “upload the modified .tbr files to the SDL server,” do you mean that each user's .tbr file would need to reside on their application server? Or just one set of tbr's for everyone?
Paul M.

No, just one set of tbr's for everyone.  So, you need one for topic, another for concept, etc.

I am not so confident that Acrolinx can make a fix for this.  Acrolinx's add-on does modifications to the built-in toolbars.  Upon opening a document, that document's toolbars are merged on-the-fly with the modified built-in toolbars.  The algorithm involves comparing unique identifers and the order/position of toolbar entries is critical to the whole system working properly.  So, I wonder if the toolbars SDL uploaded in the first place our out-of-sync with the built-in definitions…thus causing the merging to fail and general random chaos.

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