Xmetal Publishing Controller freeze

[cdybdahl]

I am experiencing an issue where the XMetaL Publishing Controller freezes and needs to be forced to quit when running output.

System:
Windows 7 and XP (two machines, fresh installs of XMetaL)
XMetaL Author Enterprise 6.0.0.079

This problem manifests itself regardless of output type (PDF, Webhelp, CHM, etc).
Changing the _rem_cmd_synchro_mode  =  2 to cmd_synchro_mode  =  2 changes the behavior somewhat, but both XMetaL and the publishing controller window still freeze. With the cmd_synchro_mode  =  2 value I am able to continue working in XMetaL after force quitting the publishing controller, which is better but still not great.

The xmpde.exe process pegs pretty much immediately at 50% of processor, so it's fully occupying one of the cores on the Windows 7 machine.

Output actually does get generated, but the process continues to hang long after the output folder is populated until the user intervenes. I tried re-deploying the toolkit but that did not change the behavior.

Reply

[Derek Read]

The only two things I can think of to resolve this (the first of which you've tried):

1) Redeploy the DITA OT.
2) Reinstall the product.

Has the DITA OT been modified the same way on both affected machines?
Was the change made just prior to this behavior occurring?
Can you undo any changes (ie: fresh installation without modifying the DITA OT) and confirm that the out of the box DITA OT we install is working?

Reply

[cdybdahl]

Thanks for the quick reply, Derek.

In one instance, it is a fresh install of XMetaL.
In both cases, the toolkit was redeployed to out-of-the-box settings by renaming the DITA-OT folder in the SoftQuad/XMetal Shared folder. I have not applied any customizations since redeploying. It should be completely stock.

I will try reinstalling XMetaL and report back with my findings.

Reply

[gcrews]

Interesting, it sounds almost like the issue I had/have ( http://forums.xmetal.com/index.php?topic=971.0 ), I'm just using the standard output option though.  The problem actually appeared again yesterday. The dialog box shows but then xmetal locks up with 100% core usage. The toolkit and everything runs fine in the background though.

Does the Publishing Controller thing have a progress bar that bounces back and fourth? I am suspicious of that since its the only thing that does not load on the dialog. Maybe the progress bar  move function loops with breaking.

At first I was suspicious of some recent Microsoft updates but im not so sure anymore.
Interesting thing though yesterday. I found a reboot with not doing anything else made the problem stops. I can  think of anything strange I did since I booted my computer up  that morning and when it started acting up.

Reply

[cdybdahl]

Reinstalling XMetaL worked… for the first couple of times I ran output yesterday.
Today the problem has returned, still using an unmodified version of the toolkit.

The only change I can think of between this working and now is the installation of several Windows updates.

gcrews:

The Publishing Controller looks just like the normal dialog that appears when running output. It's SUPPOSED to have the green thing dashing back and forth, but when this issue is present, the green thing never appears.

I guess I'll try a reboot and see if that has any effect.

Derek: any other suggestions?

Reply

[Derek Read]

(just got back from vacation)

I've checked with the main developer that manages this part of our code and he can't guess why this might be occurring on your machine. We'd like to reproduce the issue but so far cannot speculate what might trigger it, so if you can provide any more clues as to what might be unique about this machine that would be really useful.

Reply

[Yuwono]

Hi I have the same issue as above. I have Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit and XMetal 6.0.1.030.
Do you think Home Premium causing this problem?

Reply

[Su-Laine Yeo]

64-bit is probably the problem. XMetaL is currently not supported on 64-bit machines. We plan to support it in the next major release.

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