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Critical Parser Failure


daanrud

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I am currently trying to create products to be used in EFI's Digital Storefront. I keep getting the Critical Parser Failure whenever I save my template and also when I try to collect my files. The ONLY time I get this error is when I rotate a graphic or text box with a different value than what is within the drop down for choices (90, 180, 270). Whenever I create graphic or image boxes without rotating them, everything works fine. I have also noticed that the border of the graphic or text box disappears when it is rotated with a different value than what is within the drop down.

 

My current specs:

Mac OS 10.9.4

FusionPro 9.2.35

Pitstop 12, Update 3. Beta 1

 

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The problem is in the PitStop plug-in. FusionPro is not doing anything differently than it has done for over ten years now. It's PitStop that changed something to make it put up those error messages. Therefore, I suggest that you contact Enfocus and ask them to fix the problem in PitStop.
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This same error occurs with Pitstop 11. I've used FP 7, 8, and 9 with Pitstop 11 and only encounter the error with FusionPro 9.

 

It's clear that the issue is coming from Pitstop as it has the icon for it in the error prompt. The odd thing here is that it is not triggered by earlier versions of FusionPro (at least on the 2 machines I tested it on). I'm hoping it goes away when 13 comes out as it is extremely annoying to deal with on a constant basis.

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This same error occurs with Pitstop 11. I've used FP 7, 8, and 9 with Pitstop 11 and only encounter the error with FusionPro 9.

Hmm, then I guess I'm wrong that FusionPro is doing the same thing that it's always done. Although, are you sure we're talking about the same problem? There was another issue where the "Critical Parser Failure" message would pop up when doing things like turning Preview on. We did make a change in FusionPro VDP 9.2.35 to work around that (even though I maintain that was a problem with PitStop). However, I think that daanrud has uncovered a completely separate condition that causes the "Critical Parser Failure" message, specifically related to frames which are rotated at non-orthogonal (not multiples of 90-degree) angles.

It's clear that the issue is coming from Pitstop as it has the icon for it in the error prompt. The odd thing here is that it is not triggered by earlier versions of FusionPro (at least on the 2 machines I tested it on). I'm hoping it goes away when 13 comes out as it is extremely annoying to deal with on a constant basis.

Yes, the error message is coming from PitStop. Even if FusionPro is doing something not quite right in the PDF, PitStop should be more specific about what exactly the problem is. Also, if Acrobat is not complaining, then I would argue that whatever it is we're doing that's triggering that message in PitStop isn't really illegal at all. Unless somehow Enfocus is more of an authority on what's valid in a PDF than Adobe is.

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David, I get the exact same error when I try to save my PDF with a rotated frame. I also do not use the Preview and still get this error.

 

We have been dealing with this since June and have been in contact with both FusionPro (Alex Marshall) and Enfocus Support (Michele Collins), but have yet to get a resolution.

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http://i.imgur.com/TKYDihU.png

 

This screenshot was just taken on 9.2.30 running Windows 8.1, Acrobat 11.0.08, and Pitstop 11 update 2.

 

For me it is always triggered when I go to compose, locally or to the API. Clicking OK once does not clear it. I usually have to OK it like 10 times or so, I just hit enter rapidly until it goes away.

 

It is also almost always triggered if I have preview turned on and I click save. Turning preview off does seem to help most the time and I don't get the error.

 

This same problem exists on another Windows 7 workstation where FP Designer is installed along with Pitstop 11.

 

Is 9.2.35 available for the PC?

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Thanks for all the additional info. It's clear to me now that we are, in fact, dealing with two separate, though related, issues in this thread. I feel a bit like the chess master playing different games against multiple people at the same time. But here goes:

In case it helps, the complete warning message that I see is:

 

"Critical parser failure: Unknown character in content stream"

Thanks, although that's still pretty vague. Couldn't PitStop at least give some kind of hint about what content stream, on which annotation, is causing it offense? Or, at the very least, say what character it is that it doesn't like?

 

Also, just because PitStop doesn't know what some character in the content stream is, that doesn't necessarily mean it's not legal in the PDF, nor that FusionPro is doing something wrong. Again, I would expect that if FusionPro were truly doing something illegal in the PDF, that Acrobat itself would also complain about it.

 

EDIT: David, you need to contact Support and ask for version 9.2.35, which will work around the problem you're seeing.

David, I get the exact same error when I try to save my PDF with a rotated frame. I also do not use the Preview and still get this error.

You get the same message box pop-up, but it's not the same problem.

 

Thomas and David are having a more general problem, which has to do with PitStop not liking how FusionPro is setting the content stream for all its frames (annotations). There was a change made to FusionPro in the 9.2.35 release to work around this bug in PitStop.

 

You (daanrud) are having a much narrower issue, related only to rotated frames. No changes have been made to FusionPro to work around that more specific aspect of the PitStop bug.

We have been dealing with this since June and have been in contact with both FusionPro (Alex Marshall) and Enfocus Support (Michele Collins), but have yet to get a resolution.

Sorry that you've been on hold for so long. I think that it hasn't been clear to us (at PTI) until now that there is a separate issue related to rotated frames, beyond the issue with frames in general that Thomas is seeing (and which has already been worked around in the version of FusionPro that you're using).

 

In other words, we thought that we had already made all of the changes that we needed to in FusionPro 9.2.35 to work around the bug in PitStop. But it seems you have uncovered another aspect of that PitStop bug, which we have not accounted for in FusionPro.

http://i.imgur.com/TKYDihU.png

 

This screenshot was just taken on 9.2.30 running Windows 8.1, Acrobat 11.0.08, and Pitstop 11 update 2.

 

For me it is always triggered when I go to compose, locally or to the API. Clicking OK once does not clear it. I usually have to OK it like 10 times or so, I just hit enter rapidly until it goes away.

 

It is also almost always triggered if I have preview turned on and I click save. Turning preview off does seem to help most the time and I don't get the error.

 

This same problem exists on another Windows 7 workstation where FP Designer is installed along with Pitstop 11.

Yes, this is the more general aspect of the PitStop bug, the one for which we made a change in FusionPro 9.2.35 to work around.

Is 9.2.35 available for the PC?

No. We originally had a couple of Mac users who were having this problem, so we made version 9.2.35 on Mac available to them. There is currently no Windows build with the workaround in it. I will ask about making a build with the same change available on Windows.

 

I have to reiterate that, even though it may be possible for us to change what FusionPro is doing to work around the issue in PitStop, and even though we did make a change in the 9.2.35 build for Mac to work around the more general problem as a convenience for our customers, this is nevertheless a bug in PitStop, and it is ultimately Enfocus's responsibility to fix it. It's PitStop that's putting up that box, not FusionPro. If the people from Enfocus try to tell you that it's not their bug, then ask them why Acrobat itself has no problem with what FusionPro is doing, and why Enfocus should be the arbiter of what's valid in a PDF file, rather than Adobe. It's like they're taking it upon themselves to pull over fellow drivers on the freeway for things that the cops are fine with.

Edited by Dan Korn
Added note to David about the 9.2.35 release
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I'm only using 9.2.31, but I ran an Acrobat preflight on a a FusionPro PDF that has 2 pages. And I get the following errors only on page 2: Page Description Errors > Offending Command. So, it's not just Enfocus that's seeing it as an error. Adobe also sees it as an error.

 

Report.txt attached.

Okay, but what is "it?" Are you sure that what PitStop is complaining about is the same thing that the preflight is offended by? I think this is a red herring. In the preflight report file you attached, every instance of "Offending command" is followed by "Outside visible page area," which, without having the PDF to look at and know for sure, I think means that the FusionPro annotation extends beyond the bounds of the page. So I think what the preflight is telling you there is that the annotations can't be printed reliably. But so what? You're not trying to print those annotations. For that matter, you're not really trying to print the FusionPro template PDF at all, so these "errors" are not really meaningful. At any rate, the errors listed in your preflight report don't seem to have anything to do with the "Unknown character in content stream" error that PitStop is reporting.

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PDF and Preflight profile attached.

 

I should have been more specific in my last post, by "it" I mean FusionPro Text and Image Frames. The fact that Acrobat Preflight marks FusionPro frames as errors means the FusionPro frames are not conforming to the PDF standard.(When running the preflight it specifically highlights the frames). I can only assume Pitstop is running a quick check of page content to see if anything is corrupt, or is mis-formatted, and is complaining about the frames also.

 

Again, I'm only running 9.2.31, and I'm not sure how the fixes are implemented in the version that PTI currently has in QA right now. And from your posts it does seem like the errors that Pitstop is reporting no longer appear. And in the new version Acrobat might not be finding errors with those frames either.

testfile.pdf

New Profile 2.kfp.zip

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PDF and Preflight profile attached.

 

I should have been more specific in my last post, by "it" I mean FusionPro Text and Image Frames. The fact that Acrobat Preflight marks FusionPro frames as errors means the FusionPro frames are not conforming to the PDF standard.

No, that's actually not what it means. The preflighting is about more than just conformance to the PDF standard. It's about whether your file is ready to print. But you're not trying to print the FusionPro template (or at least I don't know why you would want to). What's relevant for pre-flighting is the composed PDF output, not the template PDF.

(When running the preflight it specifically highlights the frames). I can only assume Pitstop is running a quick check of page content to see if anything is corrupt, or is mis-formatted, and is complaining about the frames also.

Well, we can all only assume what PitStop is complaining about, since the error message it displays is not very specific.

 

The preflight report, on the other hand, is very specific, and very specifically notes that the problem is that the annotation is "Outside visible page area." This means exactly what it says. It's not invalid to have things in a PDF file that extend beyond the page area, but such things are not going to print correctly. Again, preflighting is about preparing for print, not about PDF conformance.

Again, I'm only running 9.2.31, and I'm not sure how the fixes are implemented in the version that PTI currently has in QA right now. And from your posts it does seem like the errors that Pitstop is reporting no longer appear.

Yes, you need to do the same thing that I told David to do, which is to contact Support and ask them for the 9.2.35 build, which works around the bug in PitStop, at least for the general case, although it still does not seem to work around a separate issue related to rotated frames, which is what daanrud uncovered.

And in the new version Acrobat might not be finding errors with those frames either.

Again, you're talking about preflighting errors, not general PDF conformance errors.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I just wanted to check to see if there was any progress made on my original issue of the "Critical Parser Failure" message, specifically related to frames which are rotated at non-orthogonal (not multiples of 90-degree) angles?

 

Thanks

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I just wanted to check to see if there was any progress made on my original issue of the "Critical Parser Failure" message, specifically related to frames which are rotated at non-orthogonal (not multiples of 90-degree) angles?

Yes, we think we have isolated the content to which PitStop objects and have made a change to prevent that. We're awaiting confirmation from Enfocus. The next release of FusionPro 9.3 should have this change.

 

Once again, this entire process would have been a lot easier if PitStop would report something a bit more specific than basically "something went wrong."

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
Thanks Dan.

I just talked to EFI Support and right now DSF 7.6 is not compatible with FusionPro 9.3 or vice versa.

FusionPro 9.3 adds a new check box on the Collect dialog to "Preserve 9.1 Collect Format". I don't know whether a job collected with that box checked would work on DSF, but it might be worth a try. Otherwise, you'll have to wait until EFI updates DSF to support 9.3 templates.

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