Digital Workshop

Apart from the number of issues already mentioned here on the forum, the issues that currently annoy me the most with Opus is:
1. Still corrupting graphics when multiple objects are grouped.
2. Still a nightmare when working with hyperlinks in text (and has been for as long as I can remember).
3. Still crashes at design-time about every 30 mins.

Annoying because there's no workaround for them (yet).

Hi Swan

Problem Nr. 3 must be related to your machine and not to Opus. I've been working with (firstly) Presenter and then Pro 04 for over half a year now and have only experienced about two or three crashes ( mostly in the early development stages of 04).

Grouped objects are also displayed correctly on my machine -so it might be your grahics card.

I do agree with you on the hypertext issue. Working with hypertext in Opus is a bit of a problem. It would be great if you were able to save not only objects and pages but also hypertext with actions as components , so that you can reuse them over and over again . (Hope DW hears me )

Otherwise my Opus works fine !

Hi,

Thank you for your enquiry.

I appreciate your frustration with these issues, but we will need a lot more information about these problems before we are able to provide a solution. Could you possibly forward me a sample publication or sequence of steps which demonstrate the 'corrupting graphics' and 'hyperlinks' problems and I will ensure that our development team look into these issues as a matter of priority.

Your experience of the editor crashing every 30 minutes is very unusual. Our support and development teams are running Opus pretty much non-stop, often leaving the program running over weekends, and we have never encountered this kind of problem. As there have been no other reports of this problem, it does strongly suggest that the problem is system-related, rather than a bug in the editor. Do you have any other systems available upon which you could try to reproduce this problem? I suspect that the issue will not manifest itself on another machine.

I assume you have tried updating your graphics drivers and DirectX components and have performed a clean-reinstall of Opus? If not, please use the following procedure:

- Please first visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx and follow the instructions given at the web site to locate, download and install the latest version of DirectX.

Once DirectX has been updated, please use the following procedure to update your graphics drivers:

- Click Start > Settings > Control Panel > System

- Select the Device Manager tab (if you are using Windows 2000 or XP, you will need to select the Hardware tab and then click the Device Manager button)

- You should see a list of hardware types currently installed on your machine. Click on the plus-sign next to the Display Adapters entry to display the corresponding component

- Make a note of the make, model and any other information displayed

- Now visit the manufacturer's website (in most cases, this will be either www.nvidia.com, www.ati.com or www.matrox.com) and click the Download Drivers link on the homepage

- Follow the on-screen instructions to locate the latest drivers for your model of graphics card. Once located, download and install the drivers using any advice given on the manufacturer's site.

Once the graphics drivers have been updated, and the system restarted, click Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs. Look through the list of installed programs for any references to Opus Pro XE 04, Opus Presenter 04, Opus Pro 04, Illuminatus Opus, Illuminatus Opus Pro, Opus Pro XE, Opus Presenter or Illuminatus 4.5. If found, click on the entry to highlight it, then click the Remove button to uninstall the software.

Once all versions of Opus have been uninstalled, please right-click on your Start button and select Explore... Navigate to C:\Program Files and look for any folders referring to Opus Pro XE 04, Opus Presenter 04, Opus Pro 04, Illuminatus Opus, Illuminatus Opus Pro, Opus Pro XE, Opus Presenter or Illuminatus 4.5. If found, simply click on the folder to highlight it, then press Delete on the keyboard.

Once all Opus program folders have been deleted, click Start > Run, type regedit and click OK. Double-click on the HKEY_CURRENT_USER folder to display its contents. Double-click on the Software folder to display its contents. Now single-click on the Digital Workshop folder to highlight it and press Delete on the keyboard. Click Yes to confirm the deletion. Now please close the Registry Editor using the X icon in the top-right of the screen.

Now reinstall Opus Pro 04 using the original installation CD-ROM. Once installed, please download and install the Service Release 3 update from:

ftp://ftp.digitalworkshop.com/pub/opusu ... 04_SR3.exe

Once updated, please launch Opus Pro 04, load in your publication and test to see if the problem is still apparent.

If the program still crashes after a period of time, I would recommend visiting your motherboard manufacturer's web site and locating the latest miniIDE and chipset drivers for your model of motherboard as problems with these components could trigger application glitches. If you have a spare graphics card to hand, I would also try replacing the graphics card to see if this has any effect on the issue.

If the problem persists, the next step I would take would be to uninstall any applications which may be running in the background one-by-one. This includes firewall and antivirus software. After uninstalling an application, launch Opus and test to see if the problem is still present. If so, try uninstalling another application which runs in the background and test. If the problem is resolved, please contact the manufacturer of the software in question to see if they are aware of any known conflicts and if they can supply you with an update.

I hope this helps. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further queries.

Kind regards,

It's Thurdsday here now - on Monday I sent and email with project attachment and explanitory notes to support at DW.

Is the UK still in holiday mode ?
Still no reply !
Robin, I sent the file you requested over a week ago.

... and you don't think they also have other people's issues to look at ... or that it may be taking time to replicate your problem and find a solution?

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you.

I have replicated the graphical corruption with grouped objects and have asked our development team to look into this. I will contact you by e-mail tomorrow with further information.

I have not yet been able to fully replicate the hyperlink issue, but have observed some unusual memory management issues when editing hyperlinks which may be contributing to this problem. Try opening the Windows Task Manager at the 'Processes' tab and keep an eye on the Opus.exe process as you edit a hyperlink. You should notice that the memory usage increases as the Actions dialog is displayed, then settles back down again. However, you should notice that memory usage does not return to its original level and is actually around 20-30K higher than the starting value. Repeat this process and the 'resting'
value will again be roughly 20-30K higher than the previous value.

Theoretically, editing a hyperlink thousands of times in succession would consume all available memory and could cause the behaviour you describe. However, I would expect Windows to warn you of this before all resources were consumed and it would take a LOT of edits for this to occur. For example, based on my observations, a thousand successive edits without closing the editor would consume about 20MB of RAM, which is unlikely to cause a problem for most modern systems.

I have forwarded my observations to the development team and we will take a closer look at the code which handles hypertext editing to ensure that resources are being managed correctly. However, please try repeating the above test and let me know if you observe the same behaviour or if memory usage differs on your system.

Kind regards,

Thank you Robin. I reveived your email this morning.