Digital Workshop

Thanks.

I love Opus. Have been using it since version 4.50 of Illuminatus. I hardly ever had problems with the program up until version 5, and then I've had several things go bonkers on me. I'm really sad that for this particular project, I'm having to stop midstream and convert over to a help file.

Good luck,
Mike

Mike --

Please tell us about your computer. Is it a P4 with 1GB RAM? How much hard drive space do you have? Have you done a defrag lately? How much "overhead" loads (do a Run MSCONFIG and check the "Startup' tab) when you start the computer. How much Available Memory do you have? I believe I have seen the duplicate Actions once in all the time I've used OPUS. If I even slightly imagine OPUS may misbehave, I do a Save As, Close the Pub, then Exit, plus a total computer restart. I not only have normal backups, but I also use WinZip every major break point in a project to insure I have a solid version to retrieve. I do a Save after every couple of OPUS transactions.

I'm trying to give you some things to think about, to help trouble shoot why you are getting these duplicates. Any chance you are pressing Ctl+D which, instead of deleting, actually duplicates within OPUS? I've made that mistake.

Hi Fred,

I appreciate the suggestions. the WinZip idea seems to be a very good idea.

My PC has an AMD 2400 Processor and has 1 Gig Ram. My startup item list is as small as I can get; I disabled startup for every non-essential item. I don't have any problems associated with memory.

I don't use keyboard combos except for copy, paste, select, etc., so there's no chance I was pressing the wrong combo for Delete, especially since it decides to start duplicating every few minutes now. However, I do appreciate you suggesting that. I am always open to ideas.

Thanks for all your input and the help.

Mike

Hi Brenden,

I can't send the whole publication because it is proprietary..

A coupe of months ago, I did send DW a smaller slices of the pub, with the duplicated objects.

I can send a more recent slice of the current pub, with the duplicated objects.

My thought was that maybe this problem is associated with larger publications. Since it is obviously difficult to 'reproduce', I'm looking for clues.

I've also have the 'jittery' mouse cursor, mentiond by mbain, though his seems much worse than mine.

Yesterday, with the intent of deleting the same object from many pages, I had selected the objects, using the CTRL key. When I right-clicked the mouse, to Delete the objects, all of my selected objects were immediately pasted onto a page. Every pasted object had the same name. (The right-click, pers se, does not have a Paste feature).

(In normal, every day operation if I simply Duplicate an object, or just copy and paste an object, Opus assigns a new name to the object.)

Anyway, I'm sorry that this is 'windy'; I'm just trying to find some clues
as to what is causing this problem.

I've been a programmer for many years, and I know how difficult it is to
fix a problem when it can't be reproduced. I do like to use Opus, and I do realize that it is a complex program.

Thanks !

Steve Hawley

Steve --

It's been a long time since I had the problem you are experiencing with Duplicate items in the Organizer. At the time, I found the Duplicates difficult to delete. They kept re-appearing, especially if I tried to delete multiple Dups together in one step. They would re-appear when I returned to the offending Page.

Here's what worked: I had to start at the bottom of the Organizer, and delete each Duplicate item separately, then do a Save. I would change Pages, then return to the problem Page to ensure the Duplicate item was really GONE. This process took time, but I was finally able to remove all the Duplicate items, without them returning.

I believe there was something corrupt within the Page, but doing a Copy & Paste of all the Objects, or simply Duplicating the Page still produced the problem on the new Page.

I haven't had this problem since I started creating new Pubs using OPUS 5.5. Was this Pub you are having trouble with upgraded from a previous version of OPUS, or did you create this from scratch with 5.5? What about importing things from an old Gallery? Again, I'm trying to think of possibilities which could have caused this problem.

Hi Fred,

Deleting the duplicates object, per se, is not so much a problem, as actually locating pages that have the duplicates. And when there are hundreds of pages, that is a daunting task. With this last failure, I was
acutally demonstrating what I considered a finished publication, and, when
I just happened to access a page with the duplicate objects, the publication
crashed (more, or less).

Of course, that led me to the offending pages, about 10 pages, with all the objects duplicated in each page. Needless to say, I had to go through the entire pub to ensure that there are no other duplicates.

(As a tool, I did find that if any of the duplicate objects have resources associated with them, that I could use the Resource Manager to Clear All the resources, and any resources NOT cleared were the invalid duplicate objects. (Of course, I renamed/saved the pub before I cleared the resources).)

IN my day-to-day work, I do save, and create backups, often; it's not unusual to have 10, or more version/names of a publication each day. However that is not always helpful because the duplicate objects may not be discovered until a much later date. For example, in the scenario I cited above, I went back almost three weeks to find a version that did not have the duplicates.

At present, I can only continue to remain extremely vigilant...

=====

This particular pub was created from a Pro 5.5 pub that was originally created in Presenter 4.5, so it is not made from scratch, in Pro 5.5.

There were several problems involved in the conversion from Presenter, to Pro. DW tech support did help me with the most pressing problem, and
gave me a patch that fixed the problem; my version of Pro is designated as 5.51.

Thanks for your help ! I'm all ears when it comes to suggestions !

Steve Hawley

Steve,

I agree that locating the corrupt pages is a daunting, time-consuming task.

If I remember correctly, my first encounter with the phantom dups occurred with a pub that had taken many years to develop, which ran across versions of Opus released from 2000 to v4, and involved almost 2000 pages.

To remove all instances of the phantoms, I had to carefully visually examine the organiser of every page. This took 100+ hours.

I generally have not had the problem where I created a new pub in a new version of Opus, but I know I can almost certainly reporduce it where I attempt to convert from an old version to a new version.

As you and others have discovered, it is difficult to identify what causes these dups because we do not immediately become aware that they have occurred.

That said, I believe there is one set of actions which almost always causes the problem for me, and it has done so across 3 hardware systems and 3 operating systems.

I have become very wary about using any version of Copy or Move, and have removed completely the practice of dragging objects (including pages and chapters) to copy or move them.

With current projects in v5.5, when I need to copy or move any object, I first copy the source object to a Gallery, and then paste it from the Gallery to the target page. I adopted this technique a couple of years ago, and since then I have never encountered the infamous phantom objects.

These days, whenever I think about upgrading an old project, I always create a new version. My first task is to create a new Gallery and from the old version copy all the objects I might want to re-use. Then I close the old pub, open the new pub and rebuild it using the gallery components. This sounds like a lot of work, and it is. But, it has 3 distinct advantages for me:

1. I never encounter the phantom dups;
2. I reduce the stress and frustration these dups cause; and
3. I invariably create a better, more effective pub because of my experience from the past.

This might not be a general solution, but it works for me.

I hope this adds to the growing body of knowledge about these pesky little devils.

Hi Stenosa,

Thanks for the great, and sage advice; I will definitely take heed, and follow it.

I've been reluctant to recreate the pub in V 5.5, but I can see, now, that the hours spent doing that, will more than cover the hours saved dealing
with the duplicate objects.

Thanks!

Steve Hawley

Hi Sentosa,

(Sorry about the previous misspelling of your name...)

When you use the Galleries to create a fresh publication, how do you deal with the Publication Variables ? Do you re-key them ?

There doesn't seem to be any way of transferring to a new publication...

Thanks, again...

Steve Hawley

Yes, you have to create both Page and Publication Variables again in the new Publication, otherwise you would see them in your Actions, but they won't work (because they don't exist until you create them). Once you create them, the Actions will work normally.

Thanks !

Dear DW, For the Wishlist:

It would be helpful if there were a way to list (display and print) all the variables in a publication.

Steve Hawley

Look under Edit -> Pub Properties -> Variables. All the System Variables are in the beginning of the list. All the Variables you create are at the end of the list. You can do a screen grab and print them.

Hi Fred,

Thanks, again, that's a great help...

Steve Hawley