Can Anyone Step Into the WayBack Machine and Help with QuarkXPress?

[dboh]

QuarkXPress 6.5 on a Quicksilver 2002, OS 10.3.9.

It crashes while opening. I dug out the plist file, dragged it to the desktop, and clicked on a file, which opened without a problem. I closed it, went to open another file and it started crashing again. It didn't matter whether I clicked on the program icon on the Dock or opened a Quark file. I noticed the plist had not been recreated after the one file opened, so I put the old one back. No change.

I used Quark without a problem on Sunday and created a pdf within the program with the Adobe PDF 7.0 driver. Yesterday, I spent a couple of hours making lots of pdfs of Web pages (using the PDF button on the print option). I do remember at some point seeing the printer choice switching from Adobe PDF 7.0 to No Printer Selected (I hadn't touched that menu). I didn't think much about it until I went to print a Word file today and had to rechoose my printer. I opened my other programs to make sure the printer was correct (which it was) and when I opened Quark, it crashed.

I know I can always delete and reinstall the program, but I've made so many adjustments to the settings, I'd like to hold off until there's no other choice.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

This is the beginning of the Crash Report from Apple:

Command: QuarkXPress
Path:    /Applications/QuarkXPress 6.1/QuarkXPress/Contents/MacOS/QuarkXPress
Version: QuarkXPress version 6.50 (6.50)
PID:     286
Thread:  1

Exception:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes:      KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0x0002) at 0x00000408

This is the beginning of the Console log, which makes no sense to me:

4   Quark Image Engine.dylib          0x100ae3f0 Process__9IgcIoPost + 0x40 (ImPClientView.h:92)
5   Quark Image Engine.dylib          0x103fa724 startProtected___17IgcThreadDetached + 0x5c (ImPClientView.h:92)
6   Quark Image Engine.dylib          0x103fa334 CBinding_threadDetached + 0x20 (ImPClientView.h:92)
7   libSystem.B.dylib                 0x90024910 _pthread_body + 0x28

Thread 32:
0   libSystem.B.dylib                 0x90018e18 semaphore_timedwait_signal_trap + 0x8
1   libSystem.B.dylib                 0x9000e9d4 _pthread_cond_wait + 0x268
2   Quark Image Engine.dylib          0x103f2f90 wait__12IgcSemaphoreUi + 0x74 (ImPClientView.h:92)
3   Quark Image Engine.dylib          0x103f3134 wait__12IgcSemaphore + 0x24 (ImPClientView.h:92)
4   Quark Image Engine.dylib          0x100ae3f0 Process__9IgcIoPost + 0x40 (ImPClientView.h:92)
5   Quark Image Engine.dylib          0x103fa724 startProtected___17IgcThreadDetached + 0x5c (ImPClientView.h:92)

[Paddy]

http://forums.quark.com/t/15078.aspx might help.

There are a number of threads on this topic at the Quark forums - I'd try searching there for suggestions. It's been 4 years since I had the er...pleasure of using Quirk, and that was on OS 9. On OS 9, it would take down the entire machine - not fun.

Usual culprits in these things are .plist files, font problems and extensions.

[dboh]

I'm still working through this problem.

I trashed the Quark preference file and moved all the Xtensions to the desktop. Quark opened up without a problem. Adding Xtensions back in one by one showed that the PDF filter was the problem. I reinstalled it from the disk and Quark still quit. I scanned all my fonts in Suitcase, found one corrupt font, and tossed it. Quark still quit on start-up. So I reinstalled Quark. Did all the permissions and then it crashed on start-up.

I was then concerned it might not be Quark. I tested all my other programs (Word, Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat), and they opened fine. I ran the Hardware Test and Tech Tool Pro, and there were no problems there, either.

My next step will be to check all the fonts that aren't in Suitcase and see if any of them are corrupted (by temporarily moving them into Suitcase, scanning them, and then returning them to their proper place). I do remember that this trouble started about when I was having a problem writing an e-mail in AOL while making pdfs of Web pages. Suddenly there were all these weird fonts in the AOL menu (none of which I have) and none of my usual fonts were there. I quit AOL and when I signed back on, the weird fonts were gone.

Quark aside, do you think there's anything else I should check out? TIA.

[krissel]

Did you clear your font caches?

http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/fontfinagler/

Create a new user and see how Quark acts then.  That may narrow things down.


Re "other things":  how old is your hard drive? Is it the original?

[dboh]

Thanks. I'm downloading Font Finagler now. When I run a search for "font cache," the only one that comes up is Microsoft. Where would the others be? Or will Font Finagler take care of them all?

As for the hard drive, it was replaced a couple of years ago. It's the only problem I've had with this computer. I'm wondering if I was being too aggressive at multitasking this old thing. Firefox froze up on me a few times when I was trying to do too much. I never had a problem running Quark, Photoshop, and iLlustrator together, but maybe online stuff is more intensive.

[Paddy]

And then again, it may be that PDF Filter. See: http://forums.quark.com/p/11566/47880.aspx (Also saw your post on the Quark forum from early Jan. - no solutions that worked there either)

And it doesn't look like things have improved a whole heck of a lot since then...

http://forums.quark.com/p/19219/76732.aspx

I know that this isn't what you want to hear...but Quark drove me nuts. I switched to InDesign long ago and have been happy as a clam since. Judging by what I've been reading, Quark seems to be fading in popularity rather quickly. I had to laugh - they're really grasping at straws lately. They released an "independent report" (uh huh) that said that Quark did a better job of multi-media WEB design than InDesign. EH? Anyone who buys either of those programs to do web design deserves whatever misery they get, IMHO. It's like buying Word to do photo editing. Anyway, on your older Mac and older OS, you cannot run current versions of either Quark or ID. Quark 8 will work on 10.4.6 and up, CS5 requires an Intel Mac. Indesign CS4 will run on late G4s (according to some reviews) but states that it needs a G5 or Intel Mac in the "official" system requirements. CS3 would work on your Quicksilver.

[dboh]

QUOTE(Paddy @ Jan 17 2011, 11:41 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I know that this isn't what you want to hear...but Quark drove me nuts.

Oh, believe me, I'm with you. I am very clear about Quark's -- er -- shortcomings. But I couldn't justify coughing up $700+ for InDesign when Quark was just as good (and for me, probably even more reliable at the time than InDesign -- this is the first issue with Quark I've had since first using it in 1996). What really killed me was Quark disdaining to deal with customers even as Adobe started their drive to put InDesign in every business in the country. Now, everyone has InDesign and those are the only kind of files they want. Plus, with the economy and my customers (npos) sputtering, there's not much I can do but hold on to this antique as long as I can. I just wish Adobe weren't so intent on becoming the AT&T of the graphics industry. But that's another issue…

I can't seem to download Font Finagler. Twice it starts out saying that it's a 3.9 MG download, but what ends up on my desktop is less than 1 MG, and when I click to open it, I get a message "No mountable file systems." Tried the solutions I found on Google, but will have to e-mail the developers and see if they remember that far back!

I may end up just disabling the PDF filter. I don't import PDFs into layouts, but I do like being able to create PDFs in Quark -- so much simpler. I guess I can relearn saving as postscript and opening in Distiller.

[krissel]

I just downloaded Font Finagler and opened it without problem.  In the readme is the following:

QUOTE

Adds support for cleaning the font cache files of Adobe, QuarkXPress, and Microsoft applications.

So it might help.

But if you can do without the Pdf extension that is the easiest solution for now.  Remember, OSX has a built in method for making pdfs in the print window.

[dboh]

I contacted the developer who thought it might be an issue with my (older) browser that was preventing a complete download. This would explain why you were able to download without a problem. He gave me this alternate place to download it, which worked for me, so in case anyone ever needs Font Finagler 1.0, here's the link:

http://www.markdouma.com/fontfinagler/FontFinagler.zip

I'm embarrassed to say I'd never noticed you could save to pdf in Quark. I guess I was looking for other things. But since I don't need to do press-ready pdfs at the moment, this workaround will work for me. Thanks for stating what should have been obvious to me!

---

ETA: I did set up a separate account and was able to open Quark with the PDF Xtension enabled. I'm surprised, because the PDF filter misbehaved with my older and reinstalled copies of Quark. Does this mean that it does have something to do with font caches?

[Paddy]

Krissel, the OS X "Save as PDF" function in the print dialog is not supported in InDesign (never has been) - I'm not sure about Quark. I no longer have it installed and the version I have probably wouldn't work under Snow Leopard even if it was installed. Judging by this, the "export to PDF" in Quark is pretty much the same as ID.

More discussion:

http://forums.quark.com/t/21840.aspx

Not sure if the issues mentioned in the above linked thread were resolved or not - but there definitely are some with SL and Quark 8, which of course may have no bearing on dboh's situation.

[dboh]

The Save as PDF option works for me in Quark 6.5. I'd bet any images would be in low resolution, so its uses would be limited, but it's better than nothing.

I'm assuming that since I had no problem with the PDF filter in my test account that I could create the file in my regular space and then log into the test account and create a "real" pdf there?