Re: [Doc2pdf-devel] doc2pdf problems

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Hallo Matt,
your description helped me to find the reason for doc2pdf's timing out:
The ms wordviewer window has another title than what doc2pdf expects. It
seems, that the title always is 
Microsoft Word Viewer - 1attachment.doc
with the name of the attached file. I can supply a screenshot, if that
helps.
Regards
Norbert

Matt Peterson schrieb:
> 
> Norbert,
> 
> What happens if the same email is sent to do...@ho...?  If
> do...@ho... works, there is definately something different about your
> installation.
> 
> Please tell me what settings (exclude passwords) you have set for doc2pdf.
> The settings can be viewed by clicking the setup button.
> 
> The most interesting thing is that the .ps files are created, yet the print
> dialogs are not being closed properly.  Someone sent me an email earlier that
> mentioned something about a similar problem on foriegn versions of Windows 98
> regardless of the language of the viewer.  When converting .ppt or .xls
> documents, may be that some of the the viewers use the MFC print dialogs
> which might not display "Print To File".  The XlsToPs() and PptToPs() code do
> look for a dialog entitled "Print To File".  Because of the way that the
> WordViewer works, the DocToPs() code does not look for a "Print To File"
> window.
> 
> Since you seem to be seeing a failure when converting .doc files, there must
> be something else wrong...  It will be difficult to debug this via email, so
> I will give you all the information I have so that you can debug it yourself.
> 
> .doc files are converted to .ps by the DocToPs() function in
> doc2pdf_convert.cpp.  As you read in the web documentation, this function
> invokes the MS Word Viewer then feeds it keystrokes to automate what would
> otherwise be the manual procedure of printing the document to a file.  The
> code make the following assumptions:
> 
>  1 - You have already set up a "print to file" PostScript printer as the
>      *default* printer for the machine running doc2pdf.  Again, this printer
>      *must be* the *default* printer for the machine.  Follow the installation
>      guide for specific instructions on how this is done.
> 
>  2 - You have to have the MS Word Viewer installed and file associations have
>      to be set up so that the MS Word Viewer is set up to be the program
>      that handle .doc files.
> 
> The following steps are taken when converting documents:
> 
>  1 - When invoked, DocToPs() opens the .doc attachment with a call to
>      ShellExecute() which on a properly configured machine uses MS Word
>      Viewer to open the .doc file.
> 
>  2 - DocToPs() then waits for a window to appear that has the following title:
>      "Microsoft Word Viewer - mydocument.doc".  The text for this title
>      (other than the name of the document which is extracted from the email)
>      is configurable at compile time by modification of #defines at the
>      top of doc2pdf_convert.cpp(). If the "Microsoft Word Viewer -
>      mydocument.doc" does not appear then DocToPs() will timeout and return
>      an error
> 
>  3 - When the  "Microsoft Word Viewer - mydocument.doc" window appears,
>      DocToPs() sends the following keystrokes to the viewer (you can manually
>      enter these keystrokes to see if the behavior of your installation
>      matches the behavior DocToPs() expects:
> 
>      ctrl-p   <-- brings up the print dialog
> 
>      enter    <-- select print to the default printer and displays the "Print
>                   To File" dialog.
> 
>      "c:\windows\temp\mydocument.ps" <-- The name of the file to print to.
>                                          Note: DocToPs() does not check for
>                                          the existance of the "Print To File"
>                                          dialog before sending this string.
> 
>      enter   <-- like clicking the OK button
> 
>  4 - After sending these keystokes to the MS Word Viewer, no other MS Word
>      Viewer windows should exist other than the original window entitled
>      "Microsoft Word Viewer - mydocument.doc".  If additional printer specific
>      or Microsoft Word Viewer Windows exist then you will have problems.
> 
>  5 - There is one exception to item #6 above...  Sometimes (depending on the
>      printer) an single error dialog will be displayed that notifies the
>      user that they are attempting to print a document that exceeds the page
>      boundaries for the selected printer.  This dialog has a window title of
>      "Microsoft Word Viewer 97".   It turns out that when writing a .ps file
>      page boundaries can be ignored so DocToPs() simply clears this dialog
>      by sending an "enter" keystroke which is like clicking OK.
> 
>  6 - Documents take differing amounts of time to print to file (depending on
>      the length and complexity)  therefore, DocToPs() simply waits for the
>      "c:\windows\temp\mydocument.ps" file to become writeable.  This is how
>      DocToPs() knows when the document is finished printing.  The wait loop
>      is simple:
> 
>           while(not_timed_out)
>           {
>               Look for window entitled "Microsoft Word Viewer 97" and clear
>               it if it exists.
> 
>               Check "c:\windows\temp\mydocument.ps" and break if it is
>               writeable.
>           }
> 
>  7 - If the above loop times out (as opposed to breaking prematurely due
>      to the writeablilty of "c:\windows\temp\mydocument.ps" then DocToPs()
>      errors out.  Otherwise the conversion was considered a success.   In
>      both cases the MS Word Viewer should be closed and Doc2pdf will either
>      proceed to convert the .ps to .pdf via a call to PsToPdf() or it will
>      mark the email as not convertable and proceed to the next email.
> 
> I hope this information is useful.  My guess is that everything is working on
> your installation up until step 4.  Then I suspect that you are encountering
> unexpected error or warning dialogs that DocToPs() can not handle.  If this
> is the case, it is probably because of your selection of print driver for the
> default printer or perhaps because your Win98 installation is slightly
> different from mine.
> 
> Thanks for reporting this problem.  Please let me know how things go.  I'll
> be happy to make any changes to Doc2pdf code or documentation that will help
> others avoid the same problem.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Matt
> 
> 
> On Monday 14 January 2002 06:32 am, Norbert Wegener wrote:
> > Hello,
> > I just installed doc2pdf-0.4 on a win98 machine. I can start up doc2pdf.
> > When mail arrives, doc2pdf fetches the mail and opens the attachment in
> > wordview.
> > After that two windows are opened for a very short time and that's it
> >
> > :-(
> >
> > Wordviewer -english version- stays up. Some minutes later doc2pdf seems
> > to get an timeout, closes wordview  and I receive an error mail.
> > What might be wrong with my installation? Anyone any ideas?
> >
> > Regards
> > Norbert
> >
> 
> Norbert Wegener also wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> > I just installed doc2pdf-0.4 on a win98 machine. I can start up doc2pdf.
> > When mail arrives, doc2pdf fetches the mail and opens the attachment in
> > wordview.
> > After that two windows are opened for a very short time and that's it
> > :-(
> > Wordviewer -english version- stays up. Some minutes later doc2pdf seems
> > to get an timeout, closes wordview  and I receive an error mail.
> > What might be wrong with my installation? Anyone any ideas?
> >
> > Regards
> > Norbert
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________

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