Natalie, What operating system are you using? What version of FrameMaker are you using? Are you working across a network? If yes, what flavor of server do you use?
We have a similar issue with the WIndows version of FrameMaker. In the past, people have suggested turning off the graphics to speed navigation through a document. Others have suggested a fast hard drive, a lot of RAM, and a fast network connection (if you are working across the network). Turning off the graphics is not always convenient for an author, and fast equipment may not help. Below is some information I have compiled about scrolling speed, operating systems, and servers. We did some speed tests to determine the efficiency of various machines we have. We tested a MacBook Pro, a G5 Mac, and a HP Pavilion. We have a 1 GB network. The test consisted of scrolling through 10 pages of a typical document. Each page contains text and three-to-five photos (sized at 3.25"X2.0" and 300 dpi tif) with vector callouts placed on top of the photos in an outside application. The graphics are saved in the outside application as EPS with a low resolution TIF preview. The resulting EPS files are about 1 MB each. We import the EPS files into FrameMaker by reference. All FrameMaker files and graphics are located on a server. We performed the test with files located on a Mac server and on a Windows server. NOTE: The following discussion is not a Mac vs PC issue. The reality is that we need to work with the Windows version of Frame in the future, and we need to make it as efficient and cost effective as possible. The results of the speed tests show that the G5 Mac significantly outperformed any of the WIndows configurations, independent of the server. The MacBook Pro running Parallels, the MacBook Pro operating under Boot Camp, and the HP have unacceptable performance with the Mac server. The MacBook Pro in both configurations has marginal performance with the Windows server. (If the graphics are stored on the local hard drive, the performance of the WIndows version of Frame improves but is still only marginally acceptable. However, local work is not a possibility?we must work across the network.) We did more research to determine why the Windows version of Frame is so much slower. We ran a process-monitoring utility and found the following: when FrameMaker for WIndows displays a graphic, Frame requests the graphic information 1Kb at a time. The Windows version of Frame completely loads the full resolution graphic and then accesses the preview facet. We couldn't find a similar process-monitoring utility for the Mac, but it seems that the Mac version of Frame must display graphics differently than the Windows version. If there is a way to change the Windows behavior, we should be able to significantly improve the performance of the Windows version of Frame with our Mac server. Does anyone know how to change this? The unfortunate conclusion is that if we can't improve the PC-to-Mac server communication, we will eventually need to change to a Windows server. This is a significant cost increase?buying a new server machine (we have the Win2K server on the HP notebook for development purposes only), managing a Windows server, and the decrease in productivity all add up. Here are the actual results of the speed tests: Server 1: Mac G5 Processor: Dual 2GHz Power PC RAM: 1.5GB Operating system: Mac OS 10.4.9 Server Hard drive speed: 7200 RPM Server 2: HP Pavilion notebook (development server) Processor: 1.66 GHz Intel Centrino Duo RAM: 1.5GB Operating system: Windows 2000 Server Hard drive speed : 7200 RPM Test machine 1: MacBook Pro Processor: 2GHz Intel Core Duo RAM: 2GB Operating system: Mac OS 10.4.9 running Windows XP Pro through Parallels FrameMaker version: 7.2 Time to scroll through 10 pages on G5 server: 3 min. 31 sec. Time to scroll through 10 pages on Win2K server: 36 sec. Test machine 2: MacBook Pro Processor: 2GHz Intel Core Duo RAM: 2GB Operating system: Windows XP Pro through Boot Camp FrameMaker version: 7.2 Time to scroll through 10 pages on G5 server: 2 min. 10 sec. Time to scroll through 10 pages on Win2K server: 35 sec. Test machine 3: HP Pavilion Processor: 1.66 GHz Intel Centrino Duo RAM: 1.5GB Operating system: Windows 2000 Server FrameMaker version: 7.2 Time to scroll through 10 pages on G5 server: 1 min. 43 sec. Time to scroll through 10 pages on Win2K server: n/a this is the Win2K server machine Test machine 4: Mac G5 Processor: 1.8GHz Dual Power PC RAM: 1GB Operating system: Mac OS 10.3.7 FrameMaker version: 7.0 Time to scroll through 10 pages on G5 server: 13 sec. Time to scroll through 10 pages on Win2K server: 13 sec. Regards, Robert Stoker Seatech Publications, Inc. Content Development, FrameMaker Plug-ins, and Product Information Management Systems www.seatechpubs.com Phone: 360-394-1911 -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:framers-bounces+bgagne=husky.ca at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Natalie Bircher Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2007 4:38 PM To: framers at lists.frameusers.com Subject: FW: Faster scrolling We have graphic-intensive docs and it takes forever to scroll through the doc. Is there a way to speed things up? Natalie Bircher Technical Writer BackStreet Media Phone: 320-843-4337 Fax: 320-842-4236 Email: <mailto:natalieb at backstreetmedia.com> natalieb at backstreetmedia.com
