Index

This module by Michael Monscheuer is able to detect and repair sick documents. We recommend to include Document doctor in a macro which loads documents.

The Document doctor is an accessory module that can correct various structural defects in Calamus documents directly during loading. There are sundry errors that are caused by old bugs in various modules and also in some older Calamus versions. These obsolete bugs may strike at any time and may make the documents unusable. The Document doctor detects these infections and can treat the documents so that they are hale and hearty again afterwards.

Operation

If the module is loaded via the External modules dialog and called, a dialog box (the one with a red cross) appears:

Clicking on the Select document button opens the usual file selector dialog, where you can choose the document to be analyzed. When you select a document it will be loaded into memory and checked. If you have set the switch diagnosis only – no treatment!, the document will not be repaired immediately. Basically you should not set this switch.

After this it will appear as usual in a layout window. Document doctor will additionally display its diagnosis in an Eddie window.

If you set the switch don't report sane documents (default), then Document doctor will only report found and repaired errors.

What will be repaired?

Document doctor is able to recognise and repair defective vector graphics. Such defective vector graphics can arise when taking over graphics from Calamus for Windows95. The edited or imported graphics there unfortunately do not correspond always to the original format and in the past they were left untouched by the Document converter. In some circumstances this could lead to the following errors:

• Pages with vector graphics were not built up completely.
• Calamus crashed while building up the page.
• Calamus crashed during the printing process.
• The Vector buffer too small error was indicated, although the buffer should have been sufficiently large.

The current Calamus Document converter from the SL program distribution repairs W95 documents during the loading process. Older versions of the Document converter did not do this. So the Doctor in conjunction with the current Calamus SL will deal with previous (faulty) conversions into the SL format of a document's vector graphics.

A new error connected with vector frames in a document has been discovered. This internal structural error will also be corrected by the Document doctor.

Document doctor also clears a segment that the Positioner (v 1.x) leaves behind in a document after a copying process. This error leads to some interesting effects: After physically copying a large image with the help of the Positioner and deleting the copied frame, the deleted frame remained stuck invisibly to the document and may also have been saved with it(!) But cleverly the effect is not additive: The invisible frame will be discarded at the next copying process. In short: The UNDO mechanism in the Positioner still does not work quite cleanly . . .