Resizing containers in remotely hosted FM12 dbs

[Randy Trigg]

Has anyone encountered a problem resizing a container with an image (jpg, png, etc.)? It works fine when the db is local, but when hosted on FM12 server, we get "Missing File" in the container rather than the scaled image. This is the case if we choose embedded or secure storage for the container. The store by reference option is the only one that continues to support scaling. The weird thing is that you can see the image if you make the container big enough (almost as big as the original image size), but it vanishes when you shrink the container.

For the moment, we're working on converting our existing containers (created in FM11) from embedded storage to store-by-reference, but we'd much prefer either embedded or the new secure storage option.

Thanks much,

- Randy

[Vaughan]

Are you scaling the image, as in modifying the file after it has been inserted into the container field?

T'would be helpful to know the operating system of the clients and server, and whether SSL on FMS is enabled.

[Randy Trigg]

By resizing, I mean going into layout mode and changing the size of the container in the layout. No change to any backing files - in fact, some of our containers were filled by pasting pct images from the clipboard, so there is no backing file. (If we want to convert the container from embedded, we have to export field contents.) Again, we know that the container still contains the image after conversion to FM12, because it appears when we expand the size of the container object. At the smaller size, we see "Missing file".

The server is MS Windows Server 2003 R2. The clients are various versions of Windows and Mac OS. This behavior happens on all the clients we've tested.

SSL on FMS is not enabled. Do you think that's relevant here?

[Vaughan]

The problem is probably linked to the fact that the images were pasted from the clipboard. Most reliable method is "insert from picture" or "insert from file" commands.

Basically, the images are crap. Insert them again. If it was pasted, try exporting the image to a file, then inserting the file back into the container field.

FM 12 now creates "thumbnail" images automatically and scales the images sent to the client on-the-fly. If the image is not good then it might be having a problem creating the thumbnails.

BTW the "thumbnail" images aren't necessarily small. FM 12 scales the images to suit the display container field's size whatever it may be. So a 30 MB image might get scaled down to 2 MB for display on one layout, but the full 30 MB gets used when the image is printed. This all happens automatically, and the images get cached too.

[Randy Trigg]

Thanks, Vaughan, for your reply. We have tried inserting the images back into the container fields after first exporting to files. We've tried both with jpg and png formats to no avail.

Your explanation that the thumbnails aren't being created sounds right (or maybe they're created, but can't be read/sent to the client). I just need to figure out why - the images that we're inserting into the containers aren't corrupt, at least not as far as image viewers like Preview on the mac are concerned.

I can also read from your response that you haven't seen this bug before, so there must be something out of kilter in our environment, probably on the server...

Thanks again,

- Randy

[Vaughan]

FM 12 is quite new... NOBODY has seen all the bugs yet!

As another idea, create a simple test file from scratch in FM 12 and see what happens. That might sort out whether it's a conversion issue or something else.

[Randy Trigg]

Yeah, we did make a test file from scratch in FM12 and container images worked fine until we started hosting the test file on our server.

Meanwhile, I just discovered a work-around. If I go into ManageContainers and turn off thumbnail storage completely, then our embedded images work again (that is, we're able to resize the container without losing the image), presumably because that takes the server out of the thumbnail generation process ala FM11. Annoying that we can't take advantage of the new system, but a big relief if we don't have to turn all those images into store-by-reference.