Error: undefinedresult

[GThomas]

I just upgraded from a 3 year old mac running OSx 10.1 to a new G4
running 10.2. Now whenever I print one of my standard forms only
page one prints and I get the following message in the upper left
corner of the form

ERROR: undefinderesult
OFFENDING COMMAND: div

STACK:

0.0
0.0

It has something to do with the graphics in my custom header which is
a combination of fonts and objects. By elimination I've determined that
the offending character is a rotated square with a gradient fill. Has
anyone out there gotten a similar error message or know of a work
around? So far my only recourse is to delete the offending object.

 

[John McGhie [MVP]]

We will all get some interesting PostScript errors in our journey to
Panther. There are a lot of changes being made in the Operating System
currently. Word will not be aware of these changes or able to use them
correctly, because Word is built for OS 10.1.3.

One of the things we most need to understand about OS X is that we are now
running Unix computers, and Unix is a mainframe operating system. In Unix,
we *all* need to be aware that a major responsibility of the system
administrator is software version compatibility. Gone are the days when we
can apply an OS update and expect everything to "just work". Unix is not
like that, and never will be. Those who want reliable computers will have
to get back to the days when you had to obtain the software prerequisite
levels for everything you run, and ensure that we stay within them.

Apple is in a bit of a bind here: If it codes OS X so it never breaks the
legacy applications, new applications do not get the services they need. If
it provides new services, it breaks old applications. I suspect that most
of the user base would prefer to have the new services. But that means we
have to be personally responsible for ensuring that we do not take the OS
above the level supported by any of our mission-critical applications.
Personally, I find that far too much bother.

I would reconstruct the entire header as an EPS or a PICT: that's likely to
give better results.

But the real cure is Word 11 on Panther, when they are available.

Cheers

I just upgraded from a 3 year old mac running OSx 10.1 to a new G4
running 10.2. Now whenever I print one of my standard forms only
page one prints and I get the following message in the upper left
corner of the form

ERROR: undefinderesult
OFFENDING COMMAND: div

STACK:

0.0
0.0

It has something to do with the graphics in my custom header which is
a combination of fonts and objects. By elimination I've determined that
the offending character is a rotated square with a gradient fill. Has
anyone out there gotten a similar error message or know of a work
around? So far my only recourse is to delete the offending object.

--
All Spam and attachments blocked by Microsoft Entourage for Mac OS X. Please
post replies to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP: Word for Macintosh and Word for Windows
Consultant Technical Writer <[email protected]>
+61 4 1209 1410; Sydney, Australia: GMT + 10 hrs

 

[GThomas]

John - Thanks for the input which I think is dead right on. I will try to
reconstruct the headers as EPS or PICT as you suggest. One curious
thing though. We have a flat screen iMac in our office running 10.2
which prints the standard forms with no problems.

George

 

[John McGhie [MVP]]

Hi George:

Yes, I said the errors would be "interesting"

Apple OS X's display is PostScript (PDF, actually...). Everything on the
screen is PDF. Everything you see from Word is not Word, it's OS X drawing
pictures. In OS X, nothing draws its own pictures on the screen: all of the
display and all of the dialogs, menus and commands are all generated by OS
X.

Using the same mechanism that does the printing

Have you already copied everything but the last paragraph mark into a new
blank document and tried that? The last paragraph mark hides the document
master section break, which contains all of the properties of the document
except the text. It also contains all of the pictures! Pictures in Word do
not sit in the text, they are all stored in a container at the end of the
document: the only thing in the text is a pointer that tells you which
picture to put here.

If you have ever saved that document to a previous version of Word, or saved
it to RTF, you can get a vast lump of corrupted graphics information
stranded in the final section break. Copying all except the last paragraph
mark to a fresh new document can sometimes cure these problems. Graphics in
headers and footers are a particular problem: the headers and footers are a
complex look-up list stored in that final section break also. They seem
rather prone to corruption if the document ahs been edited a lot. Or to
damage of the document contains bad pictures.

You can have all sorts of fun with this, and I certainly have no way to tell
you what will work and what won't. Sometimes, simply changing the colour
depth of the display will cause Word to work (or not work). Blowing away
the printer driver and re-installing it can help. Or break it completely!
Changing screen resolution. Printing to a different printer. Using a
different colour depth in the pictures.

Since you are in Word X, round-tripping the document to HTML and back to
..DOC will fix it. This is a last resort: Word X's HTML is not quite complex
enough for the task. The next version of Word will give you an absolutely
perfect round-trip, and it fixes all manner of problems because the document
has to be completely re-created to render it in XHTML, then re-built to get
it back into .DOC format. Worth a try...

Cheers

John - Thanks for the input which I think is dead right on. I will try to
reconstruct the headers as EPS or PICT as you suggest. One curious
thing though. We have a flat screen iMac in our office running 10.2
which prints the standard forms with no problems.

George

--
All Spam and attachments blocked by Microsoft Entourage for Mac OS X. Please
post replies to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP: Word for Macintosh and Word for Windows
Consultant Technical Writer <[email protected]>
+61 4 1209 1410; Sydney, Australia: GMT + 10 hrs