Quark Forums

What is up with this? Over time, Quark 6.5 in OS X 10.2.8 becomes unusable and has to be restarted since it refuses to save files. And this is the error message it produces. So why does it happen, what is causing it, and how can it be stopped from happening?

Any ideas, fellow Quark people?

hi,
try the following steps,
-Re-opening the file (when it is already open)
-Quitting QuarkXPress without saving the document and then reopening the document(s) and then saving .
-Down saving the document also seems to work.
might help

Cheers, dennis_786,

Thankfully I figured this out on my own, but it's good that you confirm that it's something you've also experienced. Yes, not saving the document, quitting Quark and restarting Quark does "flush out the memory" or something, but it does eventually reoccur as a problem and I'd be keen to know WHY it's happening. It seems like Quark is loading files into memory every time you open a file but then not deleting the file from memory when you close it, and over time this builds up. Perhaps. Any ideas, anyone?

Robert Sharp:

Over time, Quark 6.5 in OS X 10.2.8 becomes unusable and has to be restarted since it refuses to save files.

How much time are you talking about? An hour? A day? A week? A month?

And roughly how many files would you have opened in that time?

I'm interested to know for when we switch to QuarkXPress 6.5 under OS X 10.3.9.

Robert

It's happening to me too. Just yesterday and today it's happened a total of 3 times. Always seems to be in the afternoon. Anybody else have an option for eliminating this? It's very frustrating.

Yesterday, it happened to me three times during the course of a 7 hour working day. So, about every two hours. In that time, I would have been dealing with approximately 20-30 or so files, the majority of them Quark 6 files, but some Quark 4 files as well.

Where CutThroat says it happens in the afternoon is very interesting; that exactly parallels my experience. It wouldn't happen in the morning because not that many files have been opened yet, but by the afternoon the file count would presumably have increased.

dennis_786 and I are following the same workaround procedure when it happens. The sequence of events goes something like this. You save the document. You print the document. When you try to save the document again (as would appear mandatory in Quark 6.5 after printing), the Cannot open any more files message appears. You are then unable to save the document with the save dialogue. But you can choose to "Don't Save" the document, which will close it. You can then quit and restart Quark and the problem goes away until it comes back two hours and 20-30 files later. Repeat until fade.

I guess, based on my long time experience as a Quark user, that it would be way too much effort on their part for the initial release of a Quark version to be free of this kind of annoyance. And how much money is a new copy of Quark? Maybe we'll have to wait for 6.5.1 for a fix.

Are you opening these files locally or over a network?

Robert

I'm opening files locally. No server. On another thread someone mentioned that they upgraded the QLA server license administrator, and that suposedly helped. Well, I don't have that so it won't help me.

Personally, I believe that the problem goes hand-in-hand with the spinning clock that I get ALL THE TIME if I leave a file open, and I'm not working on it. It doesn't SEEM to cause any problems, because the minute I go to a menu, or start working again, the spinning clock stops and goes back to an arrow. But what is it doing????? Is Quark searching for something? Is it looking for a server? Is it checking fonts? WHAT??? What's it trying to process?

Robert Sharp and CutThroat - I've seen a few threads on here where anti-virus software is responsible for the issue. Do you have any anti-virus software running on your Mac that might be periodically accessing files to scan for viruses? Does the timing coincide with your Quark issues?

grahampm - Thanks for lsof tip... didn't know that one!

Robert

No antivirus running, Jonesy. The spinnning clock has happened since I installed 6.5, last year. But the "Cannot open any more files" error, just started a few days ago. And I've not added any new software to my computer, so that's not it.

The thread's picking up. Cool.

jonesy17:

I'm opening all my files locally. I never open Quark files from a server; I've been in this game too long to do that anymore.

CutThroat:

I don't know what that spinning clock is doing. But I've seen it as well. It seems to appear after you've saved a file, you have no files open in Quark, and Quark is "waiting" for you to do something else. I find the instant I click on a new file in the finder, for example, it disappears. Quark may be doing something, or it's an odd bug in the cursor programming.

jonesy17:

I'm running no antivirus software. I've also got Autosave disabled.

granampm:

As far as I know, I'm using a standalone copy of Quark installed only on the machine I'm using. Aah, the machine that goes ping. I have Vista XT loaded but the clock issue seems a more minor one than Quark stopping working with a Cannot open any more files dialogue.

I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Quark notorious for precisely this kind of thing? I mean, maintaining threads and links to the assorted files, fonts, and pictures within files that you have open. It's certainly the main reason I never work on Quark files from a server, since working from a server has been fairly disastrous for me in the past.

grahampm:

...the machine that goes ping.

If only more people slipped Monty Python references into their posts the world might be a better place.

I'm really interested in figuring out what the answer to this "too many files" error might be, as we've been running QuarkXPress 4.11 off an OS X file server for years now and have never had a network problem.

With a switch to QuarkXPress 6.5 in our iminent future, I'm starting to get worried. That said, our testing hasn't come up with a single network problem yet. If only I knew what we were doing right! Bloody vikings...

Robert

Robert, have you taken a look at whats happening in "Activity Monitor" one of your OSX utilities. This will show you your cpu & memory usage. I have noticed on mine that quark is not releasing its virtual memory usage until the app is quit. Unlike photoshop etc. Depending on your config ram & free disk space this virtual memory could be leaving you with no disk space to cashe to. You can also see what else is eating up your memory.

Graham, I only work on one Quark file at a time. But I may have opened and closed as many as 15 other files over the full day. It has to have something to do with Quark not releasing the closed file cache. The spinning clock thing still bothers me though, it only happens in Quark, and if it's spinning, it must be doing something. I'll try the activity monitor and see if that shows anything.

This problem has a lot to do with how many undos you allow. When the file is closed, the undos seem to stay in memory. Try lowering the amount of undos. You'll still have to quit out of Quark every once in a while, but that doesn't take long.