Internal Program Error 938.k.ba.nd

[doceye]

This is the second PE WD6 has thrown in two days.

Is there anyone who can help me address these?

Is Covoxer not online this week?

[steve.ledger]

John Horn (covoxer) is the developer of the HTML filter, not the application core (camelot)
My advice would be to contact xara support

[esanabri]

I've had several of these specially when using repeat on all pages or update repeating objects... hasn't hindered my developments though...

it went away by itself... I do make a point of always saving newer versions of my work just in case...

Ernesto

[jonazen]

I started running into this tonight... I've been having a fairly awful time trying to do something extremely simple to an existing website that I had originally developed using Extreme. I've been maintaining the site in Designer Pro 6 since it came out, and it's been fine so far. Among other things, I have a gradient image, 1px x 1080px, applied as a "page background" (Xara formats this as a repeating tile). That was, before, incredible simple. I hope I'm just doing something wrong, here -- because I cannot figure out how to make this work again in DP6 the way I did so easily in Extreme 5.

I had to revisit this, because a few of my pages got longer and I hadn't designed the gradient properly (i.e., I was lazy!). In the past, the gradient line was longer than the page was tall, so the gradient covered everything nicely. However when the page got too tall and the gradient image repeated, I had failed to have the beginning and end the same color, so it's not tiling / repeating smoothly -- there's an abrupt change from dark to light where it repeats.

OK -- easy enough to fix, right? I first went to edit the image and had a tough time locating it in the first place. I tried editing it and changing the length, but found that the edited version never showed up in the bitmap gallery. I also discovered that if I double-clicked the image, the screen would blink several times and I would get the "Internal program error 938 k.ba.nd" error dialog. This is repeatable -- all I have to do is double-click this 1 x 2048 pixel image.

Ignoring that -- I'm still trying to update the background of my website. I searched help and see that I'm supposed to export the image as a PNG and then reimport it -- and THEN I have the option to set it as the background image -- I don't recall having to do that before in Extreme, but that could be a memory issue with me and nothing to do with DP6. I just find this confusing.

So -- I go through all this, export as a PNG, import the PNG which now shows in the bitmap gallery. I click the button to set it as the page background, but when I preview the page, it still appears that the old image (too short) is being used as the page background.

Next try will be to explicitly delete the old image, clear out the page background and hopefully start fresh -- maybe that will work?

I'm just a bit bewildered -- this used to be easy as I recall...

[jonazen]

OK --- don't know where the Internal Program Error is coming from, but I finally figured out tiled page backgrounds again for my web pages. In short:

I created a rectangle a couple of pixels wide (1 is probably sufficient) by 2048 pixels high. I gave it a repeating linear gradient fill (black to light gray) -- looks almost like a standing wave in a slinky (for those old enough to remember).

I set export settings to export PNGs are full color + alpha (overkill probably, but I already saw that inadequate resolution resulted in a nasty step / banding effect instead of a smooth gradient), and exported my rectangle as a PNG. Imported it back into the drawing, and it now appeared in the bitmap gallery.

I clicked on it in the bitmap gallery, clicked the "background" button at the top, then select the rectangle in the drawing and set it to repeat on all pages.

Whew! That did it. I now have a perfect, smooth repeating gradient pattern as the browser background behind the web pages on the site.

Not entirely intuitive, but in the end it works, and as long as I don't forget again, this should be easy next time...

[doceye]

jonazen,

FWIW, no one on this forum is responding to program errors. They're fumbling the ball off to Xara support. Nothing like having to contact the people who wrote the program because they don't think having a presence at the main user forum is worth their time.

Pretty disgusted with Xara and its products. Hiding from real, repeatable errors in how the program operates is a guaranteed way to shoot market share in the foot.

[jonazen]

Hey doceye -

The program certainly has some strengths that I find very appealing, and a few of the folks who spend their time here have shared a ton on great information. I agree though that this would be an ideal place to at least have someone from Xara acknowledge the issue, share feedback, or else direct us to the proper resource. I don't have experience with their ticketing system, but on their support page at http://support.xara.com, they say:

Submit a Ticket
If you can’t find an answer in the FAQ or Troubleshooter on this page or in the forums at TalkGraphics.com, you can contact Xara support.

Can't comment on the support from personal experience, but it does appear that there's a place where issues can be submitted. If I continued to experience something that prevented me from working, I'd probably try that next if nobody here had a suggestion. Overall, I've found the strengths and overall value outweigh anything negative that I've experienced with Xara.

Having folks like Gary Priester and Stever Ledger volunteer their time here is spectacular, and coxover (John) is a developer in Xara Group and contributes quite a bit. Of course more support would be better, and I'd certainly like issues that I post answered -- but I guess that Xara draws the line between this forum, which I believe is purely volunteer supported, and the official support process / ticketing system presented on their website. Not sure I'd do things exactly the same way -- but as I noted above, I actually think I've gotten better support from Xara than pretty much any other commercial software company.

I find the commercial software industry a pretty strange animal in general. I've probably spent more money on Microsoft products than any other publisher over the past 30 years, and yet they have some of the buggiest software and worst support in the industry. Sun is no better, and Java -- as widespread and valuable as it might be -- is built on some of the most tangled incomprehensible code ever written (and has a long history of bugs with virtually no support).

I'm no artist, but I have use for graphic software for a variety of projects on a constant basis and have for many years, such as websites, gaming graphics, tons of business designs and presentations, etc. Corel was promising at first (I started with Draw version 1), but product support was virtually non-existent, and I keep in on my PC now "just in case" there's a need I think can be handled in CD better than another tool.

I used PhotoImpact for many years and versions, and still have one installed (about 2 years out of date). Lots of power for the money, but you'd have deal with the developers in China for any kind of real support. ULead and NovaSoft really don't provide any kind of support at all.

I've used a couple of other products as well over the years, and they're all about the same. I hear your frustration, but I'm actually finding Xara seeming to be more responsive (at least they were -- no idea how Magix impacts any of these, positive or negative) than any other software firm whose products I've bought.

[steve.ledger]

This error code has been brought up before (you can find it via a search) and a solution posted.
There's a patch for WD6 which address these errors for other folks. Please try this doceye.
► http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...er-6.0.1-patch

[jonazen]

I've tried searching -- is it possible this is no longer on the forum? Could be that my searching skills are off, but I've tried 3 different searches:
- 938 k.ba.nd
- k.ba.nd
- 938

...and the result is consistent: "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms."

I also tried searching google for "938 k.ba.nd" and get 5 hits back -- two from this discussion thread, and the other three in german from the Magix support boards, and even though I don't know German, it appears these refer to patches for Web Designer 6.

Maybe I'm missing something...?

[steve.ledger]

Yeh vBulletin internal search is unproductive mostly..

Which was why I installed a 'custom search' at Talkgraphics (showed top-right of every page), but this has gone with the forum software upgrade - it's up to the new Admin if it ever comes back.

You can still use Google site search from the address bar like this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=938.k.ba.nd&sitesearch=www.talkgraphics.com