Adobe InDesign CS6: ‘Package…’ command causes crash

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Macintosh
June 28th, 2012 • 7:50 am

Yet more fun with crappy Adobe products… Will the situation ever improve?

Right now, on my Mac Pro 2009 running Mac OS X 10.7.4, if I open a publication in InDesign CS6 and then use the “Package…” command to create a complete package that I can send to the printer, I get an application crash each and every single time — and of course InDesign fails to create the package.

According to reports on the Adobe forums, this is an issue that is specific to CS6 running on Lion 10.7.4 (or Mountain Lion Developer Preview 4). A user with Lion 10.7.3 cannot reproduce the problem. And the problem also occurs when deleting pages.

Thankfully, one contributor has a temporary workaround. The crash occurs at the stage where Adobe InDesign would normally warn you about copyright issues relating to the inclusion of font files in the package. When InDesign would normally display a dialog box with the warning, you get this:

indesigncs6-package-warning

Sometimes the dialog button is visible. Sometimes the dialog box is entirely blank. In all cases, the application crashes within a couple of seconds of showing this dialog box, before you get a chance to click on anything.

I believe that, normally, this warning can be disabled, but of course in order to disable it you need to be able to display it once properly and click on the checkbox to disable it. No such luck here.

The workaround consists of excluding the fonts from the package:

indesigncs6-package-fonts

If you uncheck this box, you won’t get the warning and so InDesign CS6 will not crash and will create your package. But of course this package will not include the required fonts. Instead, you will need to include the fonts one by one manually by copying them into a folder called “Document Fonts” inside the package folder. (The “instructions.txt” file that Adobe saves along with the package includes a complete list of all the fonts included in your publication.)

It is, of course, a royal pain in the neck. But if you are running CS6 and need to create packages for your printer, this is your only option at this stage, since there are no signs of Adobe coming up with an update to fix this any time soon.

Why do such obvious bugs slip through the cracks? CS6 was obviously released at a time when 10.7.4 was not yet officially available. But the fact that a simple, incremental system update can break an application at such a fundamental level points to inherent weaknesses in the application itself. I am not interested in any kind of blame game between Apple and Adobe. To me, as an end user, the signs are pretty clear: Adobe applications are among those that crash most often on my machine. They are also among the slowest, and among the least Mac-like of all the applications that I use. (They are in the same league as Microsoft applications. Everything else is better, much better.)

And they are also the most expensive applications that I have on my machine.

What does that tell you? That Adobe is holding its users at ransom, and forcing them to use crappy software because it enjoys a near-monopoly in the graphic design market.

I also do not see any hope of improvement in the near future. It’s a sad, sad situation


One Response to “Adobe InDesign CS6: ‘Package…’ command causes crash”

  1. Betalogue » Adobe InDesign CS6 and Mac OS X 10.7.4: Fix for application crashes with blank warning dialog boxes says:

    […] couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a new problem with Mac OS X 10.7.4 that causes InDesign CS6 crashes when using certain functions, such as the […]