Offending Operator News
Niels Bruus
I have just discovered that the "offending operator" problem has sometihing to do with the harddisk.
I never had the problem before i got a new harddisk. I did a test. Saving the same file to the new harddisk and to one of the old ones.Then i restarted the computer and tryed to open the files again. The file from the old drive was OK, but the same file from the new drive had the usual problem.
I looks like Illustrator has a communikation problem with new harddisks.
Teknical information : PC Pentium 4 2.4 ghz, Windows 2000, Illustrator 10.0.3, New hardisk : 80 GB - Old harddisk : 19,5 GB (part of a larger harddisk)
Maybe this information can be some help to get rid of "Offending Operator"
Removing the man in the wheelchair dosn`t help at all.
Niels.
Niels Bruus
I looks like it is working now. I removed
the files Adobe Illustrator Startup_CMYK and Adobe illustrator Startup_RGB from the plug-in file.
And I unchecked "Write cache enabled" on the new and faster harddisk.
Any comments from the forum ?
Niels.
Teri Pettit
There are many different "Offending Operator" errors, and not all of them are related to the Wheelchair symbol.
The ones related to the Wheelchair symbol show up as "Offending operator 'ter'" on a CMYK file, and as "Offending operator 'und'" on an RGB file. Are those the errors that you were getting?
If they were not, then removing the Wheelchair symbol would not be expected to have any effect. If they were, then I am sure that removing the Wheelchair symbol from the two startup files and from all documents that it appears in will prevent the problem from happening to files that are not already corrupt. If you were getting 'ter' and 'und' offending operator errors and removing the Wheelchair symbol didn't help, then you must not have removed it from all the necessary files.
The information about the hard drive is very interesting, though. Even if it was a different error, it is still a very interesting piece of news that some hard drives can corrupt Illustrator files.
What was the brand of the new harddrive and what version of the driver software are you using? When you say that you unchecked "Write cache enabled", where were you unchecking that? Is it an option of your disk driver?
Niels Bruus
My new harddisk is a Seagate/Barracuda 7200.7 , Capacity : 80gb , Speed : 7200 rpm , Seek time : 8,5 ms avg , Interface : Ultra ATA/100.
The uncheking of "write cache enabled" didn`t work. But you can find it this way : Right click on my computer - properties - Hardware - Device manager - disk drives. Select the drive - Right click - properties - Disk properties.
Anyway I did another savetest: The file contained vectorgraphics, a large Photoshopimage (105 mb) and a transparent Photoshopimage on top. I saved the same file to the old harddisk and to the new harddisk.
Then I saved the same file again, with a new name, to the old harddisk. Then I open Explorer and moved the file with the new name to the new harddisk. Then I rebooted the system. I opend Illustrator and reloaded the files. The file on the old harddisk was OK. The file which was moved to the new harddisk was OK. But the file which was written directly to the harddisk gave "offending operator".
I think that Illustrator has a communikation problem with fast harddisks.
Maybe this could be the reason why so many users have Offending operator problems.
I am not a super-user, so it is just an idear.
Niels.
Eric Purkalitis
Niels Bruus
It won`t work. I have sis chipset on my Soltek mainboard. The Intel Application Accelerator will only work on Intel`s own chipset.
But thanks anyway.
Niels.
Teri Pettit
Thank you for the information about your hard drive.
I am still interested in hearing exactly what the "offending operator" was. All of the operator errors are detected at different places in the code, and they can have very different causes depending on what the operator is. Knowing what the operator was could help identify the part of the code that is having problems with fast hard drives.
It might be, for example, that it is only the raster image code that has a problem with fast disk drivers. (The corruption with the Wheelchair Access symbol was happening inside the raster image in the Wheelchair's drop shadow.) Have you ever had these corruption problems occur when saving files that contain no raster images, and no effects that generate rasters, such as drop shadows, glows, feathers or blurs, not even inside symbols?
This is, by the way, the most promising communication I have seen about the mysterious Offending operator errors. It could explain why they occur so frequently for some people, and never at all for most people, with the same kind of files. We have never been able to figure out what the difference is. But it understandably does not occur to people to mention or even think about what hard drive they are saving to when communicating about software problems.
Niels Bruus
It is the rasterimage that has the problem. I have saved a file only with vectorgraphics. That was ok.
I have loaded two files which was corrupted but didn`t give Offending operator. In both cases the vectorgraphics was ok but the raster image was corrupted. In the first one the top of the rasterimage was ok, but 9/10 was in black and white with some strange colors. In the second the top of the rasterimage was ok but the rest 9/10 was a repeat of the last good horizontal line at the top.
I have send you a copy of the massages to you on your e-mail. ( 5 jpg ).
The massages has letters which I don`t have. So that was the easy way.
Hope you can use it.
Niels.
Niels Bruus
It should have been "message"
Now I can`t change it.
Niels.
Teri Pettit
And I was so looking forward to getting a massage via email!
Seriously, I got your screen shots of the error messages and passed them on to the tech support folks. From the looks of them, it does appear that the corruption happened inside on an image in every case. Do you suppose you could email me a couple of your files in both the unbroken and the corrupted forms so that I can compare them, preferably the smaller ones?
Thanks very much,
Teri
Niels Bruus
What kind of massage were you looking forward to ?
Any specific in mind ?
Anyway the smaller files doesn´t seem to be corrupted. Only the large ones.
I did a test saving a smaller file (36mb), with a smaller image, to the new harddisk and that was ok. So you have to get a copy of the large files which is over 100 mb each.
That isn`t possible by email. Like the "massage".
But the information, that it is only the large files that is corrupted might be of some help to you.
The size of the corrupted file on the new harddisk and the size of the ok file on the old harddisk is the same.
The error must be Illustrators way of processing large amount of datas from a non illustrator image to the fast harddisk.
Niels.
Niels Bruus
Is there any news about "Offending Operator".
Information about the latest development could be nice.
Has Adobe got any further ?.
Niels.
Brigid Johanna
I have noticed the same problem, that of the 'offending operator', and I too did not have that problem on my old hard drive which died a few months ago. I never used to have AI files corrupted, of any kind.But on my new hard drive I have lost several, due to various oddities. I don't use rasterized effects, so that doesn't fit the pattern you spoke of. Also, the gradient effect often has a black hole at the center which may not show up until printing, and the only way to get rid of it is to completely change it's direction. Sometimes I can't save a file, and get the message something to do with the printer file. I have never had these problems on my old hard drive. I am using AI 8 on Win. ME. I have no clue about what my hard drive is called.
Most recently, I have not had any corruptions, just a few "can't save file", although the kind of work I do has not changed.
Any help appreciated,
Brigid Johanna
Theo Gerakaris
After 2 years of using Ill 9.0 without a hickup, I too have gotten my first offending operator "Tf" message today. not cool since it wiped out 3/4 of the file. which is what's odd about it. 1/4 of the file opend with the images, colors, gradients, and text. unfortunately, for packaging design, 1/4 of the pack isn't enough. here's what i got:
illegal operand
offending operator "tf"
context:
1001 827.1343-92.65190 Tp
0 Tv
Tp
0 Tr
% 0 50 XQ
/_ 1800 TF
since some of the file came through, i'm thinking it's an issue with the greek font embeded in the file, but all the fonts are outlines...
in anycase, i'm upgrading to Ill 9.02 to see if the problem corrects itself... now comes the task of trying to recover the rest of the file... anyone know how?? re-doing the packaging is not something i'm looking forward to. :(
Thanks in advance for any help
Ted
Teri Pettit
You wrote: "I have noticed the same problem, that of the 'offending operator', and I too did not have that problem on my old hard drive which died a few months ago. I never used to have AI files corrupted, of any kind. But on my new hard drive I have lost several, due to various oddities."
There are many different offending operator errors, and they all have different causes and solutions. To give useful advice, we would need to know the rest of the error message. The one that seems to be correlated with specific hard drives is the one that says "Offending operator 'ter'" on a CMYK file and "Offending operator 'und'" on an RGB file.
You added: "I don't use rasterized effects, so that doesn't fit the pattern you spoke of."
The 'ter' or 'und' error arises because of a drop shadow effect used inside the Wheelchair Access symbol in the Symbols palette. The symbol does not need to be used in the artwork to cause the problem. As long as it exists in that document's Symbols palette, it can cause the corruption. But apparently only on certain hard drives, or perhaps only certain versions of the driver software. And no, Adobe has not made any more progress since finding out that it has something to do with hard drives, because like you, almost nobody seems to know what kind of hard drive they use or what version of the driver software.
Theo,
The offending operator Tf is due to a corrupt font. A "corrupt" font does not always mean the font has been damaged after you got it; most of them are shareware fonts that were generated by inferior font software which leaves part of the necessary information out of the file.
In this particular case, it looks like the font has no internal name (which is what gets written out after the underscore). There were probably additional errors in the numerical operands on the same line, but it is hard to tell since you seem to have left out a lot of spaces in your transcription of the error message. (A valid Tp line would be more like "1 0 0 1 827.1343 -92.6519 0 Tp", and since it did not give an offending operator Tp message I assume your Tp line was really correct even though it doesn't look so in the post.)
You say all your fonts have been outlined, but the piece of code you pasted was for an actual text object, not just a font embedding instruction. (The Tp operator tells where the text object's anchor is located, in this case 827.1343 pts to the right and 92.6519 pts down from the ruler origin.) It appears to be an empty text object, that is, one with no characters in it.
Try place embedding the corrupted file into a blank document. (You may need to change the extension to .eps.) If that doesn't work, send your file to me (click on my name to get my email address) and I can probably fix it.
Brigid Johanna
That's very interesting about the symbols palette.
Brigid Johanna
Brigid Johanna
Unfortunately, I found another case of the offending operator! It said: Incomplete or garbled object description offending operator is y (with two dots over the y) and context is a whole line of zeros. Another file said the same thing essentially, except the off. op. is XP, and the context is lots of letters (not words). The first file I mentioned was made on my old hard drive, but the second, the XP was made on my current hard drive not too long ago.
It is interesting that the preview shows the file intact, while opening the file shows lots, if not all, objects missing.
Hope this adds some helpful info regarding this @#%^& ! problem.
Brigid Johanna