Hi @thijsknapen,
That definitely doesn't seem to be doing the right thing, would it be an option for you to try downloading one of the later versions of FME and giving this a try instead? It seems to be working correctly for me in build 19630 (FME 2019.1) and higher.
Hi @thijsknapen,
That definitely doesn't seem to be doing the right thing, would it be an option for you to try downloading one of the later versions of FME and giving this a try instead? It seems to be working correctly for me in build 19630 (FME 2019.1) and higher.
Hi @jovitaatsafe. Thanks for the reply. I just tried it on another machine with FME Desktop Professional Edition, using both 'FME(R) 2018.1.0.1 (20180730 - Build 18528 - WIN64)', as well as 'FME(R) 2019.1.3.1 (20191019 - Build 19643 - WIN64)'. For both those versions I wasn't able to reproduce the issue. So to me it would seem that either this issue is isolated to FME 2019.0 or to my personal machine. I'll try to look further into the latter.
Hi @thijsknapen,
That definitely doesn't seem to be doing the right thing, would it be an option for you to try downloading one of the later versions of FME and giving this a try instead? It seems to be working correctly for me in build 19630 (FME 2019.1) and higher.
Hi @jovitaatsafe, I had a bit of a closer look on the issue, and it seems to me that there is some hiccup in the PDF geospatial reader for these settings. When I open a new workspace the issue doesn't occur, but when continuing in the existing workspace the issue persisted. I can temporarily solve the issue by clicking on the 'Presets' (button in bottom of the screenshots), choosing 'Load FME defaults', and reconfiguring the reader. However, when I open the settings of the Geospatial PDF reader (in my case through a featurereader) another time (sometimes after a while), the raster size settings are greyed out again and I can start all over reconfiguring the reader...
Hi @jovitaatsafe, I had a bit of a closer look on the issue, and it seems to me that there is some hiccup in the PDF geospatial reader for these settings. When I open a new workspace the issue doesn't occur, but when continuing in the existing workspace the issue persisted. I can temporarily solve the issue by clicking on the 'Presets' (button in bottom of the screenshots), choosing 'Load FME defaults', and reconfiguring the reader. However, when I open the settings of the Geospatial PDF reader (in my case through a featurereader) another time (sometimes after a while), the raster size settings are greyed out again and I can start all over reconfiguring the reader...
Hi @thijsknapen,
It sounds like this issue is localized to your one existing workspace then, is that right? I gave it a try in FME 2019.0 build 19253 and it seems to be working fine for me there.
Can you try a few things for me on your machine on the existing workspace?
- Try updating the existing reader, right click on the reader in the Navigator and Update Reader, or Readers in the menu bar, and Update Feature Types
- If that doesn't work, and if your workspace isn't too complicated (no database connections or too many folder paths to update), consider copying the whole workspace into a new workbench where the reader is working as expected
I think this will help clear whatever cache that is causing the PDF reader to stick on the greyed out raster size selection
Hi @thijsknapen,
It sounds like this issue is localized to your one existing workspace then, is that right? I gave it a try in FME 2019.0 build 19253 and it seems to be working fine for me there.
Can you try a few things for me on your machine on the existing workspace?
- Try updating the existing reader, right click on the reader in the Navigator and Update Reader, or Readers in the menu bar, and Update Feature Types
- If that doesn't work, and if your workspace isn't too complicated (no database connections or too many folder paths to update), consider copying the whole workspace into a new workbench where the reader is working as expected
I think this will help clear whatever cache that is causing the PDF reader to stick on the greyed out raster size selection
Hi @jovitaatsafe,
Maybe I wasn't clear in my analysis. But no, I don't believe the issue is localized to my existing workspace. I believe the issue lies within the featurereader and its implementation of the Geospatial PDF reader. As i'm using a featurereader in the described workspace it all started with, there is no (orange) PDF reader that I can update in my navigator pane, and therefore also the option of doing this through the 'menu bar item' 'reader' isn't available.
I just verified my hypothesis in FME 2018.1, 2019.0 and 2019.1. So what I'm saying is that the issue occurs when using the geospatial PDF reader by means of a featurereader transformer. Strangly enough the first time configuring the featurereader and choosing the 'read rasterized pages option', the issue does not (yet) occur (i.e. the first time the raster size parameters/section is shown correctly). It is only after you have configured the featurereader a first time, and open the featurereader a second time that raster size parameters are inaccessible (to be safe it is maybe best to add some dummy transformers/changing the workspace in another way before 'reopening/configuring' the featurereader transformer for this second time).
Is this maybe something that you can verify on your machine?
p.s. upon looking into my previous comment I might have not been clear in the difference between using a 'true reader' versus a featurereader. My apologies for that. To be extra clear; from the small tests I did just now, it seems to me that the issue only occurs when using a featurereader, and doesn't occur when using a 'true reader'.
Hi @thijsknapen,
Thanks for clarifying the issue! I can reproduce the issue now with the FeatureReader and I see that it used to work in FME 2018.0.
In FME 2018.1 and newer I can see this behavior that you have described, where the parameters disappear and become greyed out when editing an existing FeatureReader with those parameters already set.
I have filed an issue in our tracking system as (FMEDESKTOP-9793) and our development team can take a closer look at what might be happening.
Workaround
In the meantime, when reopening parameters and seeing them empty, if you cancel out of the dialog, and run the transformer, the parameters are actually still set. Look in your translation log for these lines with your parameters to confirm:
PDF Reader: Directive 'READ_RASTERIZED_PAGES' has value 'Yes'
PDF Reader: Directive 'PAGE_RASTER_SIZE_MODE' has value 'SCALE'
PDF Reader: Directive 'PAGE_PIXELS_PER_POINT' has value '8'
Otherwise, toggling the Non-Spatial or using your method with the presets will workaround it if you really need to go in and edit parameters, but unfortunately it means you may need to reset those parameters again.
Sorry for the inconvenience! I'll let you know as soon as the issue has been addressed. Thanks for letting us know!
Hi @thijsknapen,
Thanks for clarifying the issue! I can reproduce the issue now with the FeatureReader and I see that it used to work in FME 2018.0.
In FME 2018.1 and newer I can see this behavior that you have described, where the parameters disappear and become greyed out when editing an existing FeatureReader with those parameters already set.
I have filed an issue in our tracking system as (FMEDESKTOP-9793) and our development team can take a closer look at what might be happening.
Workaround
In the meantime, when reopening parameters and seeing them empty, if you cancel out of the dialog, and run the transformer, the parameters are actually still set. Look in your translation log for these lines with your parameters to confirm:
PDF Reader: Directive 'READ_RASTERIZED_PAGES' has value 'Yes'
PDF Reader: Directive 'PAGE_RASTER_SIZE_MODE' has value 'SCALE'
PDF Reader: Directive 'PAGE_PIXELS_PER_POINT' has value '8'
Otherwise, toggling the Non-Spatial or using your method with the presets will workaround it if you really need to go in and edit parameters, but unfortunately it means you may need to reset those parameters again.
Sorry for the inconvenience! I'll let you know as soon as the issue has been addressed. Thanks for letting us know!
Hi @jovitaatsafe,
Thanks for verifying and reflecting on the issue. I also noticed that although you can't change the raster size parameters from an existing featurereader, the initially set parameters keep working.
N.b. the (initially) set parameters can also be found in the navigator pane as transformer parameters of the featurereader. Unfortunately, also here they can not be altered after they were initially set.
