Alternative for Object Packager (Removed in Vista)

[Guest]

Being that the Object Packager OLE feature was discontinued in the Vista OS,
is there some alternative? I have hundreds of technical manuals that have
embedded OLE drawings that are not longer editable. They are wmf files
embedded into Adobe FrameMaker using the simple MS Draw vector program. I
used to be able to double-click the drawing and edit it when using XP or
previous. Now in Vista this no longer works-- I can't even copy and move the
graphics around in the document or "un-embed" them.

Is there some alternative to the Object Packager?

 

[Andrew McLaren]

Being that the Object Packager OLE feature was discontinued in the Vista
OS,
is there some alternative? I have hundreds of technical manuals that
have
embedded OLE drawings that are not longer editable. They are wmf files
embedded into Adobe FrameMaker using the simple MS Draw vector program. I
Is there some alternative to the Object Packager?

Hi Tech Writer,

I played around with this a little bit, hoping it might be possible to copy
and run the Packager from an XP machine (including the COM class
registrations etc; not just naively copying the EXE file). However, none of
my experiments worked. Basically, it looks like Packager cannot run on
Vista.

I'm not surprised. Anything based on that older-style DDE or OLE 1.0, OLE
2.0 technology is more or less doomed. Although useful from a functional
perspective, it has 2 big flaws:

- relies on broadcasting WM_ messages, which works on a cooperative tasking
platform like Windows 3.x, but is not reliable in a pre-emptively
multi-tasking platform like NT (including here, Vista).

- security: there is none. These days, even inter-process communication on
the same machine needs to be secured, so insecure forms of IPC are doomed.

Which is all fine from a theoretical perspective, but it still leaves you up
the creek without a paddle ...

The only effective solution I can think of is to open your Framemaker docs
on a machine which supports OLE Packager - in other words, an XP machine.
Since you don't want to carry 2 physical machines around, let the XP machine
be a "virtual" PC, running as an application on Vista. The 2 main products
are Microsoft's Virtual PC:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

and VMWare Workstation:
http://www.vmware.com/products/ws/

Microsoft Virtual PC is free, so it's probably a good place to start. If you
really get into virtualisation, and find you need the extra features in
VMWare, then consider buying it (US$189).

With both Virtual PC or VMWare Workstation the principle is the same:
- install Virtual PC 9or whatever) as a product, on your Vista machine.
- create a new "Virtual Machine" (VM) in Virtual PC;
- install XP as the operating system for the new VM;
- install Framemaker as an application on your XP VM;
- run Framemaker to edit your docs containing WMF files.

Both Virtual PC and VMWare have a "shared folders" facility which lest you
move files back and forth from VM to physical Vista PC, fairly easily.

As time and conditions permit, you can gradually migrate the packaged WMF
pictures across to some more currently supported kind of technology. Or,
just keep running XP in perpetuity.

The main downside is that you need to have a full license for XP available,
for the Virtual Machine. Also your physical machine needs enough grunt to
run two complete operating systems, side by side: the physical Vista OS, and
the virtual XP OS. But both products are surprisingly efficient.

Hope it helps,

 

[Guest]

Thanks Andrew. I tried migrating some XP system files over to get it
working, as you did and had the same result. I agree, it just isn't gonna
run the old OLE packages. The virtual machine is an interesting idea. Maybe
a way to slowly rework the files. I did discover that by dragging a few.
dll's over from XP, I could double-click and open the MS Draw graphics, then
cut and paste to Illustrator. Then export back in using a straight file
import. Tedious and a lot of extra work, but if all else fails, that is a
way to get it more up to date. Change is inevitable I suppose.

 

[Andrew McLaren]

a way to slowly rework the files. I did discover that by dragging a few.
dll's over from XP, I could double-click and open the MS Draw graphics,
then

Interesting. FWIW, MS Draw itself certainly still works fine, out of the
box, in Office 2007 on Vista. I have no problem editing embedded pictures,
as such, in Word documents. But the pictures are objects of type "MS Draw
1.01"; they aren't objects that were inserted by Packager.

cut and paste to Illustrator. Then export back in using a straight file
import. Tedious and a lot of extra work, but if all else fails, that is a
way to get it more up to date.

That sounds like the best plan. Tedious, but you only need to do it once
(hopefully

Good luck with it,