Introduction

Since the release of Macromedia FreeHand 10, a number of issues have been reported by the FreeHand community in the FreeHand Online forum. The majority of the issues are with FreeHand 10 on the Macintosh.

Noticeable delay when switching tools

When switching between tools in the Freehand 10 Tools panel on Macintosh OS 9.x, you will notice a slight delay before the new tool is selected.

 Pressure sensitivity and Wacom Tablets

The pressure-sensitive feature of the Wacom Tablet does not function with FreeHand 10 on Macintosh OS X.

When FreeHand 10 was developed (as the first native application for OS X), the early versions of Macintosh OS X did not include this tablet functionality. Since the release of FreeHand 10 there have been updates of OS X which now allow Wacom Tablets to work correctly.

 Changes in the performance of the Pen tool

Due to an effort to make Macromedia products look and work more alike, there are some changes in the way the Pen tool performs. These changes are different than previous versions of FreeHand.

Many FreeHand users have provided feedback stating that this has not been a favorable change in the performance of the Pen tool. These comments and concerns have been communicated to the Engineering team.

 Color swatches drift from the cursor when dragging

When using the drag-and-drop color feature in FreeHand 10 on the Macintosh, the position of the color swatch inconsistently changes relative to the cursor. This is a known issue.

Sometimes the color swatch position is so far away from the cursor that when the color is dropped on an object or color well, it appears that the feature is not working.

Note: The position of the cursor (not the color swatch) determines the location for the color drop.

To work around this problem use the cursor position instead of the color swatch to determine where to drop the color, use the keyboard shortcuts, or use the Fill and Stroke inspectors to apply the color to objects.

 Tooltips are taking a long time to display

When you pause over a tool in the Main Toolbar, it will take FreeHand 3 to 5 seconds to display the information. In previous versions of FreeHand, it took 1 to 2 seconds for the information to display. There is no workaround for this time delay.

 Error -30891 from the Print Center in Macintosh OS X

When FreeHand 10 prints to a non-PostScript printer on Macintosh OS X, the Print Center is giving a print error -30891. FreeHand is unable to make the switch from a PostScript to a non-PostScript printer. This problem can occur with the following print settings:

• A non-PostScript printer is selected in the FreeHand Print dialog.
• In the Page Setup window accessed from FreeHand, the paper size is defined as Other. This may also generate another error that the entire image will not fit on page.

When printing to a non-PostScript printer, FreeHand requires that you define the printer as the default printer in the Print Center and define a paper size in Page Setup in FreeHand.

 Crashing while editing text on a path (German version ONLY)

A system crash will occur when clicking repeatedly on a text block that has been attached to a closed path in German FreeHand 10. The workaround is to open the path by cutting the path with the Knife tool.

Note: This is an issue that has ONLY been identified and reproduced in the German version of FreeHand 10 on Macintosh OS X.

 High Res Images (EPS) are printing Low Res (Mac OS X)

When printing to a PostScript device with imported EPS files that contain high resolution information, which is common with EPS files, the output is low resolution.

We have had reports that customers running Macintosh OS 10.2 and configuring FreeHand to run in the classic environment resolves this issue. However, this is not a recommended environment to run FreeHand in (primarily because this environment is not heavily tested.) It was also reported that running FreeHand in Macintosh OS 9.x does not exhibit the problem.

 Type 1 fonts display and printing issues (Mac OS X)

This issue has several different symptoms all of which are limited to Mac OS X. Here are the three ways that this issue may be seen:

Courier Substitution

When specifying a style of a font from the font menu (by selecting, for example, Eras Bold) the font will substitute to courier when printing to a PostScript device. If this is your issue, use any of the following workarounds:

• Select the Plain version of the font and then select the style of Bold.
• Convert text to paths Select Text > Convert To Paths
• Print file from Mac OS 9.x

Style substitution

When specifying a style of a font from the font menu (by selecting, for example, GillSans Bold) the font will substitute to the plain style when printing to a PostScript device. If this is your issue, use any of the following workarounds:

• Select the Plain version of the font and then select the style of Bold.
• Convert text to paths Select Text > Convert To Paths
• Print file from Mac OS 9.x

Low Resolution screen display and printer output

When selecting some fonts the font will display on screen and print low resolution. Converting to paths with generate an error that the font contains no outlines.

There are no real work arounds for this issue, other than working with the font in Mac OS 9.x.

 Using the Tabs when exporting as SWF (Macintosh and Windows)

When using tabs to align text within a text block and using the test movie command or exporting as an SWF the tab character will be ignored. There is no known workaround.