bullet points won't print - FHMX

[David Yerbury]

I can't print bullet points or quotes - they display on screen but they won't
print. If i convert to paths they do of course print, but that's no good for
editing purposes. Is this a Freehand MX (Version 11.0.2) or printer driver
issue? (printer : Minolta CF-9001)

[Karen26]

I have a similar problem with bullets, quotes, en dashes and em dashes
(substitutes different character). I may have a fix (but am still testing it) I
stopped using my resident Helvetica font (True Type) and I am using a new Open
Type font . It seems to be working today - who knows about tomorrow.

[Judy Arndt]

Macromedia acknowledges there's a problem with some fonts. They haven't
offered a solution. See this technote:
[url]http://www.macromedia.com/support/freehand/ts/documents/fhmx_emerging__issue[/url]
s.htm

Judy Arndt


David Yerbury wrote:

> I can't print bullet points or quotes - they display on screen but they won't
> print. If i convert to paths they do of course print, but that's no good for
> editing purposes. Is this a Freehand MX (Version 11.0.2) or printer driver
> issue? (printer : Minolta CF-9001)
>

[G.Force]

Judy Arndt wrote:

> Macromedia acknowledges there's a problem with some fonts. They haven't
> offered a solution.

If I get the substituted characters eg yen symbol for a bullet then I
quit FH and restart and it's fine.

[Maippe]

Originally posted by: Karen26
I have a similar problem with bullets, quotes, en dashes and em dashes
(substitutes different character). I may have a fix (but am still testing it) I
stopped using my resident Helvetica font (True Type) and I am using a new Open
Type font . It seems to be working today - who knows about tomorrow.

[Maippe]

Originally posted by: Karen26
I have a similar problem with bullets, quotes, en dashes and em dashes
(substitutes different character). I may have a fix (but am still testing it) I
stopped using my resident Helvetica font (True Type) and I am using a new Open
Type font . It seems to be working today - who knows about tomorrow.

[minespress]

I have come to the conclusion that this problem is related to the fact that
Freehand does not support unicode.

Bullets, curly quotes, etc. are not basic characters, and Freehand has a hard
time with them. On the PC, the hex code for a "yen" symbol is the same as the
mac hex code for a bullet. Hence, I get yen symbols instead of bullets when I
print. I also get some fonts with missing curly quotes, which also have a
different hex code on the PC. I did a test with other special characters and
found similar results. Restarting does not seem to help. I did find some fonts
that are causing a problem and "fixed" them by creating a new copy of the font
in fontographer. But there seems to be other situations that are just random.

I suspect that there is some problem with combining certain fonts with others
in the same document as well. And it may have something to do with system
support of unicode. Some of my computers may show the problem, while others do
not. The ones with the problem did not have international support turned on, as
I had re-installed the OS on those machines. But again, there are other
seemingly random situations.

I convert any of these problem documents to Adobe Illustrator, and then they
print just fine. And typing bullets works in all of my other programs that
accept unicode, no matter what the font is. This is because unicode is just
that: a universal code for fonts. No matter what font, language, application,
or operating system you are using, the unicode for a bullet is always the same
(2022 I think). If Freehand would support unicode, it would not matter what hex
code a font used for a bullet. The unicode would always be the same, and it
would always print as a bullet.

This is getting to be such a problem for us that we are considering converting
everything to Illustrator.

[MurrayRL]

This is also a major problem for me. Bullet points, apostrophes, quote marks
etc often won't print (bullet point is replaced by yen symbol) regardless of
what font is used.

Some jobs print fine, some don't. Usually the problem is eliminated by
exporting to a Freehand 10 file and printing from that. Sometimes making a PDF
from Freehand MX and printing from that works, sometimes it doesn't.

This is the most serious issue I have had so far with Freehand MX. This needs
to be fixed NOW!!