Dear Judy and Curt:
I ran into the same problem with the duplicated normal text error recently, upon investigation found this thread in the Macromedia Freehand forums.

I am quite alarmed and disapointed about the sollution or lack thereof that is presented.

For us this issue is quite severe, infact it like a virus has afflicted a large number of maps in our digital database. Now that it has been dicovered we have to keep a eye open every time we open or import a file, or group of elements into a new file, we have to be cautious about all our file updates as well.

You see the maps we make using Freehand take a minimum of months to create just the Text, not to mention the line work. To reconstruct the text on all of these maps would be a harsh economic blow to the freelance contract cartographers that make them, and unfortunatly through editorial the text error has spread both literally and graphicly across the world to many of those map designers.

Why can't Macromedia make a software-base hack or filter that would allow us to delete the duplicated normal text tyle, or is there some way of hacking into the datafork of the file to remove the error.

We are more increasingly being asked to use PDF as our format for direct to press printing and with this problem the only way to export to PDF is to convert all text to paths. The only way weve been able to resurect the file is by copying just line work to a new file and use the text converted to paths as a template to retype all the text. We can not generate place name indexes with the pathed text, or copy paste the currupted text into a spread sheet. in several cases weve had to go back to a previous edition prior to the curuption and generate the index then, losing any text changes that were subsequent or using the text to paths as a template to tell us What has been changed.

Over the last decade, I have personally created 27 maps of Africa using Freehand, and this normal-text error came to me from a change to a map cover done at the companies editorial department, it has afflicted 7 maps before it was issolated. Unfortunatly map files are lasting grafic documents, infact a few started as Freehand 4 and 5 files, and through years of editorial and revisions are in FH8,10, and MX formats, canning the files or even copy-pasting linework and redoing athe 1000s of text elements doesnt seem like an option.

Weve tried the normal customer support channels, with no luck, I only hope the Macromedia Engineers are listening to this forum discussion.

Stephen Stringall

TerraCarta Media Group
Cartographer &
1997 Macromedia Peoples Choice
Information Illustration Winner