The black joke of FreeHand's on-line 'Help'

- when trying to work out how I might make the calligraphic pen tool show smoother outlines:

in FH8 Help

1. the index has nothing under 'smooth'

2. the 'find' function said that eight topics included the word 'smooth': when I clicked on them in turn, in two of them the word 'smooth' was highlighted, in four of the others the words highlighted were 'the', 'and', 'useful', and 'learn', while in the last two nothing was highlighted. In three topics the word 'smooth' was to be found if you looked for it; and in the other three, I couldn't see any reference to 'smooth' occurred anywhere on the screen.

3. the areas discussed under 'smooth' were

  • PostScript color transitions;
  • a connector point ensuring a smooth transition from a curved path segment to a straight line segment;
  • and an option for the distortion effect called 'roughen'.

In FH7 Help

- if you click on the 'help' icon in the toolbar, or press the keyboard 'help' key, the cursor changes to a question mark, but when you click with that, nothing further happens; the 'Help' menu doesn't list any local help file, only four different places at Macromedia, for sales & success stories, to register, to give unanswered feedback and to take part in a survey: but if you do select 'contact Macromedia', the page that comes up does give a link to the on-line help; however, once there:

- the index had again nothing under 'smooth';

- the 'find' function offered just one topic, 'Improved Gradient fill .. creates a smooth transition between multiple colors in a fill'