Printing from Freehand - Postscript nostringval error

[HenryLwin]

Hi,

I am having difficulty of printing from freehand.

The error says Postscript error 'nostringval'.

Printing from other programs work fine, only problem with adobe freehand.

Did some research, it can be due to the damaged fonts or lack of memory, but i JUST reformatted my pc back to the factory default, which is now as good as the new one.

Please advise how to solve it.

Thanks!!

[Dov Isaacs]

There could be any number of reasons for getting a PostScript error from Freehand or any other application.

You gave no details about the type of printer you are printing to other than the implied fact that it is a printer that supports PostScript in one manner or another. Some printers are known to not fully and/or properly support the full PostScript specification and thus yield PostScript errors with perfectly fine PostScript files.

Another possibility could be not enough memory in your printer, although that is unlikely given the error that you describe.

You could have a printer that only supports PostScript language level 2 and the PostScript file itself is generated for language level 3. Or one of the placed EPS files requires language level 3.

You may have placed a corrupted or defective EPS graphics file into your FreeHand file.

Or you may have encountered a bug in the method by which Freehand generates PostScript.

You would probably be best off reposting this problem in the Freehand forum and see if any remaining Freehand users recognize the symptom.

          - Dov

[HenryLwin]

Hi Dov,

Thanks for your response.

Let me put more details:-

The printer that I have been using with my pc is Xerox model 1257 GA. Which works pretty well with my pc and prints were fine until yesterday. I believe my printer is supporting PostScript Language Level 2 because it can be printed before.

There are plenty of memories as the pc was just reformatted to factory default.

My pc has now installed Xerox latest universal printer driver, adobe laster printer driver, generatic driver to tackle the problems, still,

unfortunately the error is there.

I was printing the blank sheet from freehand without using any fonts, but still shows the error.

I have the lastest version of anti virus which scans the whole pc everyday, it ain't the bug problem.

Hope this helps.

Thanks and many thanks!!!

Regards,

Henry

[Dov Isaacs]

By memory, I was referring to the memory in the printer, not the memory in the PC. But even if a blank page yields this error, then it obviously has nothing to do with printer memory.

A bug in Freehand has nothing to do with viruses that may or may not be on your computer and scanning for same.

Can you print succesfully to that printer from other applications? If not, the problem is probably in the printer (the model is very old) itself, the communications of data from the PC to the printer, or in the driver.

If you had no problems printing anything from Freehand up until yesterday and today you cannot even print a blank page from Freehand points to either a sudden problem with your printer or some corruption in the Freehand program itself or its data files.

Again, you may want to post in the Freehand forum.

          - Dov

[HenryLwin]

Printing from other applications is no problem.

I believe it is a adobe postscript error which has nothing to do with freehand.

Kindly help.

Thanks

Henry

[Dov Isaacs]

Since Freehand generates its own PostScript, it is very unlikely to be the driver. And since the error occurs according to you even with a totally blank page sent to print, the problem is most likely in some corruption of your Freehand configuration. If I recall correctly, Freehand requires you to identify which PPD file is appropriate for your printer. Have you checked that?

          - Dov

[HenryLwin]

I tried the solution which you mentioned.

But I have other PC on the same network, which also installed the Freehand has no problem printing directly from Freehand.

If, PPD has the problem, this PC would has a problem printing as well.

Installing the driver and Freehand is done for 2 PCs with the same installing method.

Kindly help advise.

I am run out of the .....

Thanks

Henry

[Dov Isaacs]

Henry,

If both computers are trying to print to the same printer with the same software installation and one works and the other doesn't, there is clearly some system configuration problem on the system that doesn't print. It could be a permissions problem (ownership and access privileges to some data or software directory), a corrupted file someplace, etc. Having diagnosed problems of these types for many years, I can tell you that it is exceptionally difficult to diagnose your problem remotely without hands on to your systems, both the one that works and the one that doesn't. And I don't have such access.

At this point I would look at one other setting in the driver on both systems. And that is Output Protocol setting in the Device Settings in the Printer Properties. A stringval problem could be indicative of a misconfiguration here. To be safe, use the ASCII protocol as opposed to any Binary, TCP, or TBCP setting. Normally, that setting does default to ASCII but something could be resetting it.

Beyond that, I really recommend that you post on the Freehand forum and see if anyone there can assist you.

          - Dov

[John Hawkinson]

At the risk of being overly technical, isn't the right solution to prepend a Postscript error handler? Such as, err, I dunno, the one from http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=428&fileID=428 is probably OK (ehandler.ps).

(Or perhaps the Xerox printer can be convinced to print out postscript errors in sufficient detail...)

[Dov Isaacs]

He already is getting an error handler report reporting nostringval. Doesn't need any further error handler support. It is already there.

          - Dov

[John Hawkinson]

Well, one would like to have the stack and line number...

[Dov Isaacs]

Since the error handler is already producing output, maybe Henry can advise as to exactly what else appears on the error handler output page. Based on my experience, given the symptoms provided and that another supposedly similarly-configured system doesn't have the problem, I sounds like corruption of the data stream or misconfiguration of the data protocol, hence my request to check whether ASCII or any of the other protocols is being used.

          - Dov

[HenryLwin]

Hi,

Herewith, please see the compete error code:-

POSTSCRIPT ERROR: syntaxerror   OFFENDING COMMAND --nostringval--

VMSTATUS max: 101378560 avail: 101034616 level: 3

Many thanks and appreciated for the kind efforts.

Regards,

Henry