Adobe Illustrator and InDesign: Dimension measurement errors when running under Rosetta

MacFixit reader Len Williams reports an issue where Adobe Illustrator and InDesign (as part of the Creative Suite 2.0 package) generate slightly incorrect dimensions for pages when running under Rosetta on Intel-based Macs. This can prove to be an unacceptable limitation for designers.

Len writes:

"I'm a graphic designer of many years, currently using primarily the Adobe Creative Suite 2 workflow (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive and Acrobat). After purchasing my new MacBook Pro 17" and selling my tower G4 and Powerbook G4 I was blissfully happy until I noticed various little problems arising with CS2 on my Intel Mac. I was expecting that Adobe products would run a bit more slowly under Rosetta, which is true but still workable, but what I wasn't expecting the real problems that were to be discovered.

"In InDesign and Illustrator it's nearly impossible to specify an exact dimension for a page size or a rectangle. For example, the default Letter size document in InDesign is 8.50050050005 inches by 11 inches. Almost any dimension gets altered by a small fraction of an inch, either slightly less or slightly more than the figure you've entered.

"Where this really plays havoc is in Illustrator. I use Illustrator to create the basic mockups of the web sites I design. Unfortunately, when I want a rectangle that's 800 pixels by 600 pixels, it gives me one that's 799.999 x 600, and this causes a vertical 1 pixel white line to show up on the left or right of the rectangle when it's saved with the Save For Web command."

"I thought I could live with these glitches by using various workarounds, until I started getting frequent crashes of InDesign and Illustrator, and even Photoshop. InDesign and Illustrator started crashing for no apparent reason 6-10 times a day. All of a sudden some of the documents I was working on caused both programs to quit on boot up or quit unexpected. Only by re-saving all of the Photoshop images in certain InDesign files would allow them to open."

If you are experiencing a similar issue, please let us know.

Resources