7 Answers

• danmarsiglio

  hello folks. I'm new to the site and really glad to have found you all. I'm wondering if there might be a 4th option. Call me crazy, but isn't Freehand still the most magnificent creative software we've ever used? Is this because we're strange, contrarian zealots?! No. It's because Freehand is still the best! The 4th softer path is to build momentum and to bring NEW FH users into the fray. I have talked to many people over the years who use Illustrator simply because they don't know any better / wouldn't know to look elsewhere to get their work done. Just this past summer I was showing a couple of architects, who used Illustrator for their graphics work at Yale, the beauty and elegance of Freehand. Their jaws dropped and they exclaimed over and over that "AI doesn't work that way...you can't do that..." and on and on. They declared that they wanted FH and would begin to use it. This reminds me that I have to check in with them about that / see how they're doing. The point is that many many people fit this description and would be appalled to see the nonsense that they must endure to get tasks done that FH does with such intuitive grace. I am planning a video tutorial series to help people find FH and to demonstrate many of the infinite ways that FH makes the most sense for many of them - with or without future development. I also truly believe that this is a story that the mainstream media would like to tell. There was a recent article in the NYT about the discontinuation of 4x5 polaroid film. This has been devastating to many large format photographers who will now be forced to completely rethink their workflow. Many already incorporate digital photography so that is not the answer. That film serves a very specific need for them. That story was in the New York Times!! and there isn't even a nefarious anti-trust subplot. It's just a company that has always made a product who decided to stop making it. I believe that some other company is buying the patents or something and will produce / sell it at much higher cost but photogs probably won't care a bit. I'd certainly pay double the AI price for future versions of FH!! It's at least twice as useful!! I'll find a link to the article and post it here. But in the mean time check this out: http://www.the-impossible-project.com/ According to the new popup on their home page they have succeeded!! and a new form of instant photography will be produced. Sounds like Polaroid has agreed to license some of their technology (source code if you will) to another company to make it possible. This is what we need: 1) reach all current FH users (FFH is the best place for that to happen) 2) grow the user base by showing off FH to disgruntled AI users (trust me, their are many) 3) use press and antitrust law to pressure Adobe into selling the source code to another company. 4) wait with giddy enthusiasm while a group of talented programmers revamp FH into the most amazing and beautiful app in history!! (as if it isn't already!) 5) connect with Apple (and Microsoft presumably) to have an exclusive first offering of the new version at their retail stores. 6) camp out all night like a super nerd to get our hands on the first copies!!! yayyy! I really do believe that their is a story to tell here that mainstream media will want to pick up. Does Adobe have a parent media company that will want to squash this press? We won't approach them... danmarsiglio answered in RANTS AND RAVES 9 months ago | Report 1 0 1 comment by Mark Gelotte… Good ideas and some surprises in your thinking: #1) Yes, reaching users is the biggest goal of all. So many folks still don't know FFH exists and since FH is used by different occupations, a number of users are closed off from the publicity in design and graphics forums. This takes some diligence to uncover these people but the word can travel fast once they are exposed. #2) I had to stop and reread your comments on getting new users by switching. I just assumed Illustrator users were confirmed but you gave an instance of persuading them. If this is so (and not just my bias) than you are really on to something here. Getting testimonials from switchers could be an awesome marketing tool. Not to mention a website and videos devoted to switching from Illustrator to FreeHand. How ironic is that! #3) ditto & ditto using the press and antitrust measures. #4) Actually if FH is released to Open Source or sold to a developer, it's likely some old Fireworks/FreeHand programmers will lend a hand, at least as consultants. Many still have a soft spot for FreeHand after leaving Macromedia back in 2004. #5) Personally, I think the "new" FreeHand will attract so much online buzz, stores will be the last to catch up. Especially if FreeHand goes open source, downloads will be overwhelming. #6) Hahah Keep the mainstream media story alive. Any help here will be TERRIFIC! and, yes, certain magazines and sites may be shy about our movement because of Adobe marketing revenue but there isn't an overt conspiracy. Great post and the Impossible Project is an inspiration for us! Mark Gelotte commented 9 months ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

• Option 8: The Chinese start treating Freehand like they did with AutoCAD. AutoCAD was too expensive for Chinese (also to expensive for Europeans BTW), so they created a CLONE and called it MiniMe (read Intellicad). Same with OpenOffice being so much like Office. I would like to see an open source effort that is working 100% as FH 12, has nothing to do with Adobe. I hope it gets a real snappy core, and runs native Cocoa on macs. Bert answered in RANTS AND RAVES 6 months ago | Report 0 0 1 comment by Mark Gelotte… The question is, can a new start-up vector app have the same tools and simplicity as FreeHand, especially with Adobe holding the patents? Otherwise it's back to learning a new program and toolset. I tried Inkscape and it felt like I was on the same learning curve as Illustrator. If a new open-source effort can emulate FHMX as we are used to, than this is a workable idea. Mark Gelotte commented 6 months ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

• Hambach William

  lets's think about a sventh path... ...and I can live with that. There's still hope for Freehand in the vast mothership named Adobe. And they're aware of it. I taste, think and have the feeling that... slowly, one step at a time, freehand sneaks it's way into Indesign. For me, that is good news. From that time on, they can go further and develop it even in a far better way. INDD+FHMX would make an awesome couple. Freehand would get what was never developed and Indesign gets the lacking design tools. That way they could spare us the draconian archaic AI tools. Indd is still lacking a lot of features, but the ones that do appear are already very freehand-like. (hey mam, look; pen tool, paste inside, paste out etc.) Clean, logical and lean. A straightforward no nonsense application workflow with the ease of freehand and the power of Indesign. Not some frankenstein application like AI that has plug-ins from PSD and carries two entities in it's belly. If they put the right inventive tools from freehand in a worthy companion like indesign: I can live with that. Just more of this freehand-minded add-ons, layers, blends, grouping, compound paths and the genuine feel and look of freehand and I could be happy watching the birth of Freehandisign, which will be bursting with innovative technologie... and utterly renders illustrator useless. I can live with that, and I think a lot of us can. Or am I so wrong. Hambach William answered in RANTS AND RAVES 7 months ago | Report 0 0 1 comment by Mark Gelotte… I do like InDesign myself and it comes closer to the "feel" of FH. But for me it's still too close to it's rival QuarkXpress than it is to Illustrator/FreeHand. I have a hard time visualizing ID becoming more vector oriented than it is. At this point, I am still seeing an Adobe-sponsored open source FreeHand to take on Inkscape and Scribus. Mark Gelotte commented 6 months ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

• moderator Jabez Palmer

  #2 is interesting, I had never thought of it along those lines. If I remember right, ImageReady did little of what PS could do but a couple things it couldn't: advanced image processing (compression, optimization) and gif animation. Slicing for html output? So anyway, I wonder how much of a parallel model for Illustrator and FreeHand could be drawn. We know how FreeHand is superior in some ways, but are there distinct functions you could build a unique marketing identity around? The lines get blurry for me. Between Illustrator and InDesign you have all you need OR FreeHand, but they kind of cancel out, no? Maybe we could think of it as a design process tool, a more open and free environment to build comps, explore creative avenues, before exporting a bundle that somehow allows further refinement of the logo and art in AI (if needed) and copy and type treatment in ID (if needed). I don't know, just thinking out loud.  personally I'm not a believer in #3. As many have pointed out before, there's the bloat. It makes Illustrator slow to open, save, redraw, huge files, crashing, (what else?). And the architecture, as I think you may have been telling me: Illustrator has limitations built into its foundation that won't allow it to be modified in ways that would make it more FH-like. As we've seen Adobe just keeps attaching new parts like some kind of Frankenstein monster, bloating it further. Some of these things are no doubt for FreeHanders: the FreeHand Workspace which I tried but did very little to satisfy me. The new gradient controls which seem like a crucial improvement and level it with FreeHand in that one respect. And so on. But it will never feel or respond like FreeHand.  I'd be happy with the success of either of the first two above. The third is the one I think most likely to happen barring the forceful impact of our own vision. And I'd be happy with it IF Illustrator could really hit the bar I'm looking for. But there are a few fundamental things about Illustrator that drive me nuts (and a host of niggling annoyances). Selecting objects works the wrong way, period (I don't want every object I touch by dragging the cursor, just the ones I capture entirely); 2 kinds of type and both are lame compared to FreeHand's 1 all-purpose; clipping mask vs paste-inside; 2 cursors that require constant switching vs 1 all-purpose with select-inside; etc, I could go on but these jump to mind first. On the surface they might sound to some people like small things to be moved past, but dealing with them all day long when you know there's a better way just isn't acceptable.  ha, ha, well I'm preaching to the choir here. Adobe, you out there listening in??? We'll have to get this all into bullet points for the letter campaign I guess. This is top priority now, I think. Maybe we can have alternates that are geared more to sending to firms, agencies, etc. to build awareness at the self-directed level? Again thinking out loud... Jabez Palmer answered in RANTS AND RAVES 10 months ago | Report 0 0 1 comment by Mark Gelotte… #2 is a hybrid of sorts. From what I've been discussing with a number of FH and AI users, it's kind of like having-your-cake-and-eat-it-too approach where they want FreeHand and yet like certain things Illustrator does. There are STRONG feelings about the bloat and backwardness of AI, which is why FreeHand is used as the starting point by several folks I heard from. And then the art brought in to AI for effects and output. The thing is, AI doesn't work in reverse unless it is saved in version 8. So this would mean the future FH-CS5 is brought up to equal standards as AI-CS5. The analogy of Photoshop and ImageReady is because I couldn't recall another example. But this "hybrid" of bundling AI and FH together allows us to work in the interface we know so well and AI users to stay in theirs. The whole dispute really comes down to the feel of the tools and interface. As any FH user who has tried to switch to AI knows, we have to UNlearn FreeHand in order to learn Illustrator. (thx Garth for that phrase!) Therefore what seems like the small things you mentioned Bez, become HUGE in a workflow environment. Adobe doesn't get this. I've heard gripe after gripe from feature requesters and beta testers I talked with regarding FreeHand's sensible approach to tools and commands being ignored by the AI programmers. But they will add to the bloat with more "features." So yes, #1 and #2 are good solutions and probably make more sense with Adobe when push comes to shove. I'd be very curious if anyone has another alternative(s) to what I mentioned. Mark Gelotte commented 10 months ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

• I don´t see FH integrated into the CS family at all. FH capabilities are still strong enough to stand alone on its own. I think, if nothing happens in the future, perhaps FH will suffer the same fate as PageMaker: forgotten over time. Within a business strategy I wouldn´t put my (own) top applications -InDesign/Pagemaker- to fight between them for the market share. Same case with FH/AI. If FH were less powerful/limited, it might work as a bundle, like Photoshop/ImageReady. In my humble opinion, what FH lacks is a real smoth working color/calibration engine. FH is quite too messy and hard to setup versus AI. My christmas whish for Adobe would be a color engine integration into FH, so, answering to your question, I guess Category 1 is the closest to my thinking. Alex Sanchez answered in RANTS AND RAVES 9 months ago | Report 0 0 Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

• If they were gonna do anyone of the above, I think 3 would be the road they'd go down, 2 would be preferable but I don't see it. 1 should happen but not in Adobe's hands. James Blast answered in RANTS AND RAVES 10 months ago | Report 0 0 Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.

• 1: Ideal but unlikely. Better to have Freehand as Open Source as proper competition would be good for Illustrator's development and for Freehand's. 2: Why bother? The overlap is confusing. 3: An option, but unlikely, after all it has taken Illustrator until CS4 to have multiple pages on the pasteboard (if I have read the reviews correctly) and the text handling (eg justification - word spacing) is woeful compared to Freehand. Simon Watson answered in RANTS AND RAVES 10 months ago | Report 0 0 Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question preview THIS IS A PREVIEW: Click "Post" to submit it or "Edit" to make changes. edit Please wait… This could take a minute if the tubes are clogged.