...some sense would buy Canvas from ACDsee and get the import / export rendering to work properly. Canvas would be a serious viable contender, since it does both bitmap and vector editing in one program - BUT - it just has trouble with several file formats that it says it supports.

I've been using Canvas for years (since version 6) and it's my go-to program but now more than ever, it needs to be bought and updated.

Other than someone rescuing Canvas, maybe this would be a good time for Corel to bring their coreldraw suite to the Mac?

now I have to buy an overbloated Illustrator CS3

irrespective of whether freehand or illustrator was better, the point is that i now have less choice than I had before.

This was not the utopian free world that Dubya promised me, I feel betrayed,

hey bring on the communists

If the free market were really about fair competition with the customer getting the best product, there would be a way for someone to buy Freehand and run with it.

Obviously the market is all about ownership, power, and control with a little bit of middle school playground arrogance in the mix.

I don't know which was better. In my last job designers used Freehand, but PR people used Illustrator.

What I hope we see here is that the free market needs to be tweaked some more and next time you here some say that "market forces should decide X and Y" remember that board rooms decide whether market forces are ever even applied and corporate gamesmanship do not make for a healthy life, much less a vibrant, healthy economy.

I always figured that if you started out with pen and pencil you were likely to prefer Illustrator, if you started with waxers, X-Acto knives, RubyLith, acetate overlays, and cold type you probably were going to prefer FreeHand. I vastly prefer FreeHand and every time I've used Illustrator it's been painful.

I suppose I'll pony up and get the current Illustrator, eventually I'm sure I won't be able to run FreeHand, but if it were any more expensive I wouldn't bother.

For those who will continue to use the finest vector tool ever created, the diehards will continue to support each other on the Freehand list: http://www.domainvanhorn.com/mailman/listinfo/freehand

Van (moderator of said list)

Xara is a serious contender to Illustrator. It just needs to be ported to Mac. I kept telling people in the Adobe forums that Adobe was going to do this, but they were like, "No, wait, Adobe hasn't said anything about the future of FH. There's always a chance." Yeah, right, whatever.

I heard that Adobe is combining Freehand with Illustrator and releasing a new product called Frustrator!

(It's an old joke but it may be the last time I get to use it)

...but was an excellent drawing program. You only had to look at the results.

Illustrator has unfortunately also become buggy and since v8 has become a mess of pallettes and clumsily implemented GUI and procedures.

Long time Pagemaker and Adobe users have become used to the mess, but despite (or because of) the fact I have used Illustrator since v1, I find it has all gone off the rails.

If Adobe takes just one thing from Freehand, it should be "Paste inside"... bleedin' obvious as opposed to Mask and all the other rubbish you have to go through to make it just work.

no more choice

it hadn't been updated for several years and still had features like the one you mention that beat AI hands down..

typical Adobe.

Restart Altsys, restart Freehand. Freehand rules!

Professionally, I used ImageReady instead of Fireworks I used GoLive instead of Dreamweaver I used Freehand instead of Illustrator

I know how to pick the winning horse. Let me say this merger is the worst thing to happen to me.

Freehand is the worst kick in the pants. I have years of documents that I occassionally have to update. They could at least fix the grid bug if they're going to continue selling it. Illustrator does not handle multi-page layouts like freehand. For that, you need InDesign.

...was pretty decent. And Persuasion was much better than PowerPoint.

Hi Tech Historical Trivia: The two brothers who wrote Freehand, Altsys I think, had no idea that Adobe was working on Illustrator and were very surprised when Illustrator was released about the same time as Freehand.

when Macromedia decided to sell off KPT and stop focussing on the creative side and focussed too much on the web apps they had. If they kept KPT/Painter et al and hung onto FH as well as their web stuff they could be around and we'd have some competition. But that decision was like 6 years ago I think

until it won't work any more, then I'll switch to ID. Illustrator bites. I imagine if you're into strictly drawing Illustrator is OK, but its handling of text and user interface is really bad.

I hate Adobe dropping FrameMaker for Mac even more than them dropping FreeHand.

What are you afraid of Adobe. Oh that's right, that someone will take a product that hasn't been updated in 4 years and with a mere universal binary update make it kick the c*** out of Illustrator.

It makes me cry to think that after all the years I've be using FreeHand, back to the Aldus days . . . that a force to learn Illustrator is the "answer", nice. I like how Adobe uses the bonuses that the move to Illustrator will be nice because it integrates with Adobe Flash, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks. Hey Dumbasses, that's exactly why I loved FreeHand so much! Oh yea, and how I could have multiple pages of multiple sizes, and how I could opt+click down objects, and, and, and.

"migrate" to illustrator for 7 years! but guess what, FreeHand is superior hands down. Adobe, instead of making every update to Illustrator just a bloated, a** impacted behemoth of a program, get back to basics and study why Freehand is better and put it into AI.

Adobe can also learn a lot from modern programs like Luxology's Modo or Apple's motion, to really update how we work with these programs. I can't beleave it's 2007 and I still can fill a second, 20 in monitor with an s-load of pallets! I was doing that in '92.

On that note, sell FreeHand to Apple and see what they can do with it. I'm sure they can take it an really run with it. R.I.P.

Macromedia never owned KPT or Painter. That was MetaCreations. And Fractal Design before that.

I never liked Illustrator because it wasn't as intuitive as Freehand, and Adobe products really didn't integrate well with one another, whereas Macromedia products did.

However, to Adobe's credit, it has done some nice work integrating Macromedia products into its own, as well as updating its own products. I haven't played with the new Illustrator, and I hope it resolves some of these problems.

workaround: re-map the default shortcuts for "show grid" / "snap to grid" to e.g. F6 / F7

I am a professional cartographer/graphic designer. Ive used Freehand since 1995, so much so that it's extension of my body. I've used both programs extensively, and Illustrator still does not work as well as Freehand specifically for information rich graphics such as complex base maps. Features too numerous to mention here, but gladly listed for anyone interested. The company I work for has a vast archive in Freehand, and noone can expect all of that to be converted. There are many of us that dont want to see Freehand go. After all, Corel Draw is still around...who am I to say that it should be eliminated just because I prefer Freehand or Illustrator? Yes, I really really want that "outdated and possibly unmaintainable" codebase for my intel mac and for tiger and beyond. I would do anything to save that program and I know that Im not alone. Adobe could market it the product for geeky types or sel it if they wanted to. I dont care to have it compete with Adobe and the Freehand is not a serious "threat" to Illustrator, especially because there are only a couple thousand highly skilled designers that know how to take advantage of its special capabilities ...it may not be a product for the masses that just need to make simple ads or flyers. There are numerous features that Illustrator still does not have (though Adobe has incorporated some of them in InDesign, which is a great product). There is no way to describe the "feel" of the programs and how they select and manipulate objects and text...it's a personal preference. I use both programs for different purposes and I need Freehand available to do my work. Although I dont use certain products, I support designers personal choices, as long as they can create properly prepped for print/web graphics, even if they use Canvas, Corel Draw, Mac Paint or whatever.