ADOBE MEDIATION RESULT

[ThePixelDoc]

[ThePixelDoc]

<<Oops... hit the draft button instead, so this later in the thread than I had assumed>>

OK. With the above post out of my system, I would like to thank Mark and all of you for your efforts and time, and I guess a degree of success for actually being “allowed” to sit down with Adobe. My hat’s off to ya all.

With that said, I think we as former Freehand Users, have to consider a new tactic to get the features in Illustrator that we most care about... from a “perspective” as a community and coming from our experience using a far superior tool.

Our feature requests are not hypothetical or experiments, they “were” present, and at a time when computers were less powerful than the phones we have in our pockets today. Think about that.

May I humbly suggest the following:

1) we carry on as a community and post our Illustrator requests here and continue to receive these in a summary email.

2) that each and every community member take the time to rewrite the request in their own words and post to a new thread within Adobe’s forums. Even if it does not effect them, but as respect to the other members and their needs.

3) that we relinquish forever on the Adobe Illustrator forum, the word(s) “Freehand” or “like Freehand”. If you follow those forums as I do, you know that our requests and/or bug reports drop down a multitude of “notches” when stating that we were fans of FH.

4) make all posts appear as concerned long-time fans and users of our beloved Illustrator. You see what I’m doing here? We are treating Adobe like a child to put it bluntly. Their whining and moaning, even outside of FH, such as with the Great Flash Debate (Debacle) with Apple, shows their mentality. Act like a child, be treated like one is my position.

Actually, that’s all. We end up again with the magical Number “4”.
From: http://astronlogia.com/2009/01/02/number-4-numerology/
1 = signifies intellect
2 = signifies mind
3 = is for energy
4 = is for uniting the above 3 numbers and forming a society. Number 4 signifies society and social obligations.

Let’s see what we, as a tight-knit “society”, can do to change things in any way we can with the tools we use and the company that makes them. Even if they are evil killers, compassion and psychology in this instance just might work. Beating them with a brick didn’t... so what else is left?

PS. I really had to chuckle about the rebate coupon. That is just so...... can’t even put it into words. However I do know exactly what I would have replied with, hint: something regarding “sunshine” and the lack there of.

[ThePixelDoc]

Once again in my haste, I bungled a post.

If referred and added to, my Numerology Tactic should have my positions 2 and 3 flipped. Just saying...

[Mig]

Oh, well.
Thanks for the effots, anyway.

Are they going to share their reasons in the future? I can´t see how it would do any harm.

[rowettd]

As other posters have expressed my response to the news ('though not nearly in as colorful language), I'll refrain from posting my own version of those remarks. Suffice to say that Might has defeated Right, and we must live with the results.

I think the meetings with Adobe will be an exercise in futility, and I wouldn't devote much time/energy to them. Monopolies will do as they please. I hope you will keep us updated on the other strategy.

[Mig]

Thanks for the efforts, fellows.
Is there any chance to get an explanation for Adobe? I can understand all this secrecy but...

[alexgab]

I want to thank Thü, attorneys and all the team at FreeFreeHand. Indeed, a $199 coupon discount is an insult. I know Freehand days has gone but what I want is a better Illustrator. I started my career with Freehand but since quite some time I moved to AI, even though several times I wanted to trow the App out off the window (in the same day!). Today I no longer have a dependable relation with FreeHand and, as rough as it may sound, i don't see myself working back again with FH. True, Illustrator is a lesser app in many ways, but has many things that are great. 

This trial VS Adobe is around this table for around 2 years, but like many of you, I've been part of this organization for sometime before. Lets congrat Thü for keeping this work up to this point and try to focus into the possible with this meetings with Adobe. 

Of course they have no obligation to follow all of our requets, but having this person to person meetings, might take most of our requets to build a much better application of AI. 

I don't know guys, buy maybe this is the right time to turn (a bit) AI into a more reliable app. I am talking here about 64 bits. We all know how slow and heavy eating memory resources this mammoth of AI is. With CS6  absolutely all the code of the app has been rewritten to take advantage of the 64 bit structure and allow to gain acces whatever RAM you have installed instead of the 2 RAM limit the CS5 and below has. Now that Adobe has rewritten Ai from the ground up, this is the best chance we have to get "new" features into the new code. 

Think of this like a front row premium user request, and this are my requets:

WHAT I REALY-REALLY NEED

1) Editable corner radius. For christ sake! Ai has two ways to create corner radius and neither of them are great. FH did that from the early days and InDesing can do that too. 

2) Paste inside / cut contents. InDesing can do it, why cant Ai?

3) Collect for output / progress bar. In the extras folder there is a plugin that looks like the FH feature but is so crappy. I work every day with files that need to be sent to the print house. Its a pain making a full package of this file. The actual plugin only collects images but no fonts. And you can't never see when its done because it has no progress bar or something. Crap. 

4) Strict swatches policy. I don't know what's going on but the swatches pallete is a mess. The startup blank page has a predefined swatches already loaded. If you add, for example, a logo with 2 pantone colours, they will be added to the pallete, but if you ungroup the logo and sellect one element, there is no reference to any swatch. Another thing, if you from here sellect all unused swatches there will always be swatches left behind! I need a 'Reveal swatch in art'. Hell. 

WHAT I NEED

5) Fixed batch system. Creating an action in Ai is a pain. Meanwhile creating an action in PS is quite easy.  In order to make it work properly I had to search all over the internet and from crypted adobe forums. It turns out that if you create a "Saving" action, it will record the file name that you used to create the action. Nonsense. You need to use the batch option to fix that. Pure trial an error procedures here. 

6) Reveal link in finder. This is a must. 

7) Align objetswith  customs keys. In order to speed my work, in FH I had my custom shurtcuts for aligment actions (Cmd+1 = align center). Ai can't create this sort of custom shortcuts. All you can do is hit F9 to show the aligment pallete, after that you just click-click-click-click

8) Auto expand / collapse text boxes. How usefull this was in FH. 

OPTIONAL
9) Make CS6 suiatble to read FH file via the app itself of a free plugin. 

Remember, these are my personal requets for what I need. Many of you, of course, will have different priorities. 

[tcha-tcho]

What do you think of create a new FreeHand?? We could get one of the open source vector softwares available and start to transform it to something close to FreeHand.

Some open source options:







Maybe persuade Microsoft to release Expression in open source (Silverlight already is):


I am developer. But we gonna need more developers and designers interested in build a software like this.

Best regards

Tcha-Tcho

[mickmac]

The saddest day for FreeHand. That is the end. But many thanks anyway for your work.

[erniet]

First a caveat: I do appreciate all the hard work and tenacity of Thu and others over the years. Many thanks for your efforts.

Re the Mediation Result:

I cannot express how disappointed I am, Goliath has won.
1/ I sincerely doubt that the four meetings will yield substantive results.
2/ I am insulted that a tiny discount on an overpriced product that I do not wish to own or learn is all that we have "won."
3/ #2 is in the context of a longtime designer who has always eschewed Illy. I don't know how to use it and don't care to. I do hope this mac will last well enough for me to continue my (admittedly low volume) work far into the future. I know that I cannot upgrade and hope to continue with FH.
4/ Does anyone know how to obtain the FH source code? I would buy an illegal upgrade in a moment.