Some important questions for the Forum team

[Head]

Hi guys,

I had a few questions about general issues relating to this venture, which would seem relevant to everybody with an interest:

Is Quasado 'safe' from Abobe?
Many supporters will want to write out their checks payable to Quasado right now. It’s our duty, after all . But what comfort do Quasado have that Adobe won’t jump on them from a great height and file a copyright infringement claim to bring development of Expressive to an immediate halt at any time in the future? The whole point of Expressive is to mimick FreeHand as closely as possible, and with Adobe's track record as it is, it’s hard to believe they will just stand by and allow this to happen.

This is a question that could hold many folk back from making a vital contribution that Quasado need to make Expressive a reality. Is there any encouragement available to the community in this regard?


Do Quasado's programmers have FreeHand experience?
Quasado’s development videos are impressive and demonstrate an awareness of the required feature set in principle. But, in addition to the available features, there are aspects of using a program that are hard to describe in words, and more to do with how it 'feels' in the user's hand. A comprehensive feature set that’s clunky and just doesn’t ‘feel right’ in practice could be a big disappointment: FreeHand will always be a tough act to follow, more than for just the available features.

I'm guessing it's unlikely that Quasado's programmers are long-standing FreeHand users familiar with the subtleties of how FreeHand 'feels' and responds in the user's hand? So are we (the 'backers') and you guys the ones who Quasado will be relying on for guidance in this regard, or do Quasado have experienced FreeHand users working with them on the ground to guide them through these subtleties, and to give Expressive the best chance of doing its stuff as well as FreeHand still does?


Getting the word out
It’s already clear that Quasado Expressive is a serious venture with massive potential to provide us with a real alternative to FreeHand. Aside from this thread and the usual word of mouth, is it too early to be thinking about more ways to get the word out about this excellent venture, for example, an ‘I support Quasado Expressive’ logo or similar to use on our emails and websites etc. (similar to when FreeFreeHand was launched)?


Encouragement!
If Quasado are provided with the finance and guidance they will need to make this a reality, and if Adobe don't come along and bury them, it would seem that Expressive certainly has the potential to be everything a FreeHand user needs.

The development milestones published on Quasado's website provide a clear indication that they have a well-founded plan in place to make the dream a reality, and whilst the loss of FreeHand is very sad, I think Expressive is the best news we've had to date and likely to be well worth the wait if they can pull it off. Kudos to all involved.

Regards to all,

Nigel

[citrus]

Would second this, as it was briefly mentioned in another post. We certainly don't want to be having a 'FreeExpressiveFoundation' in x years!

Also, notice that the pledges are debited immediately, even before any milestone releases.

We need more.

[ezio.massera]

Hi guys,

I had a few questions about general issues relating to this venture, which would seem relevant to everybody with an interest:

Is Quasado 'safe' from Abobe?
Many supporters will want to write out their checks payable to Quasado right now. It’s our duty, after all . But what comfort do Quasado have that Adobe won’t jump on them from a great height and file a copyright infringement claim to bring development of Expressive to an immediate halt at any time in the future? The whole point of Expressive is to mimick FreeHand as closely as possible, and with Adobe's track record as it is, it’s hard to believe they will just stand by and allow this to happen.

This is a question that could hold many folk back from making a vital contribution that Quasado need to make Expressive a reality. Is there any encouragement available to the community in this regard?


Do Quasado's programmers have FreeHand experience?
Quasado’s development videos are impressive and demonstrate an awareness of the required feature set in principle. But, in addition to the available features, there are aspects of using a program that are hard to describe in words, and more to do with how it 'feels' in the user's hand. A comprehensive feature set that’s clunky and just doesn’t ‘feel right’ in practice could be a big disappointment: FreeHand will always be a tough act to follow, more than for just the available features.

I'm guessing it's unlikely that Quasado's programmers are long-standing FreeHand users familiar with the subtleties of how FreeHand 'feels' and responds in the user's hand? So are we (the 'backers') and you guys the ones who Quasado will be relying on for guidance in this regard, or do Quasado have experienced FreeHand users working with them on the ground to guide them through these subtleties, and to give Expressive the best chance of doing its stuff as well as FreeHand still does?


Getting the word out
It’s already clear that Quasado Expressive is a serious venture with massive potential to provide us with a real alternative to FreeHand. Aside from this thread and the usual word of mouth, is it too early to be thinking about more ways to get the word out about this excellent venture, for example, an ‘I support Quasado Expressive’ logo or similar to use on our emails and websites etc. (similar to when FreeFreeHand was launched)?


Encouragement!
If Quasado are provided with the finance and guidance they will need to make this a reality, and if Adobe don't come along and bury them, it would seem that Expressive certainly has the potential to be everything a FreeHand user needs.

The development milestones published on Quasado's website provide a clear indication that they have a well-founded plan in place to make the dream a reality, and whilst the loss of FreeHand is very sad, I think Expressive is the best news we've had to date and likely to be well worth the wait if they can pull it off. Kudos to all involved.

Regards to all,

Nigel

Holy words, Nigel. Many thanks.
I want to say something about the name of the software: "Expressive" is not very expressive... I propose a contest to suggest a more appropriate name.

Best wishes.

[Heich]

Do Quasado's programmers have FreeHand experience?
Quasado’s development videos are impressive and demonstrate an awareness of the required feature set in principle. But, in addition to the available features, there are aspects of using a program that are hard to describe in words, and more to do with how it 'feels' in the user's hand. A comprehensive feature set that’s clunky and just doesn’t ‘feel right’ in practice could be a big disappointment: FreeHand will always be a tough act to follow, more than for just the available features.

Nigel

I think that's a more imortant question than looking at the planned milestones for Expressive alone. Remember: Illustrator has a similar feature set compared to Freehand, but its workflow doesn't compete in any way with Freehand at all.

Heich

[vaa]

Excuse me, everybody, but you don't need to quote full posts as they are here – and pls note: authors can always edit their own…

I'll ask again here: are there any specific features or functions EXp won't be able to include for fear of ©-litigation?

I'll mention this again. One of the reasons Viva didn't get bigger was threats. Another, more openly “quarky” Quark competitor from Austria was sued out of business at the time, 15 years ago. So as you may have noticed, I advocate openness, but I'd be cautious with this argument.

On the other hand, would A. risk more bad press?

[FFH Mark]

Hi guys,

I had a few questions about general issues relating to this venture, which would seem relevant to everybody with an interest:

Is Quasado 'safe' from Abobe?
Do Quasado's programmers have FreeHand experience?
Getting the word out

I'll try to answer these questions as best we know at this time:

Is Quasado 'safe' from Abobe?
Depending on how it's feature set is applied, Expressive should be safe from any patent restrictions. Yes, certain features are restricted, for example Flash, so that will be left out. Also Perspective Grid may be left off as Adobe now owns the patent on that. But many other vector apps share similarities with Adobe products and they are fine.

Do Quasado's programmers have FreeHand experience?
This will be a heavily monitored venture with large amount of input from staff and members on what Expressive needs from FreeHand. Beta testing will be open as well. Expressive will improve upon the old FreeHand so while it will be immediately familiar to what FreeHanders expect, the aim is to have it be modern and advanced.

Getting the word out
Because it is early in the game, it would be difficult to offer a realtime view of Expressive that would give folks a tangible sense of the product. At this stage, it is a work in progress with great ambitions so putting the word out is with the understanding that a finished product is down the road.

[FFH Thü]

Specifically in my opinion, having Pantone and other color systems incorporated, will probably not happen. I do not know exactly how expensive such licenses would be. But for me as a designer it is not essential. Expressive will have the possibility to set fulltone colors. The colors and its names can be specified, so we can use any outside reference to look up the colors and names/numbers. When converting fulltone to CMYK we can also use any outside source to look up the correct CMYK values. Most designers have printed Pantone palettes around anyway.

Sure, Flash will not be supported. But it is a dying technology anyway. Instead, there are good chances that later HTML5 export or even HTML5 multimedia features could be added.

As for the question "if another company may come around and bury Expressive": An independent (because crowd funded) company can not simply be "taken out". The problem lies in the patent system, which is going crazy for years, specially in the US. Patent trolls try to make a fortune and rival companies try to stop competency by finding whatever part of a software they may have patented. Fortunately Quasado is located in Germany and such misuse of the patent system is much less likely to happen in Europe.

[slopes]

Specifically in my opinion, having Pantone and other color systems incorporated, will probably not happen. I do not know exactly how expensive such licenses would be. But for me as a designer it is not essential.

I would say it's pretty essential. Line artwork created in a vector program is usually imported into a layout program such as InDesign or Quark. Corporate ID work created in this way (logos, branding etc) almost always use spot - or special- colours.

Perhaps Quasado should have a 'premium' addition which covers the cost of a Pantone library. Alternatively - can't Expressive just leave 'the back door open' for a user to link to a Pantone library used in another program he/she runs?

[FFH Thü]

I would say it's pretty essential. Line artwork created in a vector program is usually imported into a layout program such as InDesign or Quark. Corporate ID work created in this way (logos, branding etc) almost always use spot - or special- colours.

Right and if you read my post exactly, you see that you can do just that by define any spot color (fulltone color) you want. You just use any reference you have around for giving it a name and mix a color.

[Head]

Thanks Mark, Thü.

This is excellent news, very encouraging.

As for the few restricted features, we can live without Flash for sure.

And Thü is right - if the program supports spot colors generally, these can be created manually using available external reference, then renamed to whatever the user wants to call them (‘Pantone’, ‘Toyo’ etc.). Okay, the user wouldn't be able to type in a Pantone number and jump straight to the color in a library, but that’s no big deal.

As for the perspective grids, you can draft your own quickly and easily as needed (e.g. using the step-and-repeat or blend features), and stick it in a background layer, no problem there.

Exciting times ahead …