ADOBE MEDIATION RESULT

[fredmatamoros]

Seeing as it's almost 2013 now, I guess there's no progress on this issue. Any good news at all? I'm hunting around the FreehandForums here to see if the vector gods have decided to release us from limbo!

[FFH Mark]

Seeing as it's almost 2013 now, I guess there's no progress on this issue. Any good news at all? I'm hunting around the FreehandForums here to see if the vector gods have decided to release us from limbo!

Here is the good news for 2013 as I see it:
Quasado's FreeHand clone is for a Summer 2013 release with a beta in Spring. From what bits I know, the feature set and functionality will feel familiar to FreeHand users and yet will be more versatile and expandable to modern workloads. For me, this will be close to what I wanted an upgraded FreeHand MX to have become. Based on their Twitter announcement, Quasado now has outside funding so less a burden on donations.

A huge concern in 2012 was FreeHand MX not running on Mac OSX Lion and Mtn Lion because Rosetta was dropped. But those barriers are breaking down with Virtualization that allows Windows and Mac versions of FH to run in OSX 7 and 8. I see several folks here are trying out Parallels, VMWare, Crossover, and Sheepshaver to find the best way. I read elsewhere that the evolution of a virtualized FH could become seamless with the UI in 2013. I'm still using Snow Leopard which will do me fine until later next year. And Windows PC users seem immune from problems running FreeHand 10 and MX on their systems.

Because 2012 was so focused on the litigation early in the year and that FreeHand code could not be publicly released, FFH opened up another path: conferencing with Adobe's development team and managers. The purpose, to influence Illustrator and InDesign to become more FreeHand-like and thus easier to use. They own the FH code so better to use it. We began meetings this past Fall and will continue meeting through next year.

Happy New Year and to hoping 2013 will be an easier year than this last one was.

—Mark

[fredmatamoros]

Thanks so much! Great work being done and lots to look forward to!