Running Freehand MXa on Silicon Mac

[jensdrache]

Hi all,
I have got it working with minimal work and at 0 cost.
Freehand MXa running on Mac Studio M2 Max with Sonoma 14.0.

If anyone is interested I can give a description on how it works...

Happy New Year

Jens

[FFH Thü]

This would certainly be of very much help. At least for me to not have to keep old machines running.

[jensdrache]

After getting Freehand to work on a Linux machine I thought there must be a way on Silicon Macs. The second revelation came to me when I realised that all my PC games don't run on a Mac and I found a solution for some of them in the form of "Porting Kit". This software installs a lot of PC games including new ones on Mac Silicon using a winewrapper. I have no Idea how to set up wine so this seemed like a great idea.

I got a modern Game running on my Mac Studio with just a few clicks. Porting Kit also offers installing Apps - there are only 3 pre-configured - but you can set up your own.

So I set up my own using the PC installer of Freehand MXa Demo for PC. You need to unpack the installer EXE - its an archive. It will unpack into a folder called "Disc 1". Inside the folder is the actual setup.exe.

In Porting Kit choose All Apps below Apps

1 Choose Custom Port on the right
2 Name it: Freehand and hit continue until you reach the Advanced Settings part
3 Set Engine to: WS11WineCX21.2.0
4 Set Operating System to: Windows 7
5 Set Windows Driver to Mac Driver
6 Do not mark any options below
7 Continue...
8 Do not change Install Destination, continue
9 Hit Install and navigate to the Installer
10 It will take some time - it is done when it says its done.
11 Start Freehand and enter your Serial Number (There is a Master Serial put out by Adobe)
12 The wierd path for saving is actually your documents folder on OSX - Direct Access to your files.
13 You need to point the wrapper to the installed freehand exe

Enjoy

[jensdrache]

First Issue...

In the Object Menue on the righthand side of freehand you can not change the fonts. You can change them in the Text Menu at the top - it uses you installed fonts... Not all, if they are modern formatted fonts with specialities they may not work. Right now I can not get the tab to show all fonts.

[jensdrache]

I will try to reinstall setting Operating System to: Windows XP and see if this removes the issue.

[jensdrache]

Issue seems to be persisstent throughout wine Mac & Linux. There is a request in WineHQ to get it fixed but I presume the priority for Freehand is low. We will have to wait...

The result of using Windows XP or Windows 7 is the same.

As far as I have checked all of the vector tools are working - the problem seems to lie with the font menu.

Anyone who just needs Freehand for the vector abilities should be fine.

[lovejoy]

Can you give more info on the following functionality.

Import / Export - what options work?
Embedding artwork in FH file.
Copy Paste between Apps.
PDF export - does scripting functions work? e.g. URL links / page links
Can Mac version of FH be installed

Thanks

[Atelier FM]

FFH Thü hat geschrieben:
> This would certainly be of very much help. At least for me to not have to
> keep old machines running.


Running Mac OS 9 & FreeHand on Apple Silicon (M1) & Intel via QEMU?