It doesn’t make sense anymore to repeat all the anxious
questions why the hell Adobe buried the better software, keeping
the worse one alive. We are designers and producers in the middle
of life, not small-minded bookkeepers talking about daily market
share. We always just wanted to work with the very best vector
drawing program available. It was, and it is called "Freehand". The
web is stuffed with corresponding posts by countless, disappointed
Freehand enthusiasts.
Just let me focus on that tiny, little Bezigon tool Freehand comes with. For 20 years digitizing logos and letterings was quick and easy, just setting a few anchor points at typical positions, letting the Bezier routines draw the rest. Illustrator simply doesn’t have such a tool. It takes double and triple time to draw clean shapes with its cheesy, manual drawing tools. Does ADOBE want to sell amateur toys?
Now they own the source code of Freehand. Everything’s finally ready to be dumped. In the case of PageMaker, ADOBE at least offered an InDesign version which had a built-in palette of PageMaker functions. So one could forget the old software step by step. Nothing like that with Illustrator. Eat it or die! I won’t eat it that way.
Maybe the programmers at ADOBE are too stuck-up to admit that Freehand as a whole is the superior vector software. Here’s some advice to get round with that obstacle, using the Bezigon tool as an example: Yes, that tool could be implemented in Illustrator and RENAMED! Yes, it could also come as an optional plugin! Yes, of course, you could also let a third party developer do that job!
Yes, of course, ... or PLEASE, sell Freehand to another company and let’em work on it and compete with Illustrator, like it was in the past. This would be sooo courageous, and we could love ADOBE again for giving us PhotoShop. Isn’t it love (and Freehand) we all need so much? ...
Just let me focus on that tiny, little Bezigon tool Freehand comes with. For 20 years digitizing logos and letterings was quick and easy, just setting a few anchor points at typical positions, letting the Bezier routines draw the rest. Illustrator simply doesn’t have such a tool. It takes double and triple time to draw clean shapes with its cheesy, manual drawing tools. Does ADOBE want to sell amateur toys?
Now they own the source code of Freehand. Everything’s finally ready to be dumped. In the case of PageMaker, ADOBE at least offered an InDesign version which had a built-in palette of PageMaker functions. So one could forget the old software step by step. Nothing like that with Illustrator. Eat it or die! I won’t eat it that way.
Maybe the programmers at ADOBE are too stuck-up to admit that Freehand as a whole is the superior vector software. Here’s some advice to get round with that obstacle, using the Bezigon tool as an example: Yes, that tool could be implemented in Illustrator and RENAMED! Yes, it could also come as an optional plugin! Yes, of course, you could also let a third party developer do that job!
Yes, of course, ... or PLEASE, sell Freehand to another company and let’em work on it and compete with Illustrator, like it was in the past. This would be sooo courageous, and we could love ADOBE again for giving us PhotoShop. Isn’t it love (and Freehand) we all need so much? ...