OT Freehand on Lion or Mountain Lion ?

[Michel Raj]

Does anyone know a way to make the good old FreeHand still work in Lion or Mountain Lion ?

Michel

[Bob Levine]

I'd consider that an exercise in futility.

If you're going to move to a new Mac operating system you need to be
prepared to give up on older programs.

This isn't as big an issue on Windows, though, where you can get away
with running just about anything newer than Pagemaker.

Bob

[Michel Raj]

I don't see it the way you do.

Moving on a new Mac Os, before Lion, rarely implied that I had to abandon my preferred tools.

In old days, on Mac I don't remember the MacOs version, I did my choice of tools between Illustrator 1.1 and FreeHand 1.x. I still use FH regularly with SnowLeopard, although I'm using more and more Illustrator.

But this is not the point of me asking here.

I asked, because I read somewhere there was a way to still install Rosetta on Lion... and someone here might have tried...

Talking about PageMaker, we all know it's InDesign's ancestor, not just inspired by it.

Regards,

Michel

[Dick Margulis]

On 7/29/2012 11:15 AM, Michel Raj wrote:
> Talking about PageMaker, we all know it's InDesign's ancestor, not just
> inspired by it.

No, we don't all know that.

InDesign was written from scratch, essentially. The old Aldus code base
was obsolete spaghetti code that became impossible to maintain after the
original team was gone. Adobe kept hanging ornaments off the branches as
they moved from version to version, but they rarely dug into the kernel
to dig out the persistent bugs. By Pagemaker 6 there was no one left who
had even taken school courses that would help them understand the code.
My own claim to fame was that around version 6 or 6.5, I had a sudden
insight into one of PM's most notorious bugs, the Bad Record Index that
corrupted a file and left you high and dry if you hadn't backed it up.
Once I conveyed the meaning of the message to Adobe's PM product
manager, someone followed the breadcrumbs and actually resolved the bug
in time for version 7.

But InDesign is modern code and takes nothing from PageMaker except some
aspects of the UI design.

[Andrew Brown]

On 29 juil. 2012, at 17:28, Dick Margulis wrote:

> But InDesign is modern code and takes nothing from PageMaker except some aspects of the UI design.

And the habit of conserving aged bugs...

AB

[Sharon Villines]

On 29 Jul 2012, at 11:28 AM, Dick Margulis wrote:

> But InDesign is modern code and takes nothing from PageMaker except some aspects of the UI design.

And the whole idea of how it to use software to design pages. Adobe didn't think that up on its own.

Code writers are only as good as the ideas that drive them to code.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines, Washington DC
"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." Albert Einstein

[Michel Raj]

I might not have been clear enough, and didn't say InDesign was build on PageMaker's code (a program is not "only code").
But when I first worked with InDesign, I had a great feeling of "déjà vu"... and also of innovation.

Michel

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[Dick Margulis]

Yeah, well, that too. But they're not Pagemaker bugs; they're InDy bugs ;-)

[Dick Margulis]

On 7/29/2012 11:38 AM, Sharon Villines wrote:
>
> On 29 Jul 2012, at 11:28 AM, Dick Margulis wrote:
>
>> But InDesign is modern code and takes nothing from PageMaker except some aspects of the UI design.
>
> And the whole idea of how it to use software to design pages. Adobe didn't think that up on its own.
>

Sharon, I don't have any idea of how old you are, so please don't take
this as anything directed personally at you; it just speaks to my own
experience.

I came to PageMaker from a light table. The entire pasteboard metaphor
was completely natural to me. The hardest part for me was learning to
use a newfangled gadget called a mouse. Once I got that down, the rest
was speaking to my experience. I think the Aldus folks did an excellent
job of translating the knowledge and vocabulary of the compositor and
paste-up artist to the GUI. I kept doing what I'd always done, except it
was easier now.

So to the extent that InDesign preserved that conceit, I'm glad it did so.

[Michel Raj]

I just found out, that, according to Wikipedia,
"The project had been started by Aldus and was code-named "Shuksan". It was later code-named "K2" and was released as InDesign 1.0 in 1999."
I didn't know that !

Michel

[Sharon Villines]

On 29 Jul 2012, at 12:20 PM, Dick Margulis wrote:

> I came to PageMaker from a light table. [snip] I kept doing what I'd always done, except it was easier now.

>
> So to the extent that InDesign preserved that conceit, I'm glad it did so.

I agree. I was responding to the implication that InDesign was completely new and owed nothing to Pagemaker.

Pagemaker also owed to those who did it all by hand.

A new coding language or a coding routine, is just that. It doesn't address the why and what, the purpose of doing something in the first place. The technical is absolutely important to accomplishment but the theoretical provides the ideas. And they interact.

[Bob Levine]

Wow...did this ever go off course. Perhaps I should have used a
different example but PM was just the oldest program that popped into my
head at the time.

Bob

[Graeme Forbes]

Michel is fortunate if the Snow Leopard to Lion transition is the first one that's set him serious problems continuing to use his preferred tools. Apple's dropping Classic after X 10.4, coupled with Adobe's reneging on its promise to make OSX-native versions of all its major applications, specifically FrameMaker, was and continues to be a massive headache for me and many others for whom running a Windows simulator or MIF Filter isn't a solution.

I just bought a new Mac with Lion and after some effort managed to create a Snow Leopard partition on it, so I can continue to use PPC-native programs. I did investigate installing Rosetta into Lion, but everything I read said that you can install it fine, it just doesn't do anything. So the OS downgrade looked like the better option.

[William Adams]

On Jul 29, 2012, at 10:19 AM, Michel Raj wrote:

> Does anyone know a way to make the good old FreeHand still work in Lion or Mountain Lion ?

The only options AFAIK are emulation.

- run the Windows version using Parallels
- run the Classic Mac version using Sheepshaver
- run a copy of Mac OS X in a virtualization environment
- run Altsys Virtuoso (if the binary includes Intel support --- can't recall) in Openstep using VMware or some other emulation environment

Alternately, one can just switch to doing all drawing in InDesign --- Markzware's pdf2dtp allows one to load old drawings readily enough (I was a beta tester, but haven't been able to justify purchasing it). Still pains me to give up graphics-find-replace, blends, keyline view, &c.

I'd be willing to forgive Adobe for killing FreeHand if they'd just put all of its drawing functionality into InDesign.

It still wounds me that I couldn't convince Macromedia to re-visit the old Altsys Virtuoso codebase and do FreeHand/MX as a Cocoa program during the FH/MX beta.

William

--
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

[Michael Brady]

On Jul 30, 2012, at 7:34 AM, William Adams <will....@frycomm.com> wrote:

> I'd be willing to forgive Adobe for killing FreeHand if they'd just put all of its drawing functionality into InDesign.

Agreed. I prefer to do most drawing tasks in ID rather than AI, whose UI is as frustrating as MFWurd's. Plus, FH had a lot of capabilities that AI didn't, and still doesn't, even though Adobe now owns FH and has unfettered access to its tools and techniques.


| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Michael Brady
www.michaelbradydesign.com/Blog/ | mic...@michaelbradydesign.com
www.twitter.com/typehuile | www.linkedin.com/in/typehuile | www.facebook.com/typehuile

"Thinking Like a Designer" at https://www.createspace.com/3462255

[Kathleen]

I love it. I can picture it as a

Kat
McGraphics Design, Inc.
(626) 799-2195
http://www.mcgraphics.us

[Robert Severn]

I don't think it's a matter of "cracking code"- FH just was not written to run on the current operating system, which no longer has any support for Power PC code.

It would have to be rewritten to work, and I don't know if anyone has the rights to allow that, even if the market seemed to be there.

On Oct 8, 2012, at 10:42 AM, pangster <papsc...@gmail.com> wrote:

I love FH over AI a million times. Looks like I am stuck with OS10.6.
Not sure if anyone has tried cracking codes to make FH works on  10.7 or greater....

On Sunday, July 29, 2012 10:19:09 PM UTC+8, Michel wrote:

Does anyone know a way to make the good old FreeHand still work in Lion or Mountain Lion ?

Michel

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[William Adams]

On Oct 8, 2012, at 2:15 PM, Robert Severn wrote:

> I don't think it's a matter of "cracking code"- FH just was not written to run on the current operating system, which no longer has any support for Power PC code.
> It would have to be rewritten to work, and I don't know if anyone has the rights to allow that, even if the market seemed to be there.

Adobe has the rights and the source code (bought almost 10 years to the day after the FTC told them they had to wait 10 years before purchasing another drawing program) --- they'd just rather inflict Illustrator on us.

They could have their cake and eat it too if they'd just put all of Freehand's features into InDesign --- it's most of the way there, just needs:

- ability to open .eps and FreeHand files (though Markzware's pdf2dtp goes a long way toward this)
- more path options / control
- graphics find and replace
- power duplicate
- wrapping tabs
- lens fill
- &c.

That a program produced almost a decade ago still doesn't have a viable competitor is a real testimony to how productive a tool it is.

[David Bergsland]

A group called Free Freehand was working on it. http://www.freehandforum.org

They won some sort of settlement with Adobe over the fight and now that's shut down. They are currently putting their efforts behind a potentially new pice of software called StageStack.

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[Robert Severn]

Yes. I meant that no one other than Adobe can rewrite FH. I used to think that some of it's features would be added to IL, but it's not happened so far. OTOH, I'm used to IL and it works fine for me.

[steve harley]

On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 8:42 AM, pangster <papsc...@gmail.com> wrote:

I love FH over AI a million times. Looks like I am stuck with OS10.6.
Not sure if anyone has tried cracking codes to make FH works on  10.7 or greater....

whatever you might mean by "cracking codes", it won't work; Freehand is a PowerPC application and thus requires the Rosetta environment to run on an Intel Mac; the last version of OS X with Rosetta is 10.6; that's that

aside from maintaining a separate machine or boot partition, the only way to move beyond 10.6 and still run Freehand is through virtualization — run OS X 10.6 Server (or earlier, or Windows) in a virtual machine, and install an appropriate version of Freehand in that environment; i say OS X _Server_, vs. Client, not because it is impossible to virtualize Client (one can find instructions), but because Apple's license forbids virtualizing non-Server versions

[steve harley]

On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 12:40 PM, William Adams <will....@frycomm.com> wrote:

ability to open .eps and FreeHand files (though Markzware's pdf2dtp goes a long way toward this)

could you elaborate on how PDF2DTP helps? there is no mention of EPS or Freehand files on the product page

<http://markzware.com/products/pdf2dtp/>

[William Adams]

Distill the .eps to .pdf, (if necessary, open the FreeHand file, save out as .eps first) then open it.

[David Bergsland]

I've dropped AI AMAP and draw in InDesign. I mainly do typographic illustrations so it works well for me.

On Oct 8, 2012, at 2:02 PM, Robert Severn wrote:

Yes. I meant that no one other than Adobe can rewrite FH. I used to think that some of it's features would be added to IL, but it's not happened so far. OTOH, I'm used to IL and it works fine for me.

[Louise Olson]

On 10/8/12, David Bergsland wrote:
>A group called Free Freehand was working on

>it. <http://www.freehandforum.org>http://www.freehandforum.org

>They won some sort of settlement with Adobe over the fight and now
>that's shut down. They are currently putting their efforts behind a
>potentially new pice of software called StageStack.
>

True ... and they seem to be making great progress on it. It will be
renamed, by the way. There will be new features, the ability to open
existing Freehand files. They are shooting for a March 2013 date for
something we can try out. I heard this on a radio interview with the
head programmer.

For those interested, signing onto the freehandforum will give some
information. This is being funded largely by the people who are
interested in seeing this program continue because they need it so
badly. If it turns out to be as superior as Freehand was some time
ago, I'm thinking they will also attract a good many more people to
use it.

Anyone interested in helping to fund this ... or learn more about it
... here is the pledge page: http://www.stagestack.com/en_US/pledge/


Louise