Opening Freehand 8 Files

[HankW]

I'm sure this question has been asked but I can't spend anymore time searching in the archives of the Q&A so please forgive if this is redundant.

Can Affinity open Freehand 8.0 files?

[Joachim_L]

Welcome to the Affinity forums @HankW!

I am not able to test especially FH 8, but the Affinities won't open FH 7 and FH 9, so I doubt it would work for FH 8. But you can open FH 10 and FH 11.

[loukash]

• Illustrator CS5 can open FH8/FH9 incl. multiple artboards. Then save as AI document with PDF preview to open in Affinity.
• Or run original Freehand in an emulation – on Mac via SheepShaver which can run up to Mac OS 9.0.4 – to open FH documents natively and export e.g. as EPS or print to PostScript. I don't remember if the Freehand PDF export was any good (if any? it's been almost two decades) but I doubt it; usually back then I would have processed exported EPS or PS files via Distiller.

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[loukash]

1 minute ago, Lagarto said:

I do not recall if .FH files were binary combatilbe across platforms

No idea if they were combatible, but yeah, the FH vs AI wars were still in full effect then…

They should have been compatible, although Mac documents would usually also countain resource forks with additional metadata and such. I think those would appear as individual "sidecar" files on Windows, if I remember correctly. On the other hand, Mac documents didn't require file suffixes because the default app allocation and file format was stored in the resource fork. So a document that came from Windows may e.g. fail to initally open on double click and vice versa.

[buschbrand]

No Problems here to open FreeHand MX-Files on Mac with Affinity Designer.

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[loukash]

15 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

FreeHand creates high-quality […] PDF files

Not FH9!
I vaguely recall that my printhouse guy used to be rather unhappy about my natively exported PDF files from FH9.
Usually I went via AdobePS virtual printer to Distiller instead.
Or EPS export, then page positioning in QXP, then to Distiller.
Workarounds, workarounds…
And a plenty of Mac OS bombs along the way, haha.

For what it's worth, I never upgraded to FH 10/11 because the "Adobe Design Collection" feat. InDesign 2 & Illustrator 10 looked – and eventually also turned out – way more valuable in the long run, also because of quite reliable native OS X support! I was quite happily using it until CS3 with many new bells and whistles came along. And as long as OS X allowed to run "Classic" apps – until Tiger – I even continued to use my then-beloved FH9 every now and then.

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[loukash]

2 hours ago, Lagarto said:

not everything can be transferred

How about the actual paths and editable text?
Usually that's what I'd be interested the most, since many effects are then often app exclusive and need to be double-checked, tweaked ot rebuilt anyway. So as long as the paths and text remain at their original position as is, I'd be happy.

As for editable text, yesterday I noticed that when I import my old EPS (don't remember if these were "real" or "Freehand" EPS) that contain text with embeded fonts directly into Designer (still at 1.8.6), the text is automatically being converted to outlines using a generic system font – instead of remaining live albeit with wrong font. But alright, that was a FH5 layout with text on path. Haven't checked a more "conventional" EPS yet.

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