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Discovered Affinity and have been pleasantly surprised with it.  I've been a longtime professional user of Freehand, and it would be such a treasure to see

Affinity friendly toward these native files.  Many Freehand users have tried Illustrator but are not pleased with it's design and function.

 

Is there any hope for Affinity to bridge this gap? At least allowing FHMX files to open in the application.  Hope I'm not alone on this...I know of many designers that

would welcome Affinity if it offered this option.

 

Curiously watching the development...

 

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Hi Dogwings,

 

We're certainly open to the idea, but it will not make the initial launch of the product. We aim to add many import capabilities to Designer over time and they will be made available as free updates.

 

Just out of interest though, do you have any Freehand files for me to take a look at? I'd like to know what sort of file structure we are dealing with, if we are to consider importing it. You can email them to me directly at asomerfield@seriflabs.com and they will be treated confidentially.

 

Thanks,

 

AndyS

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Thanks Andy...good to hear that there is some hope for the many Freehand users - after over 20 years in FHMX it would be so advantages to have access to previous client work, original art, etc.  - I'm sure the app can read eps files, but what an issue to return and make all native files eps.  Thanks for offering to look at file structure - I will send a file soon. 

Still stoked about the potential here...

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As a passionate and despairing freehand user (is there any other kind?) I'd like to +999 for this.

 

I'm really, really excited at the potential for affinity - particularly that it takes FH's  principle of being able to do both drawing and layout in the same file (if not app) and takes it further adding image editing.  So as someone very typographically focussed i look forward to seeing the layout beta, and seeing how typographic tools grow in the designer/drawing app.

 

But yes - I have a swag of FH files, as do a large community of users  so we're looking forward to being able to pick them up in affinity ASAP.

one planet, one chance

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Thanks for posting Tim.  Somebody needs to hear the screams from Freehand world.  The majority of my design career is connected to FH files and archives of images and vector illustrations.

I'm inviting all FH users to jump into this stream...finally an application with so much potential.

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I've been writing this today - it's going well but I will need access to a substantial set of Freehand files, from a variety of versions.

 

I've had a look on the internet, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of stuff available.

 

Do you guys have any idea where I can get a sufficient set of sample files to validate my importer? I can obviously guarantee that any files sent for testing will only be used to validate my code, then deleted immediately afterwards..

 

Thanks,

 

AndyS

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The problem with the FreeHand files from my wife is that she doesn't have FreeHand anymore, since it does not run in Mavericks anymore.
I will try to create a virtual machine with a previous system but no guaranties about the outcome :-(

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Hi AndyS Do you still need FreeHand files? I could send you a bunch of them, just give me a quick response.

 

What I heard in FreeHand forums and from Adobe is that the FreeHand MX file structure seems to have grown into a mess which made the jump from 32 bit to 64 bit starting with Illustrator CS6 a job too tedious for Adobe.

 

However, I am one of those many designers (and I know a lot of them, especially in Germany) who had done almost everything, even lengthy brochures or annual reports with FreeHand, overriding InDesign completely. This is why I’d like too see multipage support (among other stuff).

 

Adobe left us in the cold and this is why I love to see you rising to a true competitor. 

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The problem with the FreeHand files from my wife is that she doesn't have FreeHand anymore, since it does not run in Mavericks anymore.

I will try to create a virtual machine with a previous system but no guaranties about the outcome :-(

 

There are some interesting news about the ability of running Freehand under Mavericks at the FreehandForum:

http://freehandforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2067

http://www.freehandforum.org/news.html

 

(I hope it is ok to post this here - please delete if its not)

 

Btw. I worked a lot with FH since version 3 and also with AI and always loved the way freehand worked.

I will have a look if I can find some interesting files that I can submit.

Thanks for reading.

................................................................................
macOS 10.13.6 | MacBookPro | 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 | Affinity Suite

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It's no problem to discuss Freehand here - we can see the problem Mac users are having with it in recent times.

 

I would, however, prefer if threads were focussed around solving the problem - we are actively working on it and hopefully will show you something soon. If everything goes well, we will be able to import your Freehand files seamlessly before Affinity Designer is released :)

 

Thanks,

 

A

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Thanks Dogwings,

 

I tried to reply to your email - but it kept throwing back saying I was a spammer :D

 

Could be our end which is broken - I'll look into it.

 

Thanks for the files, the importer is progressing well - I will send you some screenshots later (privately, of course, because they show Affinity loading your files..)

 

AndyS

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  • 8 months later...

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