Free FreeHand, Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of Printing and proprietary file formats handling of content

Markzware explores freedom of print (freedom of content) by taking a look at Freehand and other priority file formats, as well as printing press inventor Johannes Gutenberg’s view:

Save FreeHand! They call themselves FREE FreeHand, but let’s face it, when you are up against such factors as ex Macromedia and the mighty Adobe, a miraculous “save” (I guess they would settle for an effective “import”) comes to mind…

Yes, you read it correctly. I guess this is popular with Spain, a place that I heard would not easily give up their favorite vector drawing app.

FlightCheck can preflight FreeHand 11.0 (MX) down to version 7, which may be considered for adding to PageZephyr, our new technology to index, search and extract text.

Free Freehand aims actually state this VERY PROBLEM that legacy files pose, and which Markzware’s file conversion knowledge, often helps solve:

“We want FreeHand to have a future. Not only because we love to work with it, but also because we have thousands of files from the past we may need access to on any given occasion (well, they open in AI, but are converted into chaos).” SOURCE: http://www.freefreehand.org/index.shtml

They lucked out this round, as we read:

“We were relieved to find that it does work well in Mac OS X Snow Leopard (after first installing Rosetta, the binary translation software that makes PowerPC-based applications run on Intel Macs). But the experience reminds us that we hang on the edge — maybe next time it won’t work.” SOURCE: http://www.freefreehand.org/index.shtml

I support this cause. Just because so many millions of documents have used this tool to effectively store, NOT LOCK UP their content. Stay up-to-date by following their blog and as the banner suggests, it may come down to a legal battle. In this so-called FREE Internet age, when content is apparently free for all, I have to think about the history of print, all the way back to the birth of print, and consider why printing was developed.

Johannes Gutenberg, the western founder and inventor of movable type and of course the printing press, still widely used for projects from western graphics posters to eastern digital design, set out on his lawful duty to help FREE CONTENT and to give it wings:

Religious truth is captive in a small number of little manuscripts which guard the common treasures, instead of expanding them. Let us break the seal which binds these holy things; let us give wings to truth that it may fly with the Word, no longer prepared at vast expense, but multitudes everlastingly by a machine which never wearies to every soul which enters life.
— said to be attributed to Johannes Gutenberg (source)
Note: If you hold more facts or info on this quote from Gutenberg, please email me.

Ironic, isn’t it? Printing freed the content of its day and modern proprietary file formats, via their corporate applications, lock it down again. PDF is increasingly seeing its content re-used or otherwise exported (see: PDFs and Their Content ? Part 1), yet content in the case of FreeHand files is not primarily the text, yet the intricate x and y positions of the created and placed artwork, the various vector points, paths and specific functions used. This is what they seek – freedom for their valued content. They explained it best in one of their latest blog posts, titled, “Imagine you were a carpenter.” They have a very good point, license agreement likely aside.

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