Our technical publications department currently uses Freehand 11; however, we are thinking about switching over to Designer X4, but is there a way to open .FH10 or .FH11 files with Designer X4 (pre-release for now)? Everytime I try, I get an unsupported error, but Designer will open AI (Adobe Illustrator) files. If Designer can't do this yet, where do I make the suggestion/comment for them to look into this?

Also, when will Designer X4 be available does anyone know?

I do not believe that DESIGNER X4 supports the latest Freehand formats (from memory, only up to version 8 or 9). This forum is a great place for this kind of feedback. A work-around is to use Freehand to save your files in a format that is supported by DESIGNER. I haven't used FH in quite a while, so I am not sure if there is a way to automate this through a batch process.

I would be interested in learning more about how you use FH and what type of Technical publications you create. Feel free to contact me through private message when you have a moment.

Regarding the date DESIGNER X4 will be available, sorry, but I cannot answer that (yet).

Gérard

Convert Freehand to PDF and that will bring them in as a vector line drawing into Designer 12. Do not know yet for Designer 4X