Heartland

Done, I'm member 3211

we shall overcome, thankee folks

I rather liked Freehand. Done.

Gawd bless ya guv'nor, yer a real gent and no mistake!

Does auld now mean fookin' ancient?

Button it, Hun!

Well, I've never used Freehand or Indesign, but I'll sign up anyway, as I have been very annoyed in the past when companies abruptly ceased development of software I had spent money and time learning to use.

I shall try to take this as a repeated warning not to get too dependent on any software product from any company, as there is no guarantee it will still be available in 5 years time - or 5 months time.

I'm interested in the audio rather than graphical side, and there are many similar examples. (Did you know that B4, the Hammond organ simulator recently mentioned in another post has been discontinued by Native Instruments, as well as some of their other analogue synth modelling plugins.)

I'm not suggesting the reasons are always as dubious as in the case of Freehand, but whatever the reasons, the effects on the users who have come to depend on the product is the same.

This is where free open source software comes in handy. Even if the original developers get bored (or whatever) someone else can fork the source and keep it going.