Just a word here...

After reading Bill's thread: Illustrator with Freehand Features..
Mordy Golding put up links to a video podcast about AICS3 and some of
the great enhancements...

Here's a link Illustrator CS3 Overview
<http://rwillustrator.blogspot.com/2007/03/real-world-illustrator-podcast.html>
you'll need to sign up to Mordy's video podcasts if you haven't already.

Including the new way in which clipping paths works!.. I believe the
method of creating a clipping path may still be the same however the BIG
difference now is that at the very least alignment uses the clipping
path and not the contents!!! a good step in the right direction.. I'm
still not sure whether the clipping contents outside the path remain
visible or not.. as per previous versions.. but it will be interesting
to see what it's like once it starts to ship and people get their hands
on it.

Incidentally I used Freehand from version 3 on a PC to MX but our studio
got fed up with Freehands bad color fidelity for printing comps - it
worked fine for output of fairly simple spot colour jobs but full colour
stuff was getting difficult to manage. I didn't cross over lightly - I
used AIv10 in the background sometimes duplicating jobs in AI from
Freehand in my spare time to see how it worked. While I loved the tools
in Freehand - pen tool, Find and replace, paste inside etc.. better
colour fidelity and integration with InDesign and Photoshop and more
reliability for output were more crucial to us than the tools. That's
just me/us.

But at the end of the day it looks like AICS3 is giving us at least some
of what we've been asking for.

I hope this has been of some help.

Kind Regards
Piers Le Sueur

(I'm still not sure whether the clipping contents outside the path remain
visible or not.. as per previous versions)

Yes the contents are still visable.
AI cs3 does have a new quick mask type feature. It only works on placed images
and not vector artwork. When you place a Photo there is a button that appears
in the top menu bar called "MASK" ..ooo haha.
So in one step you can set your photo in a clipping mask "square" shape only.
It creats a path that is the exact size of the image you have placed. From
there you can resize the path to crop the image as needed. the menu bar also
shows more options like adding a stroke etc.