I too have been using Freehand for over 16 years and I have used Illustrator
the entire time to maintain compatability with clients... I must say that
hands-down I still prefer the way Freehand handles objects, bezier curves,
text, and MULTIPLE PAGES of different sizes and orientations! Part of my design
philosophy has always been that the more application you import items in to to
be imported into other application ? you are creating a house of cards. Sure it
may image fine in-house, but that printer down thestreet who has hi own film
devide or is direct-to-plate might not be able to properly output color
accurate art. You can't control them, so I love to work in Freehand. It gives
me the ability to have text, layout, and editable-graphics co-exisit in an easy
to edit environment. If Illustrator could do even multiple pages and half the
layout features of Freehand, I might switch, complain about it, and the get
over it. However, Adobe seems intent on forcing us to buy multiple applications
which have little or no overlap at all. Why can't I edit bexier curves in
InDesign? Why is inDesign so cumbersome? Free-form, interactive, non-modal and
supremely editable... freehand is what Illustrator wants to be when it groes
up, but Adobe can't let it compete with inDesign... precious inDesign... we
hates it.