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Re: Re: Export PDF plot or Save Selection As -- big troubles with Illustrator

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg90115] Re: [mg90095] Re: Export PDF plot or Save Selection As -- big troubles with Illustrator
  • From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl>
  • Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2008 05:36:45 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <200806280955.FAA26335@smc.vnet.net>

I would also suggest looking at some Internet discussions of  
Illustrator's PDF editing capabilities before claiming that WRI has  
done something wrong (I am a little shocked that anyone would not do  
this first). For example, there is an interesting statement here by  
Dov Isaacs of Adobe Systems, posted in May of this year (i.e. not too  
long ago).

http://printplanet.com/discuss/thread.jspa?threadID=2504&tstart=0

which I quote in full below. It seems to throw quite a lot of light on  
this whole issue (and, of course, on the wider claim that one ought to  
rely on outside tools like Illustrator for editing Mathematica  
graphics).

Andrzej Kozlowski

Here is the quote:

---------------------------------------------------
On behalf of Adobe Systems Incorporated, I will advise you that Adobe  
Illustrator is not, repeat not, repeat yet again not a general purpose  
PDF file editor.

The only full PDF files that Adobe Illustrator can safely open are PDF  
files saved from Adobe Illustrator itself using the save for  
editability option.

Why? Adobe Illustrator operates in either CMYK or RGB and only one  
specific color space per document. Thus, a color-managed PDF file with  
more than one color space with opened in Illustrator would be ruined.  
Also there are many PDF constructs that Illustrator knows nothing  
about. At best, they are treated as foreign objects that cannot be  
edited. And for text, Illustrator only "understands" particular  
encodings. General PDF can lose text when opened in Illustrator.

Illustrator can often be safely used to modify specific, simple  
graphic objects as the vector graphics touch-up tool editor, but not  
much more.

Proceed at your own risk!

Dov Isaacs
---------------------------------------------------



On 28 Jun 2008, at 18:55, Bill Rowe wrote:

> On 6/27/08 at 6:18 AM, siegman at stanford.edu (AES) wrote:
>
>> In article <g3vkrr$kes$1 at smc.vnet.net>,
>> Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>>> On 6/25/08 at 6:29 AM, siegman at stanford.edu (AES) wrote:
>
>>>> Any idea what's happening here???  Seems fair to call this a bug
>>>> -- somebody's not doing right by the PDF format.  But, an Adobe
>>>> bug or a Wolfram bug?
>
>>> Well given two Adobe products treat the same file in different ways
>>> from your description, I would say this is a problem with Adobe
>>> rather than Wolfram. I don't have Illustrator to test this further.
>
>> Maybe, maybe not.  I have used these two Adobe products jointly on
>> many, many graphics files, and they have always worked superbly
>> together. There could be some bad PDF code in the document at issue,
>> and one product manages to work around it while the other
>> doesn't.  (Two different software apps should handle a properly  
>> formatted
>> document the same, but nothing says what either of them must do with
>> a badly formatted document.)
>
> Certainly there is no guarantees what any software will do when
> opening a badly formatted document. One would hope the software
> would at least give the user something that would clearly
> indicate the software was encountering what it sees as a badly
> formatted document.
>
> But having said that, the ability for two software programs to
> work well together written by the same company does not in any
> way imply the results you are getting from opening PDF files
> from a third are badly formatted or that the bug (assuming there
> is one) is in the third program. Without access to the source
> code of Illustrator, Acrobat, Mathematica and the problematic
> file there is no way for me to know precisely the source of the
> problem you are encountering.
>
> Simple logic suggests if two or more software programs
> independently created can deal correctly with the file, and one
> program cannot, the likely source of the problem is the odd man
> out. And from your description that is Illustrator. Note, this
> reasoning is far from ironclad. But more times than not, the
> program producing the odd result is the place to look for the
> source of the problem.
>



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