I get EPS files from clients every week with existing logos and other design elements from their letterhead and other advertising in them.
Problem is, most of these files are little more than wrappers around Illustrator-only code and can not be displayed by anything other than Adobe products, certainly Inkscape can handle maybe 1 in 10 of them and even then very poorly.
This is not Inkscape's fault but the fault of products that save files in "<product>-eps" format. The practical upshot for me is that ".eps" is now a meaningless filetype, much like .tiff, and serves only to make it difficult to explain to clients why I'm having trouble with what they think of as very basic files.
As this problem has grown, I've started to question the value of having "Save as inkscape SVG" produce ".svg" suffixed files. Is it not a better idea, design-wise, to indicate that a file is not "pure" SVG with a different suffix such as .isvg or something similar? I have already sent Inkscape-SVG files to other designers by mistake; with a different suffix this would be a mistake which would be apparent as I selected the files for attachment to my emails.
Should Inkscape change the default suffix for its own filetypes?
Thomas Worthington
On 2007-August-20 , at 13:56 , Thomas Worthington wrote:
I get EPS files from clients every week with existing logos and other design elements from their letterhead and other advertising in them.
Problem is, most of these files are little more than wrappers around Illustrator-only code and can not be displayed by anything other than Adobe products, certainly Inkscape can handle maybe 1 in 10 of them and even then very poorly.
This is not Inkscape's fault but the fault of products that save files in "<product>-eps" format. The practical upshot for me is that ".eps" is now a meaningless filetype, much like .tiff, and serves only to make it difficult to explain to clients why I'm having trouble with what they think of as very basic files.
As this problem has grown, I've started to question the value of having "Save as inkscape SVG" produce ".svg" suffixed files. Is it not a better idea, design-wise, to indicate that a file is not "pure" SVG with a different suffix such as .isvg or something similar? I have already sent Inkscape-SVG files to other designers by mistake; with a different suffix this would be a mistake which would be apparent as I selected the files for attachment to my emails.
Should Inkscape change the default suffix for its own filetypes?
I am sure others will explain this better than I do but Inkscape takes great care about SVG compatibility. An Inkscape SVG document should (and actually does! ;) ) render the same than a "pure SVG" document. The only things Inkscape adds to the document is meant to add editing functionality and does not alter the way things look, just how they behave in Inkscape. As far as I know, recent Illustrator documents are the same: they are PDFs with additional stuff which make them easier to edit in AI. Apparently, Adobe is not as careful and efficient as Inkscape team!
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
On 8/20/07, jiho <jo.irisson@...400...> wrote:
As far as I know, recent Illustrator documents are the same: they are PDFs with additional stuff which make them easier to edit in AI.
Not quite. An Adobe AI file is a PDF which stores the page as PDF, but also in custom chunks stores the entire internal representation of the page in AI. The latter is not an enhancement over the former, but simply a second representation of the same data in a different format. If you change the PDF data in an AI file and import it back to AI, your changes will be lost because it will use its own representation from the same file. They call it a "dual path" format.
Same thing with AI-created SVG: they store the entire AI-specific internal representation as a binary PGF chunk.
Apparently, Adobe is not as careful and efficient as Inkscape team!
Certainly. "Dual path" is a terrible idea. On one hand, it's understandable, because there was simply no other way they could make their AI file formats standard-compliant in 2000, with such an old and convoluted piece of software as AI. But on the other hand, all standards in question are also controlled by Adobe, and they certainly could have handled it better if they started trying earlier.
Hello Thomas,
if possible could you share one of the files that does not open correctly in inkscape and also provide a pixel-version (as png) how it should looks? So others can investigate and maybe improve things in future.
Adib. ---
Thomas Worthington schrieb:
I get EPS files from clients every week with existing logos and other design elements from their letterhead and other advertising in them.
Problem is, most of these files are little more than wrappers around Illustrator-only code and can not be displayed by anything other than Adobe products, certainly Inkscape can handle maybe 1 in 10 of them and even then very poorly.
This is not Inkscape's fault but the fault of products that save files in "<product>-eps" format. The practical upshot for me is that ".eps" is now a meaningless filetype, much like .tiff, and serves only to make it difficult to explain to clients why I'm having trouble with what they think of as very basic files.
As this problem has grown, I've started to question the value of having "Save as inkscape SVG" produce ".svg" suffixed files. Is it not a better idea, design-wise, to indicate that a file is not "pure" SVG with a different suffix such as .isvg or something similar? I have already sent Inkscape-SVG files to other designers by mistake; with a different suffix this would be a mistake which would be apparent as I selected the files for attachment to my emails.
Should Inkscape change the default suffix for its own filetypes?
Thomas Worthington
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel
On 8/20/07, Thomas Worthington <tww@...1737...> wrote:
This is not Inkscape's fault but the fault of products that save files in "<product>-eps" format. The practical upshot for me is that ".eps" is now a meaningless filetype
EPS is meaningless, but not because of that, but simply because PS/EPS is an obsolete format which is not being developed. Use PDF instead. Current SVN version imports PDF (and modern versions of AI based on PDF) very well.
As this problem has grown, I've started to question the value of having "Save as inkscape SVG" produce ".svg" suffixed files. Is it not a better idea, design-wise, to indicate that a file is not "pure" SVG with a different suffix such as .isvg or something similar?
No. Inkscape SVG is valid SVG, period.
I have already sent Inkscape-SVG files to other designers by mistake
Why mistake? Did they have any problems with those files? If so it's a bug either in their software or in Inkscape, and it must be simply fixed.
On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:50:18 -0400 "bulia byak" <buliabyak@...400...> wrote:
EPS is meaningless, but not because of that, but simply because PS/EPS is an obsolete format which is not being developed.
"Not being developed" means: it's a finished, mature standard which makes it quite the opposite of meaningless.
The fact that people (especially those that send out logos) don't know the difference between vector and raster formats, and never will, doesn't speak against file formats that can contain both vector and raster data.
--D.
On 8/21/07, Dan H <dunno@...1090...> wrote:
"Not being developed" means: it's a finished, mature standard which makes it quite the opposite of meaningless.
For people whose needs are limited to the capabilities of vector graphics of early 90s, EPS is fine. For Inkscape with its SVG, however, it's a bad idea in most cases. There are too many things in SVG that simply cannot be done in Postscript.
Thomas Worthington dubitò:
As this problem has grown, I've started to question the value of having "Save as inkscape SVG" produce ".svg" suffixed files. Is it not a better idea, design-wise, to indicate that a file is not "pure" SVG with a different suffix such as .isvg or something similar? I have already sent Inkscape-SVG files to other designers by mistake; with a different suffix this would be a mistake which would be apparent as I selected the files for attachment to my emails.
Should Inkscape change the default suffix for its own filetypes?
Fortunately this is not needed, as the situation is quite different.
The usual inkscape-produced SVG files contain additional metadata useful for editing that can be discarded for viewing without any loss.
It's similar to adding comments in a C file: while they are useful while touching the code, stripping them out gives the same executable.
So the "Pure SVG" option strips those metadata leaving a SVG that can be more difficult to edit (e.g. no shapes, only paths) but that will be rendered in the same way.
This is especially useful when publishing a drawing on the web as it can reduce the file size considerably.
I usually save Inkscape SVG files as *.ink.svg in order to avoid confusion. I'm not advocating this to be a default standard--it's just a convention I find useful.
-Kamal
On Monday, August 20, 2007, at 04:57AM, "Thomas Worthington" <tww@...1737...> wrote:
I get EPS files from clients every week with existing logos and other design elements from their letterhead and other advertising in them.
Problem is, most of these files are little more than wrappers around Illustrator-only code and can not be displayed by anything other than Adobe products, certainly Inkscape can handle maybe 1 in 10 of them and even then very poorly.
This is not Inkscape's fault but the fault of products that save files in "<product>-eps" format. The practical upshot for me is that ".eps" is now a meaningless filetype, much like .tiff, and serves only to make it difficult to explain to clients why I'm having trouble with what they think of as very basic files.
As this problem has grown, I've started to question the value of having "Save as inkscape SVG" produce ".svg" suffixed files. Is it not a better idea, design-wise, to indicate that a file is not "pure" SVG with a different suffix such as .isvg or something similar? I have already sent Inkscape-SVG files to other designers by mistake; with a different suffix this would be a mistake which would be apparent as I selected the files for attachment to my emails.
Should Inkscape change the default suffix for its own filetypes?
Thomas Worthington
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel
participants (7)
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Adib Taraben -
bulia byak -
Dan H -
Emanuele Aina -
jiho -
Thomas Worthington