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Bug 311990 - Adobe Illustrator (.ai) PDF support issues
Adobe Illustrator (.ai) PDF support issues
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: evince
Classification: Core
Component: general
unspecified
Other All
: Low enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: Evince Maintainers
Evince Maintainers
: 548767 551993 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2005-07-29 16:07 UTC by Alan Horkan
Modified: 2017-09-28 04:01 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
backends: Add support for Adobe Illustrator (2.40 KB, patch)
2017-07-20 00:33 UTC, Bastien Nocera
committed Details | Review

Description Alan Horkan 2005-07-29 16:07:56 UTC
previously discussed with Bryan Clark on IRC

Adobe Illustrator format (.ai) Drawings use PDF internally since Adobe
Illustrator 10 (at least) and older versions used an EPS based file format.  

If you try to open an AI document in Evince you will probably get a message
telling you this document was not saved with PDF compatibility information or
standard boilerplate instructions to that effect.  

Essentially Evince has already done most of what it should do.  Only a few very
minor tweaks are needed like making sure .ai files are not excluded from the
file chooser list.  There isn't anything else I can think of really at the
moment but if anyone asks if Evince can open Illustrator file it will be nice to
be able to say "Yes, ... well um sort of ..."  :)
Comment 1 Sergej Kotliar 2006-03-29 15:14:34 UTC
Yes. Xpdf can show illustrator files just fine, so there should be support for this somewhere. Is this perhaps a poppler request? KPDF doesn't do illustrator files either. Or should it be EOG that opens illustrator files?

As a sidenote - GIMP opens .ai files just fine, but renders them to pixels. Not sure how useful that code would be, just figured I'd mention it while I was sending out this spam anyway ;-)
Comment 2 Alan Horkan 2006-04-20 12:41:11 UTC
At the moment all I'm really asking for is a file type entry in the file chooser for "Adobe Illustrator".  
Comment 3 Sergej Kotliar 2006-04-21 10:04:13 UTC
Well, me - I'd like full support of the Illustrator file format(s).

But yeah, getting the basic things like opening PDFs referred to as AIs in first is a good thing too!
Comment 4 Nickolay V. Shmyrev 2006-04-29 11:01:19 UTC
Are you really sure we need to add entry "Adobe Ilustrator" to file chooser drop down list? Probably just add application/illustrator to pdf format mime types?
Comment 5 Alan Horkan 2006-04-29 12:01:55 UTC
not sure what you mean but this feature needs to be visible, it needs to be clear  to users that Adobe Illustrator PDF files (.ai) can be opened in Evince.  
Comment 6 Bastien Nocera 2017-07-19 17:08:38 UTC
*** Bug 551993 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Bastien Nocera 2017-07-19 17:25:50 UTC
I've downloaded a test file from here:
http://www.freepik.com/index.php?goto=2&k=illustrator&isCat=1&isKeyword=1&type=1&vars=1&is_selection=1

called "Watercolor-butterflies-background".

The only hard bit in handling Illustrator files is that the files, with the same suffix, are either EPS files or PDF files depending on the version:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Illustrator_Artwork

And those use different backends. So some creativity will be needed to add the support, but it should be pretty straight forward.
Comment 8 Bastien Nocera 2017-07-20 00:33:11 UTC
Created attachment 355989 [details] [review]
backends: Add support for Adobe Illustrator

Add the application/illustrator mime-type as supported if both
the PDF and the EPS backends are available.

If the appdata information for the backends is used to split off the
plugins, we'll recommend using the PDF backend, as it's the one
supporting the most current, post-2000, format.
Comment 9 Bastien Nocera 2017-07-20 00:38:58 UTC
To test out both the old and the new formats, rename the .eps file mentioned in comment 7 to ".ai". Both could be opened when launched by nautilus, though I've not tested the thumbnailer due to my current development environment.
Comment 10 Germán Poo-Caamaño 2017-07-20 01:06:44 UTC
Just to keep in mind: if evince migrates to Meson, an update should be needed.

Nacho has a wip branch somewhere ready to be used, AFAIK.
Comment 11 Bastien Nocera 2017-07-20 01:15:50 UTC
(In reply to Germán Poo-Caamaño from comment #10)
> Just to keep in mind: if evince migrates to Meson, an update should be
> needed.
> 
> Nacho has a wip branch somewhere ready to be used, AFAIK.

I'm pretty sure this change is smaller than porting to meson, meaning that I would expect him to add this feature to the meson build, rather than me waiting for the meson port to land...
Comment 12 Germán Poo-Caamaño 2017-07-20 01:49:14 UTC
I agree. I did not mean to wait until the meson build lands nor that you should fix something that has not landed yet.

I meant just as a note to not forget, but better is adding Nacho to the Cc :-)
Comment 13 Bastien Nocera 2017-07-20 01:49:55 UTC
(In reply to Germán Poo-Caamaño from comment #12)
> I agree. I did not mean to wait until the meson build lands nor that you
> should fix something that has not landed yet.
> 
> I meant just as a note to not forget, but better is adding Nacho to the Cc
> :-)

Definitely ;)
Thanks!
Comment 14 Ignacio Casal Quinteiro (nacho) 2017-07-20 06:18:47 UTC
I have not worked on evince at all, I ported libgxps to meson and that is on master already. If you need any change on libgxps then I am the guy otherwise check with Carlos.
Comment 15 Carlos Garcia Campos 2017-07-22 05:53:30 UTC
Review of attachment 355989 [details] [review]:

Ok
Comment 16 Bastien Nocera 2017-07-22 12:41:27 UTC
Attachment 355989 [details] pushed as 6de5bfd - backends: Add support for Adobe Illustrator
Comment 17 Germán Poo-Caamaño 2017-09-28 04:01:52 UTC
*** Bug 548767 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***