[OS X TeX] Illustrator 10.0.1 for Mac OS X .eps

[Ross Moore]

> on 5/23/02 7:53 PM, Ross Moore, typed:
> >> Obviously, we are not talking about including pdfs here, only eps files
> >> -from Illustrator.
> > 
> > Ahem. If you look at the text of the .eps file, you will see that it
> > *is* essentially PDF, in uncompressed form.
> > OK, not totally PDF yet, but you can expect it to be in future versions
> > of Illustrator. There will be a PostScript header as well; but the bulk
> > of the drawing commands are organised to be PDF. Also, there are comment
> > sections with XML tagging, such as the PrivateData you mentioned above.
> 
> Question: considering that Illustrator eps is "essentially" a pdf, then why
> would anyone wish to save eps from Illustrator to include in their article
> or document?

EPS is an older, better established format than PDF.
It's much more stable, and has explicit specs.


Technically, PDF is a distillation from PostScript.
Typically, distillation produces a more powerful, stronger drop,
with less liquid  --- excuse the metaphor.
But any errors or impurities are strengthened too.

You should think of it as   EPS --> PDF  is the direction that Adobe
is moving, with its file formats.
They have not yet produced a 100% sound, pure product,
which doesn't give hang-overs.  :-)

 
> My 'newbie' and limited understanding is that print houses want source, not
> pdf, is that a reason?  And for local laser printing is pdf not just as
> good/acceptable as eps? (I am aware of the web usage and encryption(?)

That's not my understanding.
General PostScript takes longer to print than PDF, so the print houses
love PDF. It means that a large part of the PostScript processing has
been done already, so they can get greater throughput on their PostScript
RIPs.  (RIP = Raster Image Processor).


> abilities of pdf, those are not at issue.)  Further, I was told by the
> gentleman with the problem (that I was helping) that saving it as pdf was
> not producing at least one of the symbols in his file? eps does produce it.

That's the problem:  doing it *right*.
There can be mistakes in the process of going from PostScript to PDF.
(or from other image formats directly to PDF without going via PS first;
 e.g. Apple's Quartz has quite a few know PDF problems.)


Think of PostScript as being the source code; with PDF as the compiled binary.
If there is an error in the output, you want to go back to the source
and re-generate the binary.

If it's bad PDF then you cannot easily fix it.

So if print-houses that you use don't like PDF, then it's probably because
they don't trust the quality of the product. (Printing quickly and efficiently
is no good if the result is wrong anyway.)



With Illustrator, saving as PDF is buggy in that it doesn't give proper
bounding-boxes; whereas saving as EPS does get this right.

Your colleague is claiming font-handling problems too.
That would be worth seeing.

Would he/you provide an explicit example of this.
Save a simple image in all the possible formats that Illustrator allows,
and bundle them up in an archive, for downloading.

Browse at:  http://www.tug.org/twg/tfaa/reports/
to see the kind of thing that would be nice to have.
There is a bug-reporting form at:  http://www.tug.org/twg/tfaa/



Hope this helps,

	Ross



> 
> Ted
> 


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