AI 8.0 EXPORT CRASH

[GrizzleyBear]

When I create any kind of image in inkscape and save as a AI 8.0 file
Inkscape crashes no matter what I have drawn, I choose Save As, then the postscript options are

Convert Text to Paths (this is checked off)
Embed Fonts (Type 1 Only) (unchecked)

Click OK

==== CRASH ====

The Error is:

Microsoft Visual C++ RunTime Library
A Error in Inkscape.exe

That is all it tells me.

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

this is probably using an extension called gs (Ghostscript).
could you specify :
- which OS
- which version of Inkscape
- do you have a file called gs in the path
- did this ever work before

[GrizzleyBear (christopher-walkfar)]

OS = Windows XP Pro SP2
Inkscape version = .046
PATH = Yes, GS is in the PATH

First time using it so I can't say if it did or didn't work before.

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

I am running win32 nightly build from May 8.
I don't actually have a file called gs, although I do have one called gswin32c.exe.
Could you attach your gs file so I could try it out?

[GrizzleyBear (christopher-walkfar)]

Sorry, I am running gswin32c.exe as well.

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

okay, then we both have the same problem :
- running win32 nightly build from May 8
- the extension ai_output.inx requires the file gs
- this file does not exist
- if we replace it with gswin32c, which does exist, then we get a crash with the exit message :

C:\Python25\APP>inkcl.py
return code: 3
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'Glib::SpawnError'

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

backtrace follows :
(gdb) run
Starting program: C:\Program Files\Inkscape/inkscape.exe
[New thread 1336.0xdac]
[New thread 1336.0xe98]
[New thread 1336.0x93c]
[New thread 1336.0x174]
[New thread 1336.0xbd8]
[New thread 1336.0x490]
warning: Lowest section in C:\WINDOWS\system32\odbcint.dll is .rsrc at 20001000

Program exited with code 03.
(gdb) bt
No stack.

[GrizzleyBear (christopher-walkfar)]

So will there be a fix ?
How will I save to AI 8.0 ?

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

I am somewhat out of my depth here, all I can think of is to save it as .svg or .pdf, and then convert it to .ai independently, outside of Inkscape.

[GrizzleyBear (christopher-walkfar)]

Oh :( Oh well I guess one day in future releases (whenever that is)

Do you know a tool that can convert SVG or PDF to AI independently ?

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

    sorry about that, I should have known the answer, the instructions are in the file ai_output.inx :
- first use Inkscape to save the file as .ps (Postscript)
- this file should be viewable using GSView32.exe
- then convert to .ai using the file gswin32c.exe and the script file ps2ai.ps
- the command that I tried was :

gswin32c -q -dNODISPLAY ps2ai.ps AI8Test.ps > AI8Test.ai

- this produced an .ai file, but I cannot speak to the quality of it, because I have no way of viewing .ai files on my machine.

[GrizzleyBear (christopher-walkfar)]

Alright I have Ghostscript Image and Ghost script open but how do I convert I ran that command at the prompt and nothing happen just a error but in Ghost Script Image I have my image showing though.

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

this was run from a DOS prompt

[GrizzleyBear (christopher-walkfar)]

I just go into the Ghostscript directory and run that command line and it should work?

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

there's more than one way to set this up, but in my case what I did was first confirm that the directory
C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.61\lib
is in the path. This is the directory that holds the script file ps2ai.ps

Then I switched to the directory
C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.61\bin
because this contains the file gswin32c.exe

Then I ran the command
gswin32c -q -dNODISPLAY ps2ai.ps pathtest.ps > pathtest.ai

the first few lines of the output file pathtest.ai were as follows:

%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-1.2
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 612 792
%%Title: Adobe Illustator 3 Editable Document
%%Creator: ps2ai.ps vers. 2.14 (C) 1993-94 Jason Olszewski

[GrizzleyBear (christopher-walkfar)]

I get this error:

GLS Ghostscript 8.61: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1

This is when I run that command in the exactly the same method as you did

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

do you have a source file called pathtest.ps in the directory
C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.61\bin> ?

[GrizzleyBear (christopher-walkfar)]

Yes

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

try attaching the .ps file to this bug report, I'll try to convert it on my machine

[GrizzleyBear (christopher-walkfar)]

It is alright, I decided I will purchase another vector illustration program (but not Adobe Illustrator, argh) and then use Inkscape as a companion to it. Inkscape should just save the file without this much fuss, I hope you can understand maybe in the future they will fix this for now I'll just go the route mentioned

Thank You for your help

[bbyak (buliabyak)]

Why do you need this obsolete version of a one-program-only format? Inkscape supports SVG and PDF, which are widely supported these days.

[Guillermo Espertino (Gez) (gespertino-gmail)]

Is a quite common practice among illustrator users to save logos and artwork as old versions of Adobe Illustrator (pre-pdf) or eps. This is because illustrator doesn't support cdr as output format, and in some countries Corel Draw is more popular than Illustrator.
It's not rare to find those old file formats out there, unfortunately.
Although it's really advisable to avoid them, people will keep using them.

What's really a shame is the quality of the SVG support in commercial packages. If there was better support, SVG would be a great exchange format, imho.

[Guillermo Espertino (Gez) (gespertino-gmail)]

It doesn't crash now, but it doesn't produce a valid file either.
Also AI import (pre-PDF) doesn't work.

I think it should be removed from the formats lists. I don't mean forever, because I still think that those old AI formats are very useful, but at least remove them until they work.

[Guillermo Espertino (Gez) (gespertino-gmail)]

The AI8 format has been removed from the list of available formats in SVN, so this report becomes invalid.

The AI8 format is still very common and will certainly missed, but meanwhile no one is be working on the exporter code, is worthless to keep a broken format in the list.