Text in exported EPS converted to paths in Adobe Illustrator CS4

[Manuel Iñarrea]

Hello,

I have a problem with text objets when I save a drawing in EPS format in Inkscape.
If then I open that EPS file with Adobe Illustrator CS4, all the text objects appear converted into paths, no longer text objects.
I use Inkscape 0.48, Spanish version, and Adobe Illustrator CS4 in Windows 7 operating system.
Does anyone know this problem? Does anyone know the solution? Or there is no solution for it...

Thank you very much.
Manuel.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Please attach a sample SVG and EPS file to allow further investigation - possibly your text objects have a reduced opacity or a filter effect applied (PostScript doesn't support transparency - all objects in the original SVG with some kind of reduced opacity are rasterized when saving a copy as EPS/PS).

[su_v (suv-lp)]

1) From the SVG file:
<g
     id="g10"
     inkscape:groupmode="layer"
     inkscape:label="ink_ext_XXXXXX"
     transform="matrix(1.25,0,0,-1.25,0,42.5)">

Are you roundtrip-editing EPS (or PDF) files in Inkscape? Does Adobe Illustrator outline text too, if you create a new document in Inkscape (i.e. without importing/editing existing PDF/EPS files) and then save a copy as EPS?

2) AFAICT this is a problem of Adobe Illustrator, maybe limited to EPS/PS files created with the cairo library (used by Inkscape for PDF/PS/EPS export). The attached EPS file 'Texts.eps' does contain the text as text, with embedded and subsetted fonts):

%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0
%%Creator: cairo 1.8.8 (http://cairographics.org)
%%CreationDate: Tue Jun 14 09:09:14 2011
%%Pages: 1
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 135 116
%%DocumentData: Clean7Bit
%%LanguageLevel: 2

<snip>

11 dict begin
/FontType 42 def
/FontName /f-0-0 def

<snip>

11 dict begin
/FontType 42 def
/FontName /f-1-0 def

<snip>

%%Page: 1 1
%%BeginPageSetup
%%PageBoundingBox: 0 0 135 116
%%EndPageSetup
q
0 g
BT
44.799999 0 0 44.799999 9.979351 45.185789 Tm
/f-0-0 1 Tf
<01020304>Tj
/f-1-0 1 Tf
-0.0232132 -0.993475 Td
[<0102>-1<0304>]TJ
32 0 0 32 -0.546875 93.22715 Tm
[<0102>-1<0304>-1<05>1<0607>]TJ
ET
Q
showpage
%%Trailer

Possibly related issue:
Bug #375323 “ps and eps export with cairo in inkscape no usable with psfrag”

[Manuel Iñarrea (manuel-inarrea)]

Thank you for your comments.

In fact the original files I use to handle are created with Mathematica and saved in SVG format. Then I edit and refine the files with Inkscape, but I need to convert them in eps in order to include them in papers.
Nevertheless, the SVG file I have previously attached in my last message with only texts, was originally created with Inkscape, and then save as EPS.

[ScislaC (scislac)]

When saving as EPS is the option for "Convert texts to paths" enabled?

[su_v (suv-lp)]

The EPS file attached by the OR does contain the text as text (not as paths), with embedded and subsetted fonts.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

@Manuel - could you test the attached EPS file in CS4? It was exported with cairo 1.11.2 [1] with these differences to your attached file:
- no matrix transforms (due to roundtrip-editing of EPS files) in the SVG file
- the embedded and subsetted fonts keep the original font names
- ascii glyphs are included as plaint text strings (not sure if that's relevant)
- fonts used should be available on Windows (Cambria Math, Arial, Times New Roman)

[1] <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/375323/comments/43>

[su_v (suv-lp)]

original SVG file

[Manuel Iñarrea (manuel-inarrea)]

Hello ScislaC,

Answering to your question: When I save the file as EPS the option "Convert texts to paths" is disabled.
As ~suv says in his/her messages, it seems that the text is saved as proper text, but nevertheless, when the file is open with Adobe Illustrator CS4 it seems that AICS4 converts the text into paths. Why?....

[Manuel Iñarrea (manuel-inarrea)]

Thank you for all your comments.

I have just test the new EPS file 797046-text-new-3-cairo-1_11_2.eps opening it with Adoble Illustrator CS4, and unfortunately all the text (Cambria Math, Arial, Times New Roman) also appear as paths.
What happens?

[su_v (suv-lp)]

> What happens?

Seems likely that the same issue as described on the cairo mailing list some years ago still affects Adobe Illustrator today:

<quote>
This solved the problem for PDFs. Thank you so much for your help!

Illustrator still reads PostScript and EPS files as outlined fonts. If
I use Distiller to convert the PS to PDF, I can edit the PDF text as a
text object, leading me to believe Illustrator is still confused over
some aspect of the font output in Cairo. This is fine for my project,
but if you have any ideas, it would be nice to have directly editable
PS files.
</quote>
<http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/cairo/2008-December/015983.html>
<http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/cairo/2008-November/015827.html>