Re: OT: Illustrator line feed inconsistencies

["Dov Isaacs" <isaacs@xxxxxxxxx> (by way of Dov Isaacs <isaacs@xxxxxxxxx>)]

Jason,

Your observations vis-a-vis EPS files from Illustrator are generally
correct. There are inconsistences in use of line ending characters. You
would find similar conditions also in the output from drivers and in
the "headers" of Adobe's Type 1 fonts occasionally. However, some 
additional observations:

(1) EPS files are NOT considered by Adobe or anyone else to be
ASCII text files.

(2) EPS files should not be considered to be ASCII editable.

(3) Adobe PostScript interpreters as well as all Adobe applications 
properly deal with any recognized line endings including CR-LF, LF, or CR.
They need to given the cross-platform functionality of our products.
Thus, although esthetically ugly, the inconsistent line ending characters
do no harm to any Adobe product or for that matter, any well-engineered
software that properly deals with data cross-platform. Most C library
functions that I have ever used have properly handled this admittedly
ugly scenario without a problem.

(4) Please advise me if any software from Adobe is failing with these
files. For any reasonable use, these EPS files should not fail unless you
are trying to process/modify them with software that is somewhat less than
"robust" in their ability to deal with cross-platform data. If that is the
case, the same software would fail with EPS files from other platforms, not
just the mixed-line-ending Windows EPS files. Contact your third-party
software provider to seek a fix in that case.

        - Dov


At 12/8/2000 09:04 AM, Jason Aiken wrote:
>FrameHeads,
>
>Delete this now if you don't care about the inner workings of Adobe
>Illustrator. I've observed some very strange behavior in the EPS code
>when viewed through a text editor. Can anyone explain what's going on or
>share if they've seen this before?
>
>EPS files saved in Illustrator 8.0.1 on Windows 95/8 inconsistently
>receive the Windows line feed (LF) and carriage return (CR) characters
>when the files are viewed in a text editor. In Word Pad, they show as
>solid black characters, but in other editors such as vi, they show up as
>control M's.
>
>For some reason, Illustrator is saving these LF/CR pairs
>inconsistently, eliminating valid line breaks that disrupt PS viewers
>from displaying/printing the EPS files. Some LF/CR pairs are respected,
>but others are obviously not acting as they should. For example, a bad
>line may look like this:

*

>2355:0 J 0 j 1 w 4 M []0 d^M%AI3_Note:^M0 D
>
>The ^M combo is the LF/CR pair. According to standard LF/CR behavior,
>the line above should look like:
>
>2355:0 J 0 j 1 w 4 M []0 d
>%AI3_Note:
>0 D
>
>Why the arbitrary failure to respect the LF/CR pair? Are these inserted
>somehow by Windows (I'd blame Word if I could, really I would)?

*

>This is a pretty serious issue because it completely thwarts many PS
>viewers, chokes Perl conversion utilities, and causes trouble on UNIX.
>In a 3,880 line file, 145 lines contain inline LF/CR pairs or the LF
>alone.
>
>We're kinda building our own Frame Enterprise, Frame Designer, Frame
>Writer scenario, but we need those EPS files to work on our server if we
>want to have graphics in our manuals (minor detail, right?).
>
>I'm probably going to head to the Adobe Online User-to-User forum with
>this one, but my question may not apply to typical Illustrator users.
>I've posted it to my favorite Framers lists because I know some of you
>folks get down and dirty with your techie stuff. Thanks for reading if
>you're still awake.
>
>Happy Friday all,
>Jason
>Frame Templar
>Babylon


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