Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!media01!pkr
From: pkr@media01.UUCP (Peter Kriens)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript
Subject: Re: Why No Adobe Host-Base Interpreters?
Message-ID: <1457@media01.UUCP>
Date: 23 Oct 90 13:58:14 GMT
References: <34733@cup.portal.com> <1990Oct11.173733.14781@zoo.toronto.edu> <14508@vdsvax.crd.ge.com>
Reply-To: pkr@media01.UUCP (Peter Kriens)
Organization: Mediasystemen, Netherlands
Lines: 52


I often notice the confusion about what Adobe Illustrator really is. It
is "just" a drawing program that conforms to the rules specified in EPSF.
It does NOT edit generic postscript files. In the contrary it uses a very
small language consisting of one and 2 letter commands to describe the
editable objects. This language is described in a prolog as procedures
so that an Illustrator document can be executed on a postscript printer.
But it definitely cannot read "any" postscript file,not even if they
conform to EPSF. EPSF and Adobe Illustrator or something quite different.

There is a document available from Adobe that describes the AI format
in detail. You can get this trough the Adobe file server, for instructions
send a mail to ps-file-server@adobe, if the first line contains:

	send Documents AIformat1.ps

and in another mail

	send Documents AIformat2.ps

you will get 2 postscript files which concatenated give you the
syntax AI is using.

Because if you write program that generate postscript code
it can sometimes be quite handy to allow post-editing. If you conform to
this specifications, your output is editable. You even dont have
to include the prolog. This is the example adobe gives as minimal
AI program:

	%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-1.2
	%%BoundingBox: 72 72 154 154
	%%TemplateBox: 0 0 612 792
	%%EndComments
	%%EndProlog
	0 G
	72 72 m
	154 72 L
	154 154 L
	72 154 L
	72 72 L
	s
	/_Times-Roman 12 10 01 z
	[1 0 0 1 108 108] e
	6 (line 1) t
	6 (line 2) t
	T
	%%Trailer

If you type this in you can read it on AI.

Good luck.
Peter Kriens