[Cbsupport] [Fwd: Re: Adobe Illustator CS]

[Simeon Scott]

Deb&Max,

I'm not familiar with Illustrator CS, but the Illustrator native file 
format which I am aware of, .ai, is basically encapsulated postscript, 
ie .eps, which can be read by ghostview, but isn't very amenable to 
editing by other applications.

I just found this one, Cenon, haven't tried it. Let me know if you need 
help getting it to work (or if it works!):

http://www.cenon.info

Cenon says it can import postscript and some other vector formats, so
probably you can import the .ai or else, use Illustrator to export some
other format it can read.

There is a livecd which you can boot and use Cenon with without
installing, if you want to try it out. I will drop in a copy of this
livecd to cbv this week or next (when I get some blanks).

http://linuks.mine.nu/gnustep/

Yes, Openoffice.org draw is an excellent free vector graphics editor. I
am proposing to run a course in cbv on this and perhaps other linux
graphics tools for dtp. I recommend learning this one, rather than
trying to learn something else which can edit .ai, first. :)

Why? Because most linux users interested in DTP now have Openoffice
already installed. It will become the defacto standard office ap, just
as MS Office is/was (ie not just for linux).

Openoffice can embed an eps file in a drawing, and you can draw over the
top, so can change them that way. But it's not all that easy.

Perhaps your best bet is to learn Openoffice Draw by recreating your
work using that ;)

The ghostscript package includes various tools for playing with
postscript, but they are all command line tools I think.

Coreldraw can edit postscript, and as Julien mentions, is available for
linux, but it costs $$$.

Fig / xfig can nearly edit postscript - there is an importer ps2fig -
see the faq
http://www.bio.vu.nl/thb/links/docs/xfig/faq.html#edit_eps

I don't know how good the importer is (how much of .ai it understands).

But postscript usually does not have information about object groupings, 
so eg textures fill becomes a seperate object from the actual outline, 
and so on, I think. It's probably your best bet for free software that 
will edit native Illustrator vector format.

Perhaps you can export from Illustrator to some other format - compare
the formats listed by Openoffice and those listed by Illustrator :)

If you can get SVG export from illustrator, try using sodipodi
(Inkscape?) to edit that.

Other excellent vector graphics software for linux are Scribus which is
a complete document layout engine, and sketch (now skencil!).

Scribus and sodipodi/inkscape are the other ones really worth learning,
apart from OpenOffice I think.

Simeon



On Sun, Aug 29, 2004 at 10:05:42PM +1000, Barry Klein wrote:
> Kylie Davies wrote:
> 
> >This may be relevant for others on this list.
> >
> >Thanks Avery and Julien. :)
> >
> >Cheers,
> >
> >Kylie
> >------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >Subject:
> >Re: Adobe Illustator CS
> >From:
> >Julien Goodwin <luv-lists at studio442.com.au>
> >Date:
> >Fri, 20 Aug 2004 23:40:28 +1000
> >To:
> >luv-main at luv.asn.au
> >
> >To:
> >luv-main at luv.asn.au
> >
> >On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 09:48:26PM +1000, Deb&Max arranged a set of bits 
> >into the following:
> >
> >>Any way we are using Illustrator CS and I was wondering if there is a 
> >>Linux Application that we read or edit it without having to buy it.  I 
> >>think with GIMP you still have to buy it to have the plug ins work but I 
> >>could be mistaken.
> >
> >Don't know of any GIMP plugins for sale but I'm sure they're there
> >(Although is the compay that sells there repacking of GIMP for Mac OS X)
> >
> >As you should know from your course there are two types of images,
> >raster and vector.
> >
> >For editing raster images you have:
> >* Photoshop (Win/Mac)
> >* The GIMP (Win/Mac/Linux)
> >etc.
> >
> >For editing vector images you have:
> >* Illustrator (Win/Mac)
> >* Corel Draw (At least one version of which was released for linux) 
> >(Win/Linux/Not sure re mac)
> >* Inkscape (nee Sodipodi) (Win/Linux)
> 
> * OpenOffice.org Draw (Win/Linux/Mac) is a vector graphics editor.
> 
> >Just having a program is obviously not enough, you need a file format
> >that they can both work with, the only real option being SVG (Scalable
> >Vector Graphics)/SVZ (GZipped SVG)
> 
> Barry Klein
> 
> 
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