[Clipart] SVG Output Using Adobe Illustrator CS on Windows

[Alan Horkan]

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004, Bryce Harrington wrote:

> On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 Sigmascape1 at cs.com wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Over the next few weeks, I am going to begin developing some material
> > for the repository. My main SVG/Vector app is Illustrator (version
> > CS). When outputting content in SVG from Illustrator, do I need to be
> > aware of anything in terms of compatibility or things that are not
> > standardized?
>
> You might want to download the Windows or Mac version of Inkscape and
> try it on a couple images saved from Illustrator to see if there are any
> compatibility issues, but my guess is that as long as you avoid some of
> the more esoteric features, there shouldn't be many compatibility issues
> to worry about.
>
> > Also, I'll be attempting to process metadata from Illustrator. Any
> > issues with that?
>
> I think you'll be the pioneer here.  ;-)

I have been playing with a trial version of Adobe Illustrator CS [1] and
there are some option you can turn on to make things more OpenClipart and
Inkscape and standards friendly.
Ideally OpenClipart will at some point invest in at least one copy of
Adobe Illustrator for testing and to be able to use some of its native
file formats to generate SVG.  I would recommend you try to provide your
files in multiple formats, at least the native Adobe .ai file format
(which is a modified version of PDF incidentally) and SVG (Scalable Vector
Graphics)  format.

There are various options that you choose when exporting to SVG, like
disabling Adobe extensions, and choosing standard SVG wherever possible.
Unfortunately if you have used some of the advanced features like 'Grid
Mesh' then the export will cheat and turn it from a Vector into a flat
raster PNG/JPEG embedded into the SVG but I'm sure the people here will at
least look at the SVG source and realise this immediately.
I would like to be able to help you more but I dont have a copy of Adobe
Illustrator so I cannot provide a more detailed description.  I'm a poor
student and Adobe Illustrator is just not affordable, and unless they
provide a value for money version Adobe Illustrator (Adobe Illustrator
Elements perhaps?) soon then Inkscape will be so good they will have lost
their chance!

I would strongly encourage you to try Inkscape and let them know if you
have any problems importing your Adobe SVG, or if you think there are any
other ways they might improve.
Hopefully Inkscape will provide a way to homogonise and standardise the
SVG inlcuded in OpenClipart.
Librsvg (for converting SVG to flat/raster graphics) is also a useful
program to test SVG against (an older version is
even included with the Gimp 2.0).

Hope that helps (and if someone could take the time to tidy up this
information and put it in the Wiki/FAQ I would greatly appreciate it).

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

[1] must put 'Adobe' before their product names or some smartass lawyer
will think they own generic words, they dont!