Hi Felix could you please post a sample .pdf and .eps file here (ideally a simple one with only one curve in it) that are not able to be read into MoI? I'll then take a look at them and see if I can tweak the importer to handle them. Both of these are pretty difficult file types to deal with though so I'm not sure how feasible that will be.

AI version 8 files are much more simple than either of these types of files but as you've seen Inkscape does not seem to have any support for making those files.

There is a different 2D illustration program Mayura draw : http://www.mayura.com/ which is useful for going from MoI into Inkscape - Mayura can read in AI files saved out from MoI and then save to SVG for going into Inkscape, but I'm not sure if there is a way to go from Inkscape into Mayura.

- Michael

Michael,

here are the files. Don't waste to much time on this unless other might find this useful as well. I can use Photoshop to convert them to AI and Moi read these easily but it's a bit ackward to do.

Thanks,
Felix

Hi Felix, so a quick look at the .eps file shows me why it's not being read - the original older AI format (for AI v8 and previous) had a simple file structure where each instruction for each step of the curve (like the next bezier segment or next line endpoint) was on its own separate line in the AI file. MoI's importer will try to scan through EPS or PDF files for those same instructions but they're not necessarily in that "one line per instruction" format in those files although often they are.

In this case they aren't though, the curve data is like this:


103.461 512.148 m 99.941 522.164 100.609 533.582 105.273 543.121 c
109.938 552.66 118.535 560.199 128.602 563.578 c 140.496 567.566
154.066 565.637 164.797 559.141 c 175.527 552.645 183.398 541.836
187.055 529.832 c 190.711 517.832 190.266 504.746 186.582 492.754 c


Each of those m and c tokens are an instruction, and instead of them being one per line they're all kind of mashed together in one long stream with line breaks just at some arbitrary line length.

I'm not exactly sure if I'll be able to tweak MoI's importers to deal with this kind of stuff, but if I was able to do it it would increase the number of eps and pdf files that MoI's importer could deal with so it's probably worth a shot.

It's too bad that they didn't simply put in some line breaks after each instruction so that their EPS file fell into the same structure as the old AI v8 format, because if they just did that the EPS data would be basically equivalent to the AI8 format and would probably work with with many AI8 readers directly just by renaming the file to .ai from .eps .

- Michael

Xara is giving away the basic version of 'Photo & Graphic Designer 5' for a limited time.
http://dl03.magix.net/xtrphogrades5_silver_en.exe

Useful for converting stuff+ more.

You can disable 'Ask Toolbar' in the installation process.

Marc

Hi Michael,

could this be from the origine of Inkscape as a Linux application maybe? Anyway it doesn't solve my problem and I don't want you to work on this just for me. And as I said earlier, I can use photoshop for now.

Do you know if this could be solve by using different save setting from Inkscape?

Thanks,
Felix

have you try expression3?
http://moi3d.com/forum/messages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4634.14

Michael,

unfortunatly, mayura can only import vectors from Ai files, all other available import formats are bitmaps.

So I guess I'll have to keep using photoshop for simple things though.

Thanks,
Felix

Hi Felix,

> Do you know if this could be solve by using different
> save setting from Inkscape?

I don't know anything for sure about it, but my guess would be probably not.

- Michael

Hi,

I dowloaded the program and I'm in business, this program can read pdf document exported from Inskscape and save them in AI format which Moi can read.

There are a few variant of of eps format it can read and the one I tried didn't work but as long as it can read something from Inkscape, in this case pdf then I'll be able to use this more or less complicated stuff.

Many thanks Mark, this will save me a lot of work.
Felix

PS. This program(s) is huge, 364 mb!

Hi Pilou,

unfortunatly, Expression as also very limited import options, no svg, eps or pdf, only Ai,wmf and emf. I tried Inkscape wmf format but there is a problem with it. Lastly, I tried Inkscape emf format and Expression loaded it no problem and exported it to Ai 7 and it also work fine with Moi.

I think I can safely say I have a couple of option now thanks to you, Mark and others. I have now quite a few vector program to work with but I think I'll strick with inkscape spiro stuff, I kind of like the idea of creating a rough version of what I want and spiro uses that to generate a pretty nice smooth curve that I can still edit if I need to. Other programs offer bezier curves and the works but it's always difficult to obtain a nice smooth curve especially when trying to reproduce curve from images for example.

Thanks,
Felix

Hi Felix, this helped me in the past, to get an .ai file from Inkscape into MoI:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3574.6

Regards
Stefan

Stefan,

thanks for your suggestion but for just file conversion like this I prefer to use free software and gsview isn't free anymore on windows.

I visited your doodles page by the way and I was quite impressed.

Thanks,
Felix

Hi Felix,

sorry, i didn't know that GSView is no longer free...

and thanks for you comment about my doodles!

Regards
Stefan

Would love to see SVG support in MOI. Inkscape has strong support/compatibility for this format; can be used instead of AI/EPS.

"""""""""Many thanks Mark, this will save me a lot of work"""""""""

No Problem!

Marc

.46 had ai export. I wonder if spiros were in it yet? Maybe could still be installed a a plug? Or dont know if the ai works either or if you could run both side by side. If it's side by side, maybe you could load both and open it in the older one to save the ai...