[gs-bugs] [Bug 688923] PDF Write - Lost Layers from EPS

[bugs.ghostscript.com-bugzilla-daemon at ghostscript.com]

http://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=688923





------- Additional Comments From ken.sharp at artifex.com  2008-08-19 09:20 -------
Hi Tony,

> Ken, Why I would like it is because we have 3rd party software that will not 
> import EPS file formats but do import PDF.

Hmm but that wouldn't handle Illustrator-specific data, would it ?

> So, I thought I could export 
> as EPS (in the background) and then use the PDF writer to convert the EPS to 
> PDF.

That's certainly a reasonable thing to do, there's no problem with doing that,
though it won't (at the moment anyway) have the Illustrator marked content.

> I would not put it high on your list of things to do

Hmm, at the moment its a Priority 1 (the only priority 1 enhancement I have) and
 shows up in our 'top ten' tracker. Again the only item I have in that tracker,
so it keeps nagging at me....

> PDF does have layers does it not? 

In a sense, yes, though it is called something different.

> and does Adobe still do this with "marked content" ?

No this is what you mentioned in your comment #5, its called 'optional content'.
The two are quite different, optional content is a well-specified part of the
PDF reference, marked content is just 'This means something special to the
producing application, don't know what so ignore it'. The actual information for
'marked content' is given by the marked content properties dictionary.

An example might be that a headline would be marked as 'marked content' with a
properties dictionary like (for example)

/Properties <<
  /MC0 <<
    /Type (Headline)
  >>
  /MC1 <<
    /Type (Body)
  >>
  /MC2 <<
    /Type (Subhead1)
  >>
>>

This would allow a text extraction utility which understood the specific marked
content to retrieve the meta information.

So back to the topic. I see why you would want to create a PDF from an EPS, but
I don't understand why you specifically want to handle the marked content. This
would only be useful to you if you were to open the resulting PDF in Illustrator
again. If you wanted to do that, you'd be better off making the PDF there in the
first place....




------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the QA contact for the bug, or are watching the QA contact.