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I saved 2 drawings in Adobe Illustrator 8.0 format because I need to send them to a silk screen shop that only accepts .ai. Unfortunately, I realized I need to edit them before I can send them, but inkscape can not read its own .ai files. When I try and reopen them, I get this:
Error: May not be a PDF file (continuing anyway)
Error: PDF file is damaged - attempting to reconstruct xref table...
Error: Couldn't find trailer dictionary
Error: Couldn't read xref table
** Message: PDF file was damaged and couldn't be repaired.
The only program I have found that can open these files so far is gsview. The files look fine when I view them, but of course I can not save them as any other format.
Can anyone give me some guidance on how to:
A) Recover these files in a vectorized format so I can edit them
B) Save these files in .ai format so that the silk screen shop can read them.
I apologize if this is a frequent problem. I did a quick scan of the site and didn't see anything similar.
Thank you for your assistance,
Greg
Inkscape can not read its own .ai file
Re: Inkscape can not read its own .ai file
First thing first, when using Inkscape, always save your original drawing as SVG. Only the copies should be AI. This is general advise for any file editing program--always work with the applications native file format and convert it when needed.
Having said that, to view the AI, try opening it in Acrobat Reader. As far as re-opening the file, I can't offer any advise to except to use a third party tool to convert it to PDF and open that.
Having said that, to view the AI, try opening it in Acrobat Reader. As far as re-opening the file, I can't offer any advise to except to use a third party tool to convert it to PDF and open that.
Re: Inkscape can not read its own .ai file
Karbon14, Xara Xtreme, Skencil is other open source vector Linux program, maybe some of them can open AI, I don't know.
Re: Inkscape can not read its own .ai file
gregblancher wrote:Error: May not be a PDF file (continuing anyway)
I think this is the problem - Inkscape's AI import is only intended for AI 9 (and higher) files, which are really PDF. Older AI files are PostScript rather than PDF. For some reason, Inkscape isn't able to autodetect the version and use the appropriate import method (or, at least, this is how I remember it - I haven't got any AI files to test at the moment).
Anyway, you should be able to open AI 8 files by using the PostScript import option. (Note that PostScript import requires Ghostscript.)