[tex-k] Illustrator 8.0/9.0 EPSF inclusion problem workarond

Tomas G. Rokicki rokicki@CS.Stanford.EDU
Sat, 26 Jan 2002 10:44:24 -0800 (PST)


Illustrator 8.0 and 9.0 generate incorrect byte counts in
%%BeginData sections for thumbnails.  This causes the new
dvips to reject those files when using comment elision
(because the new dvips attempts to interpret the comments
and stay in conformance with the spec).  I have written
this up in

   http://tomas.rokicki.com/illbug/

and will attempt to find a contact at Adobe to whom I can
report this problem.  In the meantime, I have a patch for
dvips 5.86e, and it has been checked in to Sebastian's
repository.  The patch is really a workaround; it assumes
if the byte count is specified as hex, then there is no
binary data, and it can simply scan for the %%EndData in
ASCII mode.  It is not clear that the spec permits this
(after all, if I read the spec correctly, the following
is valid:

%%BeginData: 140 Hex Bytes
%%EndData this is part of the data and should *not* be
          interpreted as a DSC comment
   The following line is the *real* %%EndData
%%EndData

but will be incorrectly parsed by dvips) but that's
unlikely enough, and the broken Illustrator files common
enough, that I've decided it's worth the risk.

-tom