[comp.lang.postscript] Generating editable PostScript for FreeHand

ccc_ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) (07/16/90)

I got hold of the Adobe Illustrator document format spec from the
Adobe file server, and tried to see if I could generate documents
according to that spec that would be acceptable to Aldus FreeHand 2.02.
It turns out that the "minimal" Illustrator document on page 31 is
a little _too_ minimal for FreeHand, but you don't need to put much
more in to make it work.

Following is an example of an Illustrator document that will load
into FreeHand. I assume it's also acceptable to Illustrator 88 (if
someone would like to check that for me, I'd appreciate it). A few
notes:

    * This isn't a complete PostScript file; it only contains
      enough information to be recognisable to Illustrator and
      FreeHand. If you want to produce a complete PostScript file,
      you have to read this into Illustrator and save it again, or
      read it into FreeHand and then export the drawing to an
      EPS file.
    * You have to set the Macintosh file signature to "ARTY" (the
      code for Illustrator) as well as making sure the file type is
      "TEXT"; the signature isn't supposed to contain any file format
      information, but FreeHand won't recognise it otherwise. I
      guess you can blame this one on Adobe, for using the standard
      "TEXT" type for Illustrator's documents in the first place!
    * Note that I set the version of Illustrator to 1.1; FreeHand
      doesn't seem to like Illustrator version 1.0.
    * Not all the lines in the header and trailer may be strictly
      necessary; there may be one or two lines that could be dropped.
      But what the hell--it works.

%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-1.2
%%Creator:Adobe Illustrator(TM) 1.1
%%BoundingBox: 4 0 129 98
%%TemplateBox: 4 0 129 98
%%EndComments
%%BeginProcSet:Adobe_Illustrator_1.1 0 0
%%EndProcSet
%%EndProlog
%%BeginSetup
Adobe_Illustrator_1.1 begin
n
%%EndSetup
0 g
0 G
F
65.2075 0.0 m
101.292 87.9283 L
101.292 22.4844 L
101.292 18.7365 101.579 12.538 99.7105 9.07849 C
97.8416 5.1864 93.8162 4.75397 90.0784 4.32153 C
88.7846 4.32153 L
88.7846 0.0 L
128.64 0.0 L
128.64 4.32153 L
126.48 4.4657 L
114.672 5.33057 115.68 12.9705 115.68 22.4844 C
115.68 75.6757 L
115.68 79.4235 115.392 85.6219 117.264 89.0815 C
119.28 92.9736 123.312 93.4061 127.2 93.8385 C
128.64 93.8385 L
128.64 98.16 L
95.9727 98.16 L
65.6388 24.2142 L
38.1802 98.16 L
3.792 98.16 L
3.792 93.8385 L
6.24 93.6943 L
18.192 92.9736 17.328 85.3337 17.328 75.6757 C
17.328 22.4844 L
17.328 18.7365 17.616 12.3939 15.744 9.07849 C
13.728 5.04224 9.408 4.6098 5.376 4.32153 C
3.792 4.32153 L
3.792 0.0 L
40.1929 0.0 L
40.1929 4.32153 L
37.6052 4.4657 L
33.436 4.6098 28.9794 5.04224 26.9667 9.51086 C
25.5291 12.8264 25.3853 18.7365 25.3853 22.4844 C
25.3853 90.5231 L
59.0257 0.0 L
f
%%Trailer
_E end