'Adobe Illustrator 8.0 and below' doesn't work on Windows (XP/7) ("UniConvertor failed")

> Please see title.

Please add information about your OS/platform and Inkscape version.

> Doesn't accept any .ai or .eps files I try.

a) *.eps files:
Do you have Ghostscript installed (required for opening EPS files)?

b) *.ai files:
Are these "Adobe Illustrator 9.0 and above" files (PDF-based), or "Adobe Illustrator 8.0 and below" files (Postscript-based)?

Inkscape opens PDF-based "Adobe Illustrator 9.0 and above" files internally without depending on external tools, for "Adobe Illustrator 8.0 and below", you need to have UniConvertor 1.1.5 installed [1] and explicitly select the file format in the 'File > Open…' dialog.

Could you attach sample AI files that fail to open in Inkscape?

[1] bundled with Inkscape on Windows

a) No I don't have Ghostscript, where can I download it?

b) I try to import with both options but neither work :-(

Will have to find some .ai files that don't work and add them asap.

"Please add information about your OS/platform and Inkscape version."

How do I add this information? I use Windows XP, I think I have Inkscape version 0.48.1 but will have to check.

agv racing logo .ai file (I did not make it but I wanted to open it in Inkscape so I could play with the colours without quality reduction)

From 'agv-racing-logo.ai':

%!PS-Adobe-3.0
%%Creator: Adobe Illustrator(TM) 5.0
%%AI8_CreatorVersion: 10.0

'agv-racing-logo.ai' appears to be an older, Postscript-based AI format. It opens without error message from within Inkscape [1] when choosing "Adobe Illustrator 8.0 and below" as file format (UniConvertor is used for the conversion AI->SVG, UniConvertor 1.1.5 is bundled with Inkscape on Windows).

If explicitly choosing the correct file type in Inkscape's 'File > Open…' dialog still fails on your system, possibly this is a problem with UniConvertor on Windows: a similar question was recently asked in this InkscapeForum topic:
<http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9130>
and import as 'Adobe Illustrator 0.8 and below' file worked fine on OS X, but failed on Windows 7; both systems having UniConvertor 1.1.5 installed.

[1] tested with Inkscape 0.48.1 and 0.48+devel r10141 on OS X 10.5.8 with UniConvertor 1.1.5 installed, resulting SVG file attached.

@JazzyNico, @Alvin - could you test the file on Windows?

- no problem encountered on Windows XP, Inkscape 0.48.1
- when I downloaded the file agv-racing-logo, it originally showed up with a .ps extension. I was not able to view it using GSView, got a number of error messages
- renamed the file to be .ai, loaded it into Inkscape as version 8.0 and earlier and got the attached result

@Alex, are you getting any error messsages of any sort, or does it just fail silently?

if you would like to confirm that uniconvertor is installed and running, attached is a bit of a procedure:
- open a DOS window and switch to the Inkscape directory
- run python\python
- run import uniconvertor
- run uniconvertor.uniconv_run()
- confirm that it reports Uniconvertor 1.1.5

on my machine I get the following result:

D:\>cd\program files

D:\Program Files>cd inkscape

D:\Program Files\Inkscape>python\python
Python 2.6.5 (r265:79096, Mar 19 2010, 21:48:26) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import uniconvertor
>>> uniconvertor.uniconv_run()

UniConvertor 1.1.5

USAGE: uniconvertor [OPTIONS] [INPUT FILE] [OUTPUT FILE]

Converts one vector graphics format to another using sK1 engine.
sK1 Team (http://sk1project.org), copyright (C) 2007-2009 by Igor E. Novikov

It affects me exactly in the same way ! I get http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/8687/crash2xi.png with above version 8 and inkscape 0.48 !

and I use windows 7

Setting to 'Confirmed' based on multiple reports (comment #2, in the Inkscape Forum [1] and on #inkscape by ace_me).

Please revert the status change if you don't agree.

[1] <http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9130>

@aquis - thanks for the screenshot of the error. 2 quick questions:

- if you are using a file different from agv-racing-logo.ai, could you attach it here for testing?

- if you are using agv-racing-logo.ai when you get this crash, would you be willing to execute the procedure in comment 7 above, to test the installation of uniconvertor? I apologize for the complexity of the procedure, unfortunately, I do not know of any easier way to confirm that Uniconvertor is alive and well. The Inkscape directory will probably be C:\Program Files\Inkscape\, although that may change on Windows 7, depending on how the installation was done (administrator or not).
- https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/745997/comments/7

@Alvin - the screenshot aquis referred to is from the topic in the Inkscape forum I mentioned earlier, not from him: I had talked to him on irc and asked if that's the same error he was getting when trying to load an AI file using the file format "Adobe Illustrator 8.0 and below" on Windows 7. It is a different file than the example from this report and the one from the forum topic.
Aquis' file starts with
 %!PS-Adobe-3.0
 %%Creator: GNU libplot drawing library 4.1

okay, thanks. jftr, I was able to successfully open the file test.ai which came from the file face.rar on XP, so it looks more like a Windows 7 issue. The 'problem' with Windows 7 is that the directory structure is not necessarily the same, depending on precisely how the installation was done. I would be very interested to see if it was possible to manually confirm the uniconvertor installation, I just wish there were an easier way of doing it.

This file according to creator was done with cs4... when he saved it with cs5 I was able to pen it fine !

Hello aquis, thanks for the file! When I downloaded it, it had the extension .ps, so I renamed it to be errorAI.ai. Loaded it using 'Adobe Illustrator version 8 and earlier' format in Inkscape, on Windows XP, and got the attached result.
    - Is this the same file that gave the error message shown in comment 8 above?
    - would you be willing to try the procedure outlined in comment 7 above, to confirm that uniconvertor is running normally?

This was the file I probably copied and renamed ! Please check again ! For me this is producing the error

just writing to confirm that the file 'error ai.ai' is identical to the file 'sigla bucea phoenix.ai', and that they both load properly into Windows XP.

- I will try, sometime next week, to see if I can find a Windows 7 machine to test this file
- in the meantime, could you try the procedure in comment 7 above to see if it works?

yes ! I am on a 7 machine ! please try on a similar one ;)

- confirmed on Windows 7 Ultimate version 6.1.7600
- using Inkscape 0.48.1-2.exe
- when I try an .ai import (8 and earlier) I get the Windows popup message saying that Python.exe has stopped working, followed by the popup message from comment 8, "Uniconvertor failed"
- it does not matter whether the installation was done as an administrator or not, I get the same result both ways.
- it is 'somewhat' specific to Uniconvertor. I was able to both save and load a .dxf file successfully, so Python is working properly.

a few additional experiments:
- tried three other .ai files as imports. All three failed on Windows 7, succeeded on Windows XP
- tried a .wmf import on Windows 7, using the uniconvertor version, and it worked!
- tried a DOS execution of uniconvertor, to convert .ai, and it failed:

the DOS command is:
C:\Users\Comp\Documents\Inkscape>python\python -c "import uniconvertor; uniconvertor.uniconv_run()" "test.ai" "test.svg"

and the failure message is attached:

similar to Bug 721352

on Windows 7, the file agv-racing-logo.ai can be converted to svg as follows (outside of Inkscape):
- install Python 2.5.1
- install PIL 1.1.6
- install reportlab 2.3
- install uniconvertor 1.1.3
- run uniconvertor from a DOS prompt with the command:
  C:\Python25>scripts\uniconv input.ai output.svg

this yields the attached svg file. The reason for reverting to a old version of Python and Uniconvertor is that there is apparently an occasional conflict between Python 2.6 and Windows 7/Vista. See for example

http://www.devpicayune.com/entry/building-python-26-executables-for-windows
and
http://wxpython-users.1045709.n5.nabble.com/gui2exe-xp-manifest-problem-td2371961.html

on Windows 7, the above conversion can also be performed using the following software (outside of Inkscape):
- Python 2.6.6
- PIL 1.1.7
- reportlab 2.5
- uniconvertor 1.1.4
- run uniconvertor from a DOS prompt with the command:
  C:\Python26>scripts\uniconv input.ai output.svg

Unfortunately AI 8.0 and below import was removed so this is no longer relevant.

Closed by: https://gitlab.com/Qantas94Heavy