FAIL! Adobe Illustraitor .ai .eps to Xara

[sadicus]

Xara X5 has an import of: Adobe Illustrator [*.ai, *.eps]
Photoshop CS4 can Export Paths to Illustrator as .ai

Why can't Xara Import the .ai file?

Workaround Found here
Import ai into Xara: http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=36226

I realize the Import is not: "Photoshop Paths to Illustrator[*.ai]"
But why the F would Adobe make two different codes for the same type of file?

[handrawn]

possibly it is a case of the xtreme 5 import filter not handling the photoshop output

its been impoved to handle CS4 illustrator output which is nice - up until then we were stuck with legacy 8

third parties such as xara can only spend so much time updating their filters and its likely just not feasible every time there is a change

[Soquili]

But why the F would Adobe make two different codes for the same type of file?

Actually it is more like several dozen different versions of .ai, .ps, and .eps files.


Postscript is actually much older than Adobe and was never meant to be used as a graphic file type.

Perhaps some history would help people know more about the problems using a programming language as a graphics file:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encapsulated_PostScript for the EPS derivative of PostScript.

[Albacore]

There are quite a few tools which could do this for you and all convert it to PDF. I use both of these programmes at regular intervals as I have to convert large eps files at my work and I either take them into AI or XPro. Here is the list and Primo is the best: https://online.primopdf.com/Default.aspx
http://www.convertfiles.com/