Exporting in PDF : problems with texts (illustrator use)

[stephane_fr]

I permit to come for a new question that concerns the exporting solution in Xara (I have Designer Pro version) in PDF/X mode.


I have some work to do (in Xara as it is my favorite tool), and have to export it 100% correctly in PDF mode for external collaborators, for allowing them
to open it and use it in Illustrator software (that's for webdesign : I made the template and external people must be able to use them, in illustrator - or photoshop, it depends)


But I get strange results with the texts, with the advanced PDF/X export solution of Xara (the rest is ok).

I can't get a text that can be simply editable when opening illustrator soft. Instead of a rich text editable, in an entire paragraph, I get :
- a "word by word" or "sentence by sentence" editable text. <- that's the best case, but happened only with very simple files, with only few words in it
- a "letter by letter" editable text <- that's unfortunately the more frequent case. If there is a little "too much text" (?!), is works like this.


I send 2 files of examples I made. One simple (with texts, shapes,...), another a very few more complex : just longer texts (only 2). And then the
"non editable text" appears : you can select only the letters, not words or better : paragraphs.



I put the 2 xara files, and the 2 pdf/X exported files. (I precise the option "convert text into files" is, of course, not effective).

Thank you for your help

[mwenz]

Stephane, do you have Illustrator?

[Albacore]

The PDF format essentially started off in life as a read only format, also away of showing text without the font, but through the years it has developed. It still has problems with transparencies, shadows and text. Even if you use Illy you can have the problems with only single lines being only editable, no paragraphs or full text blocks, so most export filters in non Adobe programmes change the text to shapes or do it like the filter supplied with Design Pro. What I do is to send a MS Word doc. with the PDF so that whoever wants to edit the texts has a simple job of copy & pasting from word into Illy. P/Shop or I/Design are better tools than Illy for exporting from source into an html doc. in both current disguise if that makes your choice of format any easier. You could use Design pro and publish to a local server and send the whole document as html so that it could be viewed and edited in a browser based editor with all graphics and text correctly supplied.

[mwenz]

The point about Illustrator is your text will come in as lines and paragraph text when exported as AI from XDP. But you will have a notice in AI about updating the text, which you need to do. This will displace some of the text positioning, which would need corrected in AI before handing off the file. As well, dump any drop shadows (and any other bitmap effects) and add them in AI.

SVG should also work, but like with the old, outdated AI filter, kill any effects and create them in AI. It will also break lines with bold text attributes into their own line of text. The SVG export filter in X could also stand to be updated.

Ultimately, if you are collaborating with people who are using Photoshop and Illustrator, you should also be using those applications. Even so, when I have need to share Illy files, I will still do as much in Xara then get it into AI to finish it.

[stephane_fr]

I thank you very much for your answers.


I keep in minds the advice for using illustrator, thank you very much.

But moreover - in my case of course - the solution, for webdesign, to export in HTML mode, seems to be really excellent
I made a few quick tries : there are some little things that are not ok, but a lot of new advantages that I couldn't imagine, because it is very close to the conception
of my work itself : same shapes, etc...
Especially the collaborator can draw the pictures he wants : excellent for multi-layered backgrounds, pictures,...

Perhaps there will be some disadvantages I can't see now, but it seems to be a really unexpected and good one ! (And thank you to both again)