Experimenting .Xar files conversion to PDF with Illustrator 10

**ivan louette** · 26 March 2002, 07:16 AM

Yesterday I had to convert a document created in Xara X with only greyscales. Thus I have converted all my fonts to editable shapes and pasted them with all simple vector graphics in one new file that I have exported to .ai. Then I have converted all shapes with Xara effects and transparencies to only one high definition tiff image.
Afterwards I have placed this image as a background image in an Illustrator file inside the evaluation version of Illustrator 10 and I have pasted the content of my .ai file in front of this image.

Exported to PDF it works very fine and I hope it will print correctly.

Another surprising thing: I have exported a DINA4 Xar page to a 1200 dpi tiff file. It failed to load in Photoshop, but I imported it easily in Xara X and was very surprized to move and zoom so smoothly on a 398 Mo bitmap file with only 512 Mo of Ram !!!

Kindly,
ivan

**Christine Farrelly** · 26 March 2002, 07:34 PM

Thanks for this tip Ivan - it certainly sounds like a way round the AI export until Xara come up with a fully compatible export to AI. Export to PDF straight from Xara would be good too.

Christine

**Sean Sedwards** · 27 March 2002, 12:50 AM

GhostScript (+GSview) will import Xara EPS and can export PDF.

Regards - Sean

**Jackie** · 27 March 2002, 06:16 AM

I have Ghostscript installed, but just found pdf995 - this is a very nice set of programs.

It's adware (but not spyware) unless registered ($9.95 USD for each module, $19.95 for all three).

PDF995

Jackie

**ivan louette** · 27 March 2002, 07:56 AM

Thanks everybody! Now I can say that it works correctly and the printbureau had no problems to read and print my PDF files (and they work with Mac's !!!)

Here are low rsolution samples of the work I have converted to PDF:

Roses Folder

Sean You are probably right about Ghostscript (+GhostView) which is an excellent and evolutive product. I tried it successfully when I had Windows NT and certainly I will download the latest version.

Mickie, many thanks for the link.

Kindly,
ivan

**tmhoogland** · 28 October 2005, 12:10 AM

What you could possibly do is use XnView together with NConvert. The application is freeware. It has 400 file types that you can convert your files to. For example you could try to convert EPS to Xara format and then import into the program.

See:

http://www.xnview.com

**Big Frank** · 15 September 2006, 12:25 PM

Hi all,

Just to update on this. I have just completed a design job, all done in Xtreme and exported to PDF within Xara, converting text to shape. I did not use Adobe PDF Writer, which I find makes a terrible hash of things. Anyway, when he received the files, the printer whined that he could not use PDF and had to have AI files. So I opened Illustrator CS (like he couldn't have done this himself), dropped in the PDF files and saved them to legacy AI, compatible with 10.

Anyway, I now have a bunch of perfect editable AI files from a pile of drawings created in Xara. If it hasn't already been covered, I hope it helps somebody else.

**amoore** · 15 September 2006, 03:04 PM

Originally Posted by Sean Sedwards

Regards - Sean

Sean! You're back!! Yaayyy!! We've been wondering where you were.

Allison

**Big Frank** · 15 September 2006, 03:16 PM

Originally Posted by amoore

Sean! You're back!! Yaayyy!! We've been wondering where you were.

Allison

Hardly. See his post date: 27 March 2002, 02:50 AM

**remi** · 15 September 2006, 08:32 PM

Originally Posted by Big Frank

Anyway, when he received the files, the printer whined that he could not use PDF and had to have AI files. So I opened Illustrator CS (like he couldn't have done this himself), dropped in the PDF files and saved them to legacy AI, compatible with 10.

Perhaps, Xara Ltd. should start a public benefit organisation to support poor printers, who aren't able to invest 70 bucks in buying Xara Xtreme as an alternative software to print out Xara Xtreme drawings...