[Issue] Importing eps graphics

[Hagar Delest]

I have simple eps graphics files created on a Mac that display fine with Preview.app and import just fine into Neooffice but importing them into openoffice 2.4 or 3.0 results in no display of the graphic just a box with the text of the creator of the eps file. I see from looking at past messages that others have reported problems with eps files but I didn't see where tis is being addressed/fixed. Since every other program on the Mac reads and displays these without problems why is Ooffice having such a hard time?

[acknak]

Your EPS file may have no preview image, or it may have an image that OOo can't handle. OOo is somewhat picky about what exact type of preview image is present in the EPS file.

Have you tried printing your Writer document? It will likely print just fine.

If you want to see the preview image, you will probably have to modify the EPS file to either add a preview (if it does not have one yet), or use a type of preview that OOo can display. There are free utilities that do such things.

If you like, post a sample EPS file, or your ODF document, and we can see what's up with it.

[foxcole]

As acknak says, it sounds likely that your EPS files don't have previews. OOo displays the preview image onscreen to save load time (because that's how EPS files are designed to work), but you'll find that the images print out correctly. If that's not satisfactory, try different image formats.

[rgball99]

Perhaps they don't have previews (I'm not always in control of the source of the eps file, and, no, eps2eps (as I saw suggested elsewhere) didn't help). But every other program that I've imported the .eps file into displays it on the screen.

Yes, if I send the file to a printer the graphic is printed but that doesn't help since the output is to PDF files and these do not have the graphic displayed (just the same box that openoffice shows).

If OOo is that "picky" about what it displays then it isn't just picky, it is broken. Enough information is in the eps file (since all the other programs handle it just fine) to create the display; that OOo can't means it is missing a really fundamental functionality. So, if there is no preview in the eps file openoffice should have an option to create one either automatically (via a Preference setting) or on demand so a correct export to pdf can be done.

[acknak]

OOo's support for EPS graphics is not great; the limitations are well known. Complaining about it isn't going to help.

I'd be happy to help find a way to make it work, but that will be a lot easier if you can post a sample EPS file.

[foxcole]

If OOo is that "picky" about what it displays then it isn't just picky, it is broken.

As I said, if it isn't satisfactory, you'll need to find a different file format... either that or choose a different word processor. As acknak said, the limitations with EPS are well known and documented. All I've done is encapsulate the issue for you.

Please read the Survival Guide (see the link in my signature) and understand that this is a user-to-user forum, so all we can do here is answer questions, confirm bugs, and help people use the software as it exists today. I am sorry that the answer didn't suit you, but don't bite my head off for it.

[rgball99]

My apologies if what I said was taken as overly sharp. I wasn't intending to bite anyone's head off.

I am just completely surprised that such a necessary functionality is in such a primitive state and has, apparently, existed this way into such a late version.

If the problem of the eps file was just limited to the on-screen display I could probably work around it but since it persists into the exported pdf it really makes the program unusable for this purpose.

I was hoping that someone here would know of a transparent way this could be fixed within OOo but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'll check back on OOo sometime in the future, maybe version 4 will be better in this regard.

Thanks for the comments, I do appreciate the time you took to make them.

[Hagar Delest]

Anyway, you should subscribe and vote for it (up to 2 votes per issue) : Issue 14163 - EPS content is not exported to pdf properly.
And maybe for that one also: Issue 24254 - Supply a warning when loading EPS without preview.

There are so many issues regarding the eps format

I tag the thread as Issue.

[foxcole]

My apologies, too. I've been short on sleep for a while so I most likely misread and overreacted. I usually try not to do that but, as you can see, am not always successful. Sorry!

The reason the EPS preview file is necessary is that Writer, as a word processor, is unable to render the PostScript data of the image file itself. It can, however, display other image formats because it doesn't need to "print" them onscreen, which PostScript rendering requires. Writer is an editor, not a printer, so it would have to send EPS through a print process and back to the screen in order to display the image. You'll find that Word works the same way, actually, for the same reasons. Graphics applications may or may not be able to render PostScript data directly... often they, too, require a preview.

If the problem of the eps file was just limited to the on-screen display I could probably work around it but since it persists into the exported pdf it really makes the program unusable for this purpose.

This seems very strange to me for two reasons: PDF is a printing process, so what comes out through a physical printer should also come out in a PDF, and EPS is a PostScript format. So is PDF. By all rights, the PDF should be correctly rendering the EPS data, not depending on the preview file.

The preview format itself can vary. Usually, if a preview exists, it's a TIFF, but sometimes it's WMF. The preview itself can be included in different ways in the PostScript data, and not every program will interpret it the same way. In short, EPS is not a universal format and is not universally portable. Whether and how the preview file is created, and how it's included with the PostScript, depends on the creator and the settings used at creation time. You might need to either mandate requirements for the EPS files when they are created, or request a different format altogether.

The format differences can go beyond how previews are handled. Do you know what program(s) generated the EPS files? Some applications can (and do) create their own "flavor" of different graphic file formats. Just as an example, the GIF you'd get from PhotoShop may not be the same as the GIF you'd get from, say, the GIMP. They sometimes put different data in the file header, which isn't always interpreted correctly by every program that processes the "universal" GIF format.

What happens if you use a different PDF generator than the one built in to OOo? CutePDF and PDF Creator are two free ones commonly recommended in this forum; there are also online file conversion tools such as http://www.zamzar.com/.

[rabbitprof]

Dudes, I struggle with the same PDF problem, and sometimes have a solution.

I have half a gazzilion specialty applications, the outputs of which of which I need to assemble into a slick looking poster (requiring a vector format image, either PICT, WMF, or PS/EPS). Frequently that process means print the graphic to a file, which generates a PS file, which GhostScript can turn into an EPS, which OODraw can import as a graphic and displays onscreen as a placeholder box.

Now, if I print this contraption it looks great, but I don't have a poster printer in my office so I need to print to a PDF and print somewhere else. PDFs however, as mentioned above, don't display the graphic, but rather the placeholder box.

My sometimes solution: print via the X11 printing box and select print to file, which generates a PS file, which preview flawlessly turns into a PDF. Still one drawback for me: that print dialog will only print files that are exact images of what could be printed by an attached printer. Again, I don't have a poster printer in my office, so the driver automatically rescales my beautiful color poster to a single black and white page. Anyway, print to file is still sometimes useful.

[acknak]

I often rely on using OOo's print to file, which creates a color Postscript output for me, and can handle any EPS graphics. Once I have the Postscript file (which is also easy to preview for correctness), I use ps2pdf to convert that into a PDF.

There have been some instances where something has broken down, but in general it is very robust.

[lbentley]

Sorry if this is thread necromancy, but I just found what may be a sort of workaround for the problem of EPS graphics displaying as a file-info text box. I converted the EPS graphic from a transparent background to an opaque background and it was able to be displayed. I'm using Adobe Illustrator CS3 to create the EPS files.

Hope that helps someone!