The layers reader of the editing copy (operators translated into
PostScript for the interpreter, any file with RGB colours, gradients,
transparency or images falling back to its page) is replaced by a reader
of the whole structure (import/ai): layers and sublayers with their
options, groups, compound paths, clipping groups and layer clipping,
names, hidden and locked objects, RGB, CMYK, grey, named and spot
colours, gradients, transparency, fill rule, overprint, embedded images
with their alpha channel, guides and every artboard, and objects drawn
as their look when they have several fills or strokes, effects or a
brush. Containers: Zstandard, zlib or plain data in EPS and .ai.
The text placement, the comparison with the page and the overwrite guard
stay around it. The page's type takes its text object's place without a
group; the comparison is by lightness, on nothing, without layers that
don't print. Symbols, pattern fills, placed files and unknown operators
make the file come in as its page where they show, and are left out of
layers that don't.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- a story is read once however many text objects name it; the text objects, their pairs with the
page's type, the pieces of a line and a story's size are capped, and over a cap the layers aren't used
- the ASCII85 of the text document is bounded before it is decoded
- joining the pieces of lines that interleave no longer removes the wrong pieces
- a run length too large for the text saturates instead of overflowing
- a dictionary left open at the end of a layer, and layers nested deeper than are read, make the
file one that comes in as its page (they were silently dropped)
- a file whose editing data can't be decoded says so, and the notes about art that was too much or
too far away count as losses, so writing over the source asks first
- the private data of a .ai is inflated under a cap of its own (the PDF reader's decoder has none)
- the other writers (PDF, selection, office, print) ask before replacing a source that lost things,
and a recovered copy remembers that
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
An Illustrator EPS is a flattened page plus, after %%EOF, an editing copy of
the document; a PDF-compatible .ai carries the same in its private data.
Importing only the page lost layer names, order, visibility, hidden layers
and hidden objects and hidden text.
- eps: read the editing copy (Zstandard %AI24_DataStream, older zlib
%AI9_DataStream) into layers, sublayers, groups, compound paths, clip
groups and hidden objects, run by the existing PostScript interpreter.
Falls back to the page, with a warning, when a shown layer uses an
operator that isn't read or the art differs from the page by over 5%.
- eps: read the text document (ate.rs) to place type on hidden layers and
objects; the page's type is matched to the file's text objects by
position (pieces of a line included) and kept with the nearest one when
none claims it. Area type and type on a path are left out with a note.
- pdf/engine: .ai files go through the same reader.
- engine/cli: a file whose import left things out isn't overwritten unless
asked (acknowledgeLoss, --replace-lossy).
- eps: font names re-encoded with a *<n> suffix resolve to their family.
- i18n: es/it/ru for the new import messages; ROADMAP updated.
Container and text-document formats were inferred from user-owned files; the
Adobe file format specification was not read.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Discord feedback: "EPS files are always rasterized: they open as bitmaps, in
other programs as vectors". Every EPS saved by Illustrator 2026 fell back to
its TIFF preview (`gcheck` was unknown), and cairo/Inkscape files stopped at
their first image (`status`), dropped masked images (ImageType 3) and failed
on mesh gradients; the warning didn't say where the program failed.
Fallback never silent:
- The warning names the PostScript error, the operator that raised it and
the named procedures it ran in, innermost first ("a PostScript error
(typecheck in `add`), in `inner` in `outer`"); errors caught by `stopped`
aren't reported. It reaches the status bar, document.open, app.open and
file.open (which now return document.open's result, so MCP's open_file over
the control channel gets it), and `vectorcraft-cli info` ("warnings").
- A file whose PostScript can't be read opens as its TIFF preview, else its
Windows metafile preview (as vectors, scaled to the bounding box), else its
EPSI bitmap. es @msg rows for the new messages.
Interpreter:
- Operators programs probe or use: gcheck/scheck, rootfont,
currentcolorrendering, currenthsbcolor, status, token, read,
bytesavailable, fileposition/setfileposition, resetfile, write*, pdfmark
(marks dropped, as Ghostscript does), execform, nulldevice, strokepath,
pathforall, user paths (ufill/ueofill/ustroke/uappend/upath/setbbox, the
encoded form too), setcachedevice2, findcolorrendering, cache, device and
VM queries, revision; (%stdout) (w) file gives a sink.
- `//name` is replaced by its value when read, inside procedures too.
- Tiling patterns become pattern swatches (their PaintProc drawn in pattern
space, one cell; uncoloured ones in the colour under them; makepattern
copies share one swatch); nested patterns stop at 8 levels.
- Type 3 fonts draw their glyphs (BuildGlyph/BuildChar, widths from
setcachedevice/setcharwidth) as outlines grouped per string, spaced by
ashow/widthshow/awidthshow/xshow/yshow/xyshow/kshow; glyphshow and
stringwidth/cshow use them.
- Shadings of types 1 and 4-7 become gradient meshes (data from arrays,
strings or files, packed or not, flags sharing edges), as fills through a
shading pattern too; sampled functions (type 0) are evaluated;
GradientMesh::coons/triangle are shared with PDF import.
- ImageType 3 masked images, interleaved by sample, by row or in separate
sources; ReusableStreamDecode reads its data when made; Flate/LZW PNG and
TIFF predictors.
- Bounded: DeviceN at 32 inks, sampled functions at 2^24 samples and 32
outputs, 4096 patches a shading, strokepath ignores dashes finer than 1e5
pieces, Type 3 glyphs nest 8 deep (a glyph that shows itself overflowed the
stack before the limit), 64-bit index maths for 32-bit targets.
Tests: a synthetic program per generator (cairo/Inkscape, its Type 3 fonts,
matplotlib, CorelDRAW, Affinity, LibreOffice, Ghostscript eps2write,
Illustrator procsets), meshes and function shadings, masked images, fault
messages, probing operators, metafile/EPSI previews, `//name`, user paths,
hostile patterns/glyphs/shadings (run against main, 12 of the 14 generator
and feature tests fail; CorelDRAW- and LibreOffice-style programs already
read there). The import fuzz vocabulary covers the new operators. Checked
against real files made here with Inkscape 1.4 (cairo) and Illustrator 2026
(its own format and the CS-to-CC compatibility formats; all fell back or
stopped early on main and open as vectors now; its Illustrator 8 format
needs the next commit); those files aren't committed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Legacy PostScript .ai files (Illustrator 3-8, and their EPS) open through
the EPS interpreter, which only recorded what was drawn: every group came
in flattened. In a file in Illustrator's format (its %AI comments, or
Illustrator named as the creator) the `u` ... `U` it writes at the top
level now open and close groups, whatever its prolog defines them as, so
groups come in nested as they were, between and inside clipping groups.
clipnest's Clip carries an optional region: without one it is a plain
group, nested in the same chain as the clips (ids given in opening order,
so a chain of clips and groups sorts by id).
Clips nested without end used to nest clipping groups past the stack
(a stack overflow in EPS and EMF/WMF import): clips and groups now nest
at most 128 deep with a warning, and each object's chain counts against
the EPS reader's drawing budget.
PDF-compatible .ai (Illustrator 9+) can't get the same: its PDF content
draws each object on its own and doesn't mark plain groups (only layers,
clipping groups and groups with opacity, blending or a mask, which
already come back); the groups live only in the private data, which is
out of scope. Documented in ROADMAP and docs/mcp.md.
Addresses Discord feedback.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#249 made the reduced repros of #234 open, but a real file saved by the
reference app (version 30) still fell back to its screen-resolution preview
with "typecheck in `a dictionary`". Running its prolog to the end needed:
- The standard dictionaries (systemdict, userdict, globaldict, statusdict,
errordict, $error) as values in systemdict, so `/globaldict where
{ /globaldict get begin } if` gets a dictionary, not an operator.
SharedFontDirectory names the font directory too. errordict has a
handleerror for prologs that wrap it.
- `dictstack`, `internaldict`, `currentsystemparams` and
`currentuserparams` (with the cache sizes programs `get`), and `cshow`.
- Executable files: `cvx` and `cvlit` set a file's attribute, `xcheck`
reads it, and executing one runs its data as a program, as the prolog
does with `(...) 0 () /SubFileDecode filter cvx exec`.
- SubFileDecode with a count of 0 and an empty end string passes its
whole source through instead of nothing.
- `flushfile` on a filter over the program's data skips that data (the
file's XMP packet). A filter chained from a pending one leaves it
nothing to skip, so the writer's own `VCsrc flushfile` is unchanged.
The interpreter empties its standard dictionaries when it finishes, since
systemdict now holds itself. Both real files tested now import as 15
vector paths in CMYK with no warnings, and round-trip through SVG and PDF
pixel for pixel. The EPS fuzzer exercises the new operators.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
EPS files the reference app saves (its procsets in the prolog, a binary header with a TIFF
preview) now open as editable art instead of failing with "undefinedresource in Generic". When
their PostScript still can't be read, the palette preview they carry is placed with the usual
warning instead of the file being refused.
Root cause: five interpreter gaps and one preview format. The Generic and Category resource
categories didn't exist, so categories couldn't be made from Generic (now Category holds the
standard categories, defineresource in Category makes new ones, undefineresource is added);
clipsave/cliprestore were unknown (now a clip stack in the graphics state); systemdict's
languagelevel was the operator, not the integer 3; getinterval copied arrays and strings
instead of sharing their storage, so astore into a subarray was lost (arrays and strings are
now views into shared storage, and readstring/readline return the part they fill); and
resourceforall was unknown (now enumerates matching names with * ? \ templates). The preview
is an 8-bit palette TIFF with an alpha sample, which the image crate can't decode: a small
bounds-checked reader handles that layout (either byte order, any strips).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Rust 1.99's clippy adds chunks_exact_to_as_chunks, and cargo clippy
--workspace --all-targets -D warnings (cargo xtask ci) failed on its eight
hits in metafile, pdf and eps. as_chunks gives fixed-size arrays, so the
loops read the same bytes without indexing into slices, and encrypt's
CBC loop takes the remainder from as_chunks instead of the iterator.
as_chunks is stable since 1.88.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01U9TrG4w49oSRYbP3cqxA3D
document.open and file.place read .eps files and PostScript by any name
(PostScript .ai opens as artwork, .ait as a new untitled document). An EPS
file VectorCraft wrote restores the document it carries (restored: true);
other files run through a small clean-room PostScript interpreter (paths,
colours and spot inks, gsave/grestore, concat, line state, bind def,
procedures, loops and dictionaries, clips, shadings, images through the
decoding filters, type as point type), and fall back to their TIFF preview
with a warning when the program can't be read. Operation, nesting, memory
and path budgets keep hostile files from hanging or exhausting memory.
The clipping-group nesting the metafile reader used moves to
vectorcraft_doc::clipnest, shared by both readers.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
