Suitable for small text edits to Illustrator files?

[McCam]

Hello.

At my workplace we use Illustrator, but for budgetary reasons it is only installed on computers where it is absolutely needed. I was wondering if we could use Inkscape to allow more people to edit AI files. It would be hugely beneficial if more people could make text edits or copy graphic elements out to turn into JPEGs.

I read the FAQ but wasn't totally clear. I'm leaning towards it not being the ideal tool for this, but wanted to ask here to be absolutely certain.

I would download and install Inkscape myself to test, but getting our tech department to do this is too slow a process for a mere experiment.

Please let me know,
Thanks

[Moini]

Of course, go ahead and test it It's free, and can always be removed if it isn't helpful.

Inkscape can open /some/ AI files, but as far as I know, not all of them. AI, however, can export to SVG.

To my understanding AI, when saving, seems to put two versions of the file into its saves (I think there's a setting that prevents that, you'd need to do some research):
one binary, that contains the original data and all AI-specific stuff, and one that can be read by other programs. If you use Inkscape with such a file, it will be able to alter the readable part, but it won't change the AI-binary part.
If you open such a file again with AI, and haven't removed the binary part first, AI loads the data from the unchanged binary part, so it looks like the changes you made were lost. So please remove that binary blob

[brynn]

Welcome to the forum!

I have the impression (which may be wrong, I'm not sure) that AI files can contain both raster and vector content (just like Inkscape can).  So if the text is part of raster content, Inkscape will not be able to edit it.  But I suppose that if it's editable by AI, it would be editable by Inkscape.

For copying graphics out of AI files, that should be possible as well.  Inkscape doesn't natively export JPG (which has been regularly argued about by developers, over the years, because so many users keep asking for it, over the years).  But there is an extension which as far as I know, does work with the current stable Inkscape version.  (But if it doesn't, for some reason, you could still use the last version it worked with, since you just need Inkscape for these few, mostly simple tasks.)