hi all,

I was led to Inkscape by the desire to edit an Adobe Illustrator (.ai) file, basically it's a poster with some text that I'd like to modify.
So I've installed the latest Inkscape (0.48.4 r9939) and imported the .ai file, using the default setting "Leave text as text".

Now when I use the "Create and Edit Text objects [F8]" tool, the texts prove difficult to edit because the cursor behaves really oddly.
In particular, I encounter the following issues:

1. in many text areas the text cursor does not advance upon typing - all the letters are superimposed on each other in one place
2. If I delete one character using [backspace] and try to type a new character in its place, the new character appears at position [n-2],
i.e. overwriting the letter to the left of the one I just erased.
3. The space bar doesn't work at all.

This behaviour is not apparent in newly created text fields (only in the imported ones).
What could be the problem? Is this an inherent problem with PDF/AI imports, or is there something I can do to work around / fix it?

TIA, Kristofer

Welcome Kristofer!

I don't know if there's an inherent problem editing text in an imported AI file, because I'm not very familiar with using AI files. But we can at least say that there's a problem with the text in this file.

I do have one question though. Your last question: "Is this an inherent problem with PDF/AI imports...." makes me wonder if we have all the info about this problem. Did you convert an AI file to PDF, before importing it into inkscape? Or where does PDF come into play with this problem?

hi brynn, thanks for your reply. I did not first convert AI to PDF, but within Inkscape, in order to import the AI file I was automatically (re)directed into the "Import PDF" dialogue. Apparently those follow the same route, which did not surprise me because AI files are deeop down compatible with PDF. I came upon the whole idea through this article:
http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archiv ... rator.aspx
Kristofer

Naive question, how can text "behave" differently? I'd think that "text is text" and as such should not be dragging along any oddball behaviours from its previous life in Adobe Illustrator. But clearly this naive thought is wrong. And if so, it is automatically true that we "do not have all the info" about this situation. That info is hidden in the file.
So, is there perhaps an area in this forum where I could upload my poster for analysis by the developers?

Oh, I see. I didn't think Inkscape could edit AI files at all. But the info at the link you provided indicates that it surely must be possible. This is all over my head though. The developers can be contacted via the mailing list or irc or jabber channels http://inkscape.org/discussion.php?lang=en, http://inkscape.org/mailing_lists.php?lang=en. Bugs and feature requests are handled at Launchpad, but for technical discussion these routes are better

I've always been curious about that import text as text option in the PDF Import dialog. It's a dropdown menu, which implies that there should be a choice. But it only has that one option, so there's not much of a choice. It makes me wonder if further future development is expected, and if even that one "text as text" option might not work properly. But I don't understand the technical side of Inkscape....hardly at all, lol.

OK, thanks, I'll see if I can forward this question in the developer forums.

Kristofer

I'm wondering if the current glitch that happened with a recent upload for Windows users (can't view several fonts) might be the same issue, maybe not, but a thought that it might be a Windows issue, not import issue.
Also wondering/thinking that as a workaround, maybe you could delete the entire text and re-create it entirely in Inkscape? Most likely if you can create the text in Inkscape there'd be no issues. If necessary, you could re-create it in a separate layer then move it to the appropriate place on the poster. If nothing else, create the text in a new document and export it as a png, then move it to the poster file.
I've just found that sometimes it's easily to do a workaround than isolate the issue.
good luck.

I don't think so dee. That has been resolved, and hopefully I've got all the topics about it locked. But thanks anyway. For some reason, I thought he was on a Linux os, but now reviewing the topic, I guess os wasn't mentioned.

So just in case, Kristofer, if you're on Windows, make sure you're fully updated

Oh! An afterthought: Sometimes it matters whether the text is Flowed text or regular text. So since you can select it, you might try Text menu > Unflow. However, that might remove some formatting....hmmm....yeah, this is all just outside my field of understanding, so don't take any of my comments as fact. But if you haven't already, it might not hurt to check out the manual -- there is info about text, as well as certain file conversions. Sorry if I've confused the issue

hi all,
thanks for the suggestions. I get the same behaviour on Windows Vista Ultimate, 64-bit (not entirely up-to-date) as well as on a fully updated Windows 7 Professional 64-bit System. Using the "Unflow" curse does not seem to help, rather on the contrary (behaviour becomes even more errant). All in all it's not the end of the world, because, as mentioned above, recreating the texts in Inkscape is indeed possible, and when I do that there is no odd behaviour. But it would have been more convenient to be able to re-use the original text directly.
thanks - Kristofer

It seems to be a problem with importing the kerning. I was having the same problem (the characters overlap when you try and type and using the space bar doesn't work) with a file generated with PDFlib. The trick I found to get it to work is select the text and then go to Text -> Remove Manual Kerns. Then I could type regularly.

I've had the same issue with imported PDF:s but am having problems with
1. text which has previously been flowed in a frame and
2. text of a particular font (SegoeUI) when changing from normal to SemiBold.
I found that changing the Transform strategy from optimised to preserved helped. This is done by accessing the Inkscape Preferences : File> Inkscape Preferences> Transforms> Store transformation >> Preserved.

Haven't tested this extensively though so might be too early to say that this is the best remedy to the problem.

Thanks for the kerning tip jrincayc, I had the same issue editing a former PDF (created by Illustrator) on my Mac OSX 10.11.2 machine - but 'Remove manual kerns' works nicely and is going to save me a whole lot of typing.