Can Adobe Illustrator read in a Microsoft PowerPoint & with fonts?

Am Sun, 1 Apr 2018 16:02:25 -0700, schrieb Ragnusen Ultred:

Illustrator, which I've never used, appears to be working.

Moving on, I had a small stumbling block with the concept of how Fonts are
used *differently* in Windows versus in PowerPoint versus in Adobe
Illustrator, where there's a separate quick-question thread on that he
*Quick question how additional FONTS work in Windows*
http://www.pcbanter.net/showthread.php?t=1103550

The question is almost completely answered, at least with respect to file
formats.

Q1: Can Win10 Adobe Illustrator read in a Microsoft PowerPoint with fonts?
A1: Yes, but not directly. It takes a multi-step method. But it works.

Since the goal is always to solve the problem and then leverage the answer
to everyone now and in the future, here's a quick summary of the steps
which, mostly Paul suggested, along with John and Neil and others.

1. Obtain & install the MS Office 2007 "Save as PDF or XPS" utility.
2. Obtain & install the "Roadgeek 2005 Series B" font set into the default
Windows Font folder.
3. Obtain & install the Windows Adobe Illustrator 12.0.0 tool set.
4. Save the PowerPoint file to PDF with the entire font set embedded.
5. Attempt to read the PowerPoint directly into AI - it will fail.
6. Attempt to read the PDF into AI - fonts will fail - but keep going.
7. In AI, switch the default font to Roadgeek now in the system folder.
8. In Adobe Illustrator, save the file as a Windows "ai" format file.
http://i.cubeupload.com/20nlCB.gif

I think what's left now is to move forward to the "printing" to vinyl part,
which Paul covered, but I don't think anyone else here has yet given any
hints other than Paul on how to do that. (Maybe Neil knows?)

So here are my next steps to flesh out.

Q: What are the next steps to print to vinyl (where Paul already discussed
the "cutContour" sequence so I just need to flesh that out a bit on my
own), and,

Q: Will the latest Mac Adobe Illustrator read in that Windows AI file?
(chances are that it will, but it will take a simple test to figure it
out).

Ragnusen Ultred wrote:
Am Sun, 01 Apr 2018 16:22:08 -0500, schrieb Char Jackson:

OK, no worries. I only wanted to point out that folks with slow or
unreliable Internet connections can likely use a download manager to
overcome the related difficulties.

I'm still not sure what you're exactly saying, but that's OK.

This is for Paul, where I simply documented what I did, and it still kept
asking for CD 2, which doesn't exist (it's all on the hard drive).

Paul ... here's what I did.
I'll continue to debug ...and try things out ... but, as you said, there's
a trick to installing it, where the instructions that come with it assume
you actually have a CDROM in the optical disc drive.

Paul: What did I do wrong?

1. Download the 4 files from:
https://www.techspot.com/downloads/4...uite-free.html
-----
Name: CreativeSuiteCS2Disc1.exe
Size: 375638402 bytes (358 MB)
SHA256: 36DACE2549BDE94D7A45281380EEF453FD2AF38EDA19348FA3 DE567549A696EC
SHA1: 1538166046E59DB6098F75C3196E84AD9310DEA1
-----
Name: CreativeSuiteCS2Disc2.exe
Size: 427451410 bytes (407 MB)
SHA256: 5862668CA45C0196777D3D4E2108D0A6F0750F6965769CB573 0944D3520DBB54
Size: 427451410 bytes (407 MB)
SHA1: D06911267603474B43F3F39E4B00029787173962
-----
Name: CreativeSuiteCS2Disc3.exe
Size: 346373903 bytes (330 MB)
SHA256: C662F1C431FAA33160523545FDA3BD58F29ED3616CB8E6D183 5CCE810AD5AB30
SHA1: 54BA48723D657E4A86903ED2C876381488C8F945
-----
Name: CS_2.0_WWE_Extras_1.exe
Size: 431237012 bytes (411 MB)
SHA256: 921402DA55BFEF5E6E21DE2261F725FFE0A451153F453000FB 3152635E1161BE
SHA1: 1C6CC05D49244ED1417B3E2C3136D4FD0B7F57E0

2. Unpack by right clicking & selecting 7Zip unpack to (choose the
default):
-----
CreativeSuiteCS2Disc1.exe unpacks with 7Zip to
.\CreativeSuiteCS2Disc1\Adobe Creative Suite 2.0\.
.\CreativeSuiteCS2Disc1\Design Guide.pdf
.\CreativeSuiteCS2Disc1\How To Install.html
.\CreativeSuiteCS2Disc1\How to Uninstall.pdf
.\CreativeSuiteCS2Disc1\Read Me First.html
-----
CreativeSuiteCS2Disc2.exe unpacks with 7Zip to
.\CreativeSuiteCS2Disc2\Adobe InDesign CS2\.
.\CreativeSuiteCS2Disc2\Adobe Version Cue CS2\.
-----
CreativeSuiteCS2Disc3.exe unpacks with 7Zip to
.\CreativeSuiteCS2Disc3\Adobe Creative Suite 2.0\.
-----
CS_2.0_WWE_Extras_1.exe unpacks with 7Zip to
.\CS_2.0_WWE_Extras_1\Adobe Solutions Network\.
.\CS_2.0_WWE_Extras_1\Documentation\.
.\CS_2.0_WWE_Extras_1\Goodies\.
.\CS_2.0_WWE_Extras_1\Technical Information\.

3. Combine all files and directories into a single directory:
.\CreativeSuite\CS2\Adobe Creative Suite 2.0\.
.\CreativeSuite\CS2\Adobe InDesign CS2\.
.\CreativeSuite\CS2\Adobe Solutions Network\.
.\CreativeSuite\CS2\Adobe Version Cue CS2\.
.\CreativeSuite\CS2\Design Guide.pdf
.\CreativeSuite\CS2\Documentation\.
.\CreativeSuite\CS2\Goodies\.
.\CreativeSuite\CS2\How To Install.html
.\CreativeSuite\CS2\How to Uninstall.pdf
.\CreativeSuite\CS2\Read Me First.html
.\CreativeSuite\CS2\Technical Information\.

4. Run the installer (I ran on Windows 10 1709 Creator's Edition):
.\CreativeSuite\CS2\Adobe Creative Suite 2.0\Setup.exe

5. You'll get a warning that "QuickTime 6 is required to use the
multimedia features in the Adobe Creative Suite 2", which you can ignore.

6. Then it will require a Name (default = "Windows User") & serial number.
Name: Windows user
Company: blank
Serial Number 1130 1414 7569 4457 6613 5551
7. It will default to C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe
It says it will use up 2.62GB
I put mine in C:\app\editor\pic\cs2

8. There will be a choice of what components to install:
[x] Adobe Illustrator CS2 (600MB)
[x] Adobe InDesign CS2 (400MB)
[x] Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Adobe ImageReady CS2 (450MB)
[x] Adobe Version Cue CS2 (300MB)

9. It will start installing and then ask:
"Please insert CD 2 to continue installation"
where if you hit the "OK" button, it will ask forever for that CD 2.

I unpacked Disc1 and put the major items of Disc2, Disc3, and the
last disc under the same folder that Photoshop uses. I didn't
actually run anything other than Illustrator, to actually verify
they all installed OK.

CreativeSuiteCS2Disc1\Adobe Creative Suite 2.0\Adobe Photoshop CS2

\Adobe InDesign CS2
\Adobe Version Cue CS2

\Adobe Illustrator CS2

\Adobe Solutions Network
\Documentation
\Goodies
\Technical Information

Anyway, with that setup in place, I wasn't getting an "Insert Disc 2"
situation that could not be resolved. It took a couple tries before
I got the hang of it.

I'm not even sure the last disc contents got installed, and I'd only know
if trying to access some documentation perhaps.

The EXE of the first disc, starts an installer. While the other three
are more or less just self-extracting files, suitable for
concatenating to the original folder structure.

Paul

Ragnusen Ultred wrote:
Am Sun, 1 Apr 2018 16:02:25 -0700, schrieb Ragnusen Ultred:

Illustrator, which I've never used, appears to be working.

Moving on, I had a small stumbling block with the concept of how Fonts
are used *differently* in Windows versus in PowerPoint versus in Adobe
Illustrator, where there's a separate quick-question thread on that he
*Quick question how additional FONTS work in Windows*
http://www.pcbanter.net/showthread.php?t=1103550

The question is almost completely answered, at least with respect to
file formats.

Q1: Can Win10 Adobe Illustrator read in a Microsoft PowerPoint with fonts?
A1: Yes, but not directly. It takes a multi-step method. But it works.

Since the goal is always to solve the problem and then leverage the
answer to everyone now and in the future, here's a quick summary of the
steps which, mostly Paul suggested, along with John and Neil and others.

1. Obtain & install the MS Office 2007 "Save as PDF or XPS" utility.
2. Obtain & install the "Roadgeek 2005 Series B" font set into the
default Windows Font folder.
3. Obtain & install the Windows Adobe Illustrator 12.0.0 tool set.
4. Save the PowerPoint file to PDF with the entire font set embedded.
5. Attempt to read the PowerPoint directly into AI - it will fail.
6. Attempt to read the PDF into AI - fonts will fail - but keep going.
7. In AI, switch the default font to Roadgeek now in the system folder.
8. In Adobe Illustrator, save the file as a Windows "ai" format file.
http://i.cubeupload.com/20nlCB.gif

I think what's left now is to move forward to the "printing" to vinyl
part, which Paul covered, but I don't think anyone else here has yet
given any hints other than Paul on how to do that. (Maybe Neil knows?)

So here are my next steps to flesh out.

Q: What are the next steps to print to vinyl (where Paul already
discussed the "cutContour" sequence so I just need to flesh that out a
bit on my own), and,
Q: Will the latest Mac Adobe Illustrator read in that Windows AI file?
(chances are that it will, but it will take a simple test to figure it
out).

I don't see a reason Adobe Illustrator couldn't embed a font.

Fonts can be copied two ways. Perhaps at some point in the past,
entire chunks of font were put in documents. But the files I've
looked at more recently, sometimes you can find a sparse table
with only five characters in it. I've examined some of these
with Fontographer (I think that's the name).

If you open a document with a very sparse (subset) font like that, it
doesn't even have all the letters of the alphabet. This can
cause the tool that only has access to that subset, to refuse
to allow text editing. Because as soon as you insert a character
for which the font table has no entry, the tool can't put anything
up on the screen.

Now, Adobe made a tool to solve that. It was something like Adobe
Type Manager, and it had a generic Sans and Serif font, which
could be used to approximate just about every other font. All that
was needed, was some sort of geometry info, to make approximations.

A file of that nature, exists today in Windows, but I don't know
how it is used. It might be ATMfd (Adobe Type Manager Font Driver)
or similar. But that's probably not sitting there making ugly
looking fonts out a Sans and Serif font. That might be a parser
for TTF or something.

I already drew a diagram with my best guess how this would
work. If you open a document and make any changes at all to
something that uses a subset font, then the tool needs a full
font table so it can create a new embedded set for storage
or output. It's going to try to get that font from the
system font folder.

What you missed on your Adobe Illustrator experiment, is when
you pulled in the PDF, the tool converted the fonts into strokes
or outlines. As near as I can tell at the moment, those are
no longer fonts after the conversion. AI doesn't seem to be
keeping references to them that way. It's just a pile
of strokes.

However, if I now used the typing tool, and wanted to
add some like-characters, I would need to select Road Geek
and start typing. To select Road Geek, the Road Geek has
to be in the Windows font folder. It can get there by
installing the font directly (right-click the font
and install it). Or if you use a Font Manager, that
will likely dynamically load some subset of your
font collection on demand.

The experiment I did, of pulling PDF into AI, resulted
in some stroke based output with fill for the characters.
But if I wanted to do the job right, I might use the Text Tool
and enter text that way (if I was doing the drawing from scratch).

You have the font and the tools now, to test the workflow.

The only thing you can't test, is what kind of "content" is
in the .ai file. On a PDF, we can do Properties and select
the Font item and examine what fonts are embedded. I don't
see a similar feature in AI. The information should really
be there somewhere.

I think I've only briefly glanced over someones shoulder at
work, who was running some ancient AI. And I haven't been
running the CS2 suite here myself (your experiment is the
first time I've tried AI). I have two older copies of Photoshop,
a copy of Distiller, and that's about it for Adobe. I may have
loaded a Premiere trial once. I have copies of Reader all
over the place, but that's their freebie.

When you make changes that actually involve the font,
that's when the tool will go looking for the font. If the
font is not present, it's going to whine about it.

Paul

Am Sun, 01 Apr 2018 23:42:03 -0400, schrieb Paul:

I don't see a reason Adobe Illustrator couldn't embed a font.

I don't either, but it seems it's not as obvious how to best embed fonts in
an AI file given these two hits I'm still reading as I respond:
https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/35285/how-to-preserve-fonts-with-an-adobe-illustrator-file#35287
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1317175

It seems everyone who asks how to embed fonts in AI is "confused" based on
those two hits anyway, so, it must simply not be intuitive.

But I think our only viable options a
a. PDF (with the fonts embedded by AI and then saved), or,
b. AI (if the fonts can be embedded).

Fonts can be copied two ways. Perhaps at some point in the past,
entire chunks of font were put in documents. But the files I've
looked at more recently, sometimes you can find a sparse table
with only five characters in it. I've examined some of these
with Fontographer (I think that's the name).

Hey Paul,
I just got an idea.
How does this sound as a test plan?
1. I embed the Roadgeek font in AI (if I can) and in the PDF from AI.
2. Then I *remove* the Roadgeek system fonts from Windows.
3. Then I see if AI can 'see' the embedded fonts.

If that sounds like a good test plan, the only thing I have to figure out
is what's the best way to *remove* a font from Windows?

*Do I just delete them manually from the System Font folder?*

If you open a document with a very sparse (subset) font like that, it
doesn't even have all the letters of the alphabet. This can
cause the tool that only has access to that subset, to refuse
to allow text editing. Because as soon as you insert a character
for which the font table has no entry, the tool can't put anything
up on the screen.

I think that's exactly why the *entire* Roadgeek font set was embedded in
the original PowerPoint template. The guy who made that template knew what
he was doing apparently, especially since the *size* was also perfect at 12
inches by 18 inches, even in the PDF and even in Adobe Illustrator.

Now, Adobe made a tool to solve that. It was something like Adobe
Type Manager, and it had a generic Sans and Serif font, which
could be used to approximate just about every other font. All that
was needed, was some sort of geometry info, to make approximations.

Yuck!
Thank God for the free Roadgeek fonts!

I already drew a diagram with my best guess how this would
work. If you open a document and make any changes at all to
something that uses a subset font, then the tool needs a full
font table so it can create a new embedded set for storage
or output. It's going to try to get that font from the
system font folder.

This makes sense. I agree with you. Thank you for explaining.
You are helping put the pieces together as I don't deal with fonts much.

What you missed on your Adobe Illustrator experiment, is when
you pulled in the PDF, the tool converted the fonts into strokes
or outlines. As near as I can tell at the moment, those are
no longer fonts after the conversion. AI doesn't seem to be
keeping references to them that way. It's just a pile
of strokes.

Hmmmmm... are you sure? I thought it substituted the *default* AI font
(whatever that was) for the original font.

Are you sure AI converted the fonts in the PDF to strokes?
Let me try that step again. Gimme a sec......
Hmmmmm......

1. This is what it says when it reads in the Powerpoint-saved PDF:
The document contains PDF objects that have been reinterpreted.
The font 1 is missing.
Affected text will be displayed using a substitute font.

So on the one hand, that implies a *font* was substituted ...
http://i.cubeupload.com/cV87Aa.gif

2. However, on the other hand, I do see "strokes" listed in the GUI.
http://i.cubeupload.com/DaYBLG.gif

3. So it's confusing whether fonts or strokes are initially used, but
it does seem that the font is substituted when I run the command:
AI: Type Find Font
as shown below before I select the Roadgeek font.
http://i.cubeupload.com/K6cBu8.gif

4. And the fantastically beautiful result after I select the Roadgeek font.
http://i.cubeupload.com/CnFAUN.gif

5. In short, I am *confused* about that first step whether "strokes"
(whatever they are) are involved, but it doesn't matter because I can
substitute in the Roadgeek font and then it looks fantastically perfect in
the Roadgeek-font layout!
http://i.cubeupload.com/RHsHn5.gif

However, if I now used the typing tool, and wanted to
add some like-characters, I would need to select Road Geek
and start typing. To select Road Geek, the Road Geek has
to be in the Windows font folder.

Yes. I see that now. It's actually pretty simple.
I put the roadgeek in the Windows folder and that's all I need to do.

It can get there by
installing the font directly (right-click the font
and install it). Or if you use a Font Manager, that
will likely dynamically load some subset of your
font collection on demand.

Oh. I see. OK. Well, I didn't know that, so I skipped that step.

The experiment I did, of pulling PDF into AI, resulted
in some stroke based output with fill for the characters.
But if I wanted to do the job right, I might use the Text Tool
and enter text that way (if I was doing the drawing from scratch).

You have the font and the tools now, to test the workflow.

Yup. The only thing I need to test now is how to *embed* the font into the
Adobe Illustrator output.

I looked around to see if there was any viable option *other* than PDF or
AI format, and I don't see it. For example, these are the
"File Export" options...
http://i.cubeupload.com/tunL4e.gif
This list is:
AutoCAD Drawing (*.DWG)
AutoCAD Interchange File (*.DXF)
BMP (*.BMP)
Enhanced Metafile (*.EMF)
JPEG (*.JPG)
Macintosh PICT (*.PCT)
Macromedia Flash (*.SWF)
Photoshop (*.PSD)
PNG (*.PNG)
Targa (*.TGA)
Text Format (*.TXT)

The only thing you can't test, is what kind of "content" is
in the .ai file. On a PDF, we can do Properties and select
the Font item and examine what fonts are embedded. I don't
see a similar feature in AI. The information should really
be there somewhere.

Following your lead, when I saved as "Adobe PDF", a dialog with a bunch of
options popped up:
http://i.cubeupload.com/4EuM07.gif

One of those options was "Advanced" which said "Fonts":
"Subset fonts when percent of characters used is less than 100%"
whatever that means, but then it also said, below that in small print:
*"All fonts with appropriate permission bits will be embedded"*
http://i.cubeupload.com/p7qEWG.gif

So, I _think_ the fonts are embedded, since these are wide-open fonts.

I think I've only briefly glanced over someones shoulder at
work, who was running some ancient AI. And I haven't been
running the CS2 suite here myself (your experiment is the
first time I've tried AI). I have two older copies of Photoshop,
a copy of Distiller, and that's about it for Adobe. I may have
loaded a Premiere trial once. I have copies of Reader all
over the place, but that's their freebie.

When you make changes that actually involve the font,
that's when the tool will go looking for the font. If the
font is not present, it's going to whine about it.

Hi Paul,
I ran a test.
I saved the PDF and AI as shown above, with the fonts set to Roadgeek.
Then I manually *deleted* the Roadgeek fonts in the Windows System folder.

Lo and behold, when I clicked on the "signs.ai" file, it complained:
"Font Problems: Roadgeek2005SeriesB: Default font substituted for missing
font. This document "signs.ai" uses fonts or characters which are not
available or are in a different format than originally specified. Do you
still wish to open this document?"
http://i.cubeupload.com/SdNyIh.gif

When I said "Open", it brought me back to ugly, which, I think, proves that
the AI-format file does *not* contain the embedded font.
http://i.cubeupload.com/wHCGuc.gif

When I opened the PDF file that was saved by AI in a PDF reader, it looked
perfect but when I opened that same PDF file in AI, it sucked.

Darn. The *same* thing happened. No fonts. Jesus. Hmmmm... that sucks.

I'll have to dig up how to embed a font in an AI-output file.
Sigh.

Am Sun, 01 Apr 2018 23:21:54 -0400, schrieb Paul:

I unpacked Disc1 and put the major items of Disc2, Disc3, and the
last disc under the same folder that Photoshop uses. I didn't
actually run anything other than Illustrator, to actually verify
they all installed OK.

Hi Paul,

Auuurgggghhh. That was it!

*It's sooooo simple once you already know the answer!*

I just installed the remaining two components (whatever they do).
"C:\app\editor\pic\cs2\Adobe InDesign CS2\InDesign.exe"
"C:\app\editor\pic\cs2\Adobe Version Cue CS2\bin\VersionCueCS2.exe"
The installer did NOT ask me for the CD this time!

One thing we need to be clear on is *how* we unpacked the files.
There are a bunch of ways to unpack the originally downloaded files.

Most people will likely just doubleclick on the downloaded files to unpack:
CreativeSuiteCS2Disc1.exe
CreativeSuiteCS2Disc2.exe
CreativeSuiteCS2Disc3.exe
CS_2.0_WWE_Extras_1.exe
But I right clicked and selected the 7Zip unpacker to unpack them.

So that's one difference we may have had.

The second difference is that everything worked perfectly (without asking
for the second CD) only when I did what you said to do just now, which is
to put everything in the same directory as the "Setup.exe" is in.

That is, I first unpacked the files with a 7Zip right click.
Then I put all the folders in the same folder as the "Setup.exe" was in.

Here is a DIR of that folder.
Abcpy.ini
Activation
Adobe Bridge Services
Adobe Illustrator CS2 === this folder needs to be here to work
Adobe InDesign CS2 === this folder needs to be here to work
Adobe Photoshop CS2 === this folder needs to be here to work
Adobe Solutions Network
Adobe Version Cue CS2 === this folder needs to be here to work
adobeisf.dll
AdobeUpdater.dll
agldt28l.dll
almuirsc.dll
asn.er.dll
asneu.dll
boost_thread-vc7-mt-1_31.dll
Design Guide.pdf
Documentation
en_gb
epic_eula.dll
epic_pers.dll
epic_regs.dll
eularesen_GB.dll
Goodies
How To Install.html
How to Uninstall.pdf
legal
libagli18n28.dll
libagluc28.dll
MFC71.dll
msvcp71.dll
msvcr71.dll
persresen_GB.dll
Read Me First.html
regsresen_GB.dll
required
Setup.exe ===================== this is the setup file to run!
setup.ini
Suite Specific
SupportDll.dll
Technical Information
upgradecomponent.dll

I will try to write up a summary so that the tribal knowledge is updated so
that the NEXT person has a much easier time of it than we did, which is
always one of my goals, and where that's my payback for all your wonderful
help.