Exporting Corel to Illustrator - Text gets broken up

Russell McGorman
Russell McGorman Posts: 262
edited December 2014 in Technique and Theory
Why?

Why why why‽

When artwork with text is exported from CorelDraw into Illustrator, text gets broken into many shorter and apparently random segments of the original. It all looks fine... Until you need to edit it. Does anyone have any idea why?

This does not happen going the other way.

My theory, (With allowances for my limited understanding of the subtle complexities involved) is that Adobe wants to crap all over the competition.
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Comments

  • Georg Seifert
    Georg Seifert Posts: 674
    What file format did you use?
    To store the proper kerning information in a pdf, you have to make a new text run after each kern pair to position the text correctly. The embedded font does not contain any kerning. I think if you export a .ps file from Indesign and make a PDF with Distiller, it looks the same. At least it did when I used Distiller for the last time 10 years ago.

    I think some PDF engined add a fallback text string that is used for copy pasting or if you open the Document.
  • Russell McGorman
    Russell McGorman Posts: 262
    edited December 2014
    Thanks,

    (exported from CorelDraw) I have : PDF, Illustrator and EPS.
    the same thing happens in all of them when opened in Illustrator.

    What do you mean by "make a new text run after each kern pair to position the text correctly."? Why? Positioning isn't a problem. Everything is where it should be, but text strings are broken into segments of 2 - 6 characters. This appears to happen if font embedding is turned on or off and id doesn't appear to happen at kerning pairs.

    What gets me is that Corel has no problem opening an Illustrator file with text intact.
  • Mark Simonson
    Mark Simonson Posts: 1,734
    In Corel, is there an option to not embed fonts? Don't know if that would help, but it might.
  • George Thomas
    George Thomas Posts: 645
    I haven't had to work with Corel in years, but try this: save the file as a Corel 8 file, then open it directly with AI CS or later. That may solve the problem for you.
  • Russell McGorman
    Russell McGorman Posts: 262
    >is there an option to not embed fonts?

    There is and I've tried that, Mark. does the same thing.
    ------
    I'll give that a try tomorrow, George and let you know how it worked.
  • Russell McGorman
    Russell McGorman Posts: 262
    > save the file as a Corel 8 file, then open it directly with AI CS or later.

    crashes both AI and Corel :o\
  • Chris Lozos
    Chris Lozos Posts: 1,458
    Russell. I have seen this happen regularly when you save an AI file as a pdf without the "save AI editing abilities" preference. I have had to select all the text using the arrow selection tool and then paste into a new text box to recover the text. You then have to clean up a few word spaces, returns, other messes before it is usable. It is better to copy/paste the text from PDF into a text editor and do a clean-up. I always "recommend" that the client provide the text as a word processing or text file and save himself some money. I have always hated jobs that begin with these kinds of headaches.
  • Russell McGorman
    Russell McGorman Posts: 262
    thanks Chris.

    The designer doing this for us figured it out - She told me how - I tried it myself but it didn't work so I' guess I missed a step or two. She's working on a newer version of Corel, so that could be why it didn't work for me.
  • uzapuca
    uzapuca Posts: 1
    edited February 2016
    Russell_McGorman said:
    thanks Chris. The designer doing this for us figured it out - She told me how - I tried it myself but it didn't work so I' guess I missed a step or two. She's working on a newer version of Corel, so that could be why it didn't work for me.
    Hi Russell!
    sorry for bumping in an old post. I have the very same problem. Could you let me know what your designer told you on how to export from Corel to Illustrator so i do not get the text broken when i open the file     in Illustrator ? I am searching in the Internet but not getting the right steps so far. 

    By the way, what version of Corel is your designer using?

    Thanks for any help      :) 

  • Russell McGorman
    Russell McGorman Posts: 262
    Not that it matters, but the designer is a consultant--Not literally "My" designer. I'll see if I can still find her emails about it. Pretty sure she was using X17.  My office has X15.
  • Ramiro Espinoza
    Ramiro Espinoza Posts: 839
    For what I remember the dialogue between Corel and Illustrator has always been far from perfect. I remember the fonts being converted to curves and even sliced with vertical lines when exported the files were opened in Illustrator.

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