What is an illustrator type EPSF?

[Kathleen]

I'm preflighting all my ID links, mostly ai cs4 files, with Flightcheck Pro.
Each file is listed under type as an EPSF. What is an EPSF?

kat

[Rai Land]

According to Wikipedia it is either an encapsulated postscript file or polystyrene, I'm guessing it is the former ;-) 

From the article:

A Mac-format EPS file is accompanied by a resource fork. The preview is a PICT resource with ID 256. An EPS file on the Mac is expected to have a file type code of "EPSF", whether or not it has a preview.

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[Valter Viglietti - Frame Studio]

Il giorno 7-04-2011 21:12, Kathleen ha scritto:

> I'm preflighting all my ID links, mostly ai cs4 files, with Flightcheck Pro.
> Each file is listed under type as an EPSF. What is an EPSF?

AFAIK, Encapsulated PostScript File.
In short, dear old EPS. :-)

EPS was the standard format used years ago (and, sometimes, still today) to
encode vector drawings (or vector data inside bitmap images, like a crop
mask from Photoshop), for importing into other (usually DTP) programs.

Since InDesign is able to import images in "native" format (AI, PSD, PDF,
etc.), EPS has become somehow obsolete.
It's still working, thou, even if sometimes can creates troubles.

[Stephen Clark]

On Apr 7, 2011, at 2:21 PM, Rai Land wrote:

According to Wikipedia it is either an encapsulated postscript file or polystyrene, I'm guessing it is the former ;-) 

From the article:

A Mac-format EPS file is accompanied by a resource fork. The preview is a PICT resource with ID 256.

Yeah, that article needs updating. PICT has been a thing of the past since the demise of OS 9 I believe.

As for plastic, sometimes expanded polystyrene foam is referred to by the same (EPSF) acronym. Context is your key.

[Kathleen]

These are old possibly .eps files that go resaved as ai, in whatever cs version it became possible to import ai in id. So what's with the EPSF hanging in there? Is it dangerous?

kat

[William Adams]

On Apr 7, 2011, at 4:43 PM, Kathleen wrote:

> These are old possibly .eps files that go resaved as ai, in whatever cs version it became possible to import ai in id. So what's with the EPSF hanging in there? Is it dangerous?

It's not dangerous IME, and I've often found that re-saving a file as .eps will fix rendering infelicities when making a .pdf in InDesign.

.eps files also have somewhat more flexible rules re: bounding box construction &c.

Downside is they can't contain live transparency.

William

--
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

[steve harley]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 14:03, Stephen Clark <hipower...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Yeah, that article needs updating. PICT has been a thing of the past since
> the demise of OS 9 I believe.

PICT still works on Macs, it's kind of cool actually -- i have PICTs
that i did in 1985 that still open with QuickLook and Preview

however nowadays i don't think Finder looks at PICT previews in the
resource fork of an EPS; instead Finder tries to render the EPS on the
fly, which can be a problem if it's very complex; it's possible some
apps still use the preview in their file browsers

[steve harley]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 14:43, Kathleen <kat...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> These are old possibly .eps files that go resaved as ai, in whatever cs version it became possible to import ai in id. So what's with the EPSF hanging in there? Is it dangerous?

EPSF is a synonym for EPS; it appears in the internal header of the
actual PostScript code for an EPS file, and that's probably what
FlightCheck is reflecting, since it's an embedded EPS; it can also be
used as a filename extension or for a Mac file type

it's only dangerous if EPS is dangerous

[Kathleen]

Thanks, everyone. I think I'm getting the idea.

kat