Known issues with Adobe® Illustrator™ Converter

Set frame to Area Type

Observation

Adobe Illustrator knows two types of text frames. Point Type and Area Type.

Point type text frames will convert to area type text frames during conversion. This causes the text to vertically shift slightly. There is no preflight message about this.

The workaround

Ensure all text frames are set to area type before conversion with the baseline set to “Ascent”.

Convert Frame to Area Type

Or select the frame, and choose Type > Convert to Area type

When converted, set the Offset in Area Type Options to “Ascent” (first option)

More in detail

Area text is created with padding value at top... CHILI publisher removes this padding value during conversion, and there is no preflight warning. That’s why there is a slight shift in text positioning.

Wrong interface scaling

When Adobe Illustrator UI Scaling is set to a value other than Small, the plug-in interface fits poorly in the plug-in window.

Workaround: In Adobe Illustrator, go to Preferences > User Interface and set UI Scaling to Small

Growing text frames

Observation

Due to a difference in the Illustrator and CHILI publisher text engines, CHILI publisher increases the width and height of text frames during conversion to prevent text content from going into overflow.

Workaround

None, so far

Growing of groups of objects

Observation

Similar to the issue above, a group of objects will grow when imported from Illustrator to CHILI publisher.
Groups of objects containing text frames can grow in width and/or height during conversion. This can lead to non-text frames increasing in size, and in some cases slightly shifting position.

Workaround

To avoid this you can decouple text content from non-text content, or you can create the PDF asset of the grouped objects prior to the conversion to CHILI publisher.

Inline text styling

Observation

Inline text styling defined in Illustrator is overwritten by [Normal Character Style] when style is selected in CHILI publisher document after conversion.

Workaround

Assign character or paragraph styling to all text content before conversion, or avoid selecting [Normal Character Style] within CHILI publisher post conversion.

Empty PDF on grouped export

Observation

Some conversions where a grouping of frames is converted as a PDF will result in an empty image frame in the CHILI publisher document. This behavior is sporadic.

Workaround

Re-submit the conversion, or re-assign the PDF image created by the converter to the empty frame within the CHILI publisher document.

Space character styling

Observation

Space characters with different formatting compared to the content before or after the space characters will be removed during conversion.

Workaround

Ensure space character formatting is identical to text before or after the space.

Undefined tab stops

Observation

In Illustrator when no tab value is defined (pressing the tab key without defining a specific value), it will result in CHILI publisher using its default tab spacing (which is larger than Illustrator’s).

In Adobe Illustrator

However, if we do define a tab value, then CHILI publisher will respect it.

We can see in the resulting conversion that the non-defined tab frame has the “here” text farther to the right than Illustrator, but the frame with a defined tab value maintains the spacing in Illustrator:

Workaround

Ensure all tabs used in Illustrator file have their own defined tab stop, or correct the tab spacing within Chili post conversion.