Over at #Inkscape, we are currently reverse-engineering the file format of Adobe #Illustrator so that we can natively read those files. We’re making good progress, but let me tell you…

.ai files are by a wide margin the most convoluted, confusing, redundant mess I have had the displeasure of working with.

But that‘s what you get when you have 40 years of historical cruft, with no conscious effort of maintaining consistency. We should not make the same mistake with our additions to #SVG.

@joneuhauser

Is the format Turing complete?

It seems most old formats have so much cruft added they get to that stage even if it's not intended 🫤

@simonzerafa the format was based on PostScript initially. It still looks like that superficially, but a regular PostScript parser would give up quickly.

So the answer to your question is probably yes, but luckily Illustrator doesn‘t use that functionality 😅

@joneuhauser

Ah! I was wondering! 😁

Good luck with your mapping the nether regions of that file format 🙂👍