referenced .eps a) won't open Illustrator; b) sometimes renders as .tiff preview

Report · Feb 17, 2020

Developer shows up at my desk, anxious about a document we last looked at four or five years ago: the .pdf has .tiff previews instead of clean vector graphics.

Step 1: open the .book in trusty FM12 [why I've not been able to install TCS successfully is a separate saga] and take a look. The referenced graphics are displaying the .tiff preview, as I'd expect, but double-clicking doesn't launch Illustrator. (as far as I remember, it's still working in other .fm files)

Step 2: without touching anything, run Save as PDF again … the result is a perfect .pdf with clean vector graphics.

Any advice on avoid/resolving either problem will be welcome!

Report · Feb 17, 2020

Getting FM to render an EPS as the raster preview (which is really more like a GIF) is easy. Getting it to do so to PDF is not easy.

As you likely know, FM will send the raster to non-Postscript output paths, but for any of these, you should get the vector:
. print to PDF
. save as PDF
. print to .PS & Distill

That the double-click fails might be a clue. The MIF might be worth a look to see just what's imported there.

Report · Feb 18, 2020

It seems as though Windows managed to lose the "open with" preferences, though I'm even-handedly ready to suspect Adobe as well since this happened the same time as I updated Illustrator ;-} I have now reinstated Illustrator as default for .eps and – fingers crossed – everything appears to be working as I might hope.