Ai not finding non-existent link in SVG file

[Jonathan24787156uxhk]

I have an SVG file which displays as expected in browsers (Edge and Chrome), and which also opens with no problem in another SVG building tool.

However, when I try to open with Adobe Illustrator, it keeps giving me a "some of the files on the links panel are missing..." message (over and OVER again, BTW... irritating...). This keeps happening even if I select "Ignore", and it never displays the image.

However, there should be no file that it needs to link to. Everything needed to display the image is in the SVG (which is just an encapsulated PNG... long story). Browsers and other programs seem to display it just fine.

I am attaching some screenshots (other tools working OK), a screenshot of the Ai error message, and a copy of the SVG file itself.

Can anyone tell me why this is happening?

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

It could be that it is looking for the encapsulated png file and cant resolve. Was this build in another tool or natively in AI and then converted in another tool?

[Jonathan24787156uxhk · Accepted solution]

The SVG file was created by ImageMagick with the simple command "magick input.png output.svg"

This merely enncapsulated the PNG data within the SVG file and referenced it... since the PNG data was in the SVG file itself, there was no external file to reference. And, as mentioned, browsers and Affinity Designer had no problem opening the SVG file and displaying it.

However. the resulting SVG file  had the line preceding the encapsulated image data as:

     href="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0.......

when, if changed to this, works fine in Ai and Inkscape (which also had a problem)

     xlink:href="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0.....

The "xlink:" bit (or lack thereof) was causing the problem, and adding it in apparently makes the file more closely adhere to the official SVG specification. The browsers and Affinity Designer were just more tolerant of the reference.

Thanks for your reply, and hope this helps in the future... Jon