Strange things happening with Symbol sizes (Canvas-related?)

[Peter Villevoye]

Picture this: you drag elements from an artboard into the Symbols. They appear correct, when you reuse them in the same document. But when you save your symbols into a Library and drag symbols from that (reloaded) library into another file, they become 1/10th of their original size !

My guess is that it has something to do with the newer Large Canvas documents and their somewhat sloppily invented 10 X Scaling Factor approach. Perhaps the Library file is still saved as an old sized document, forgetting that the symbol sizes can be intended and expected to be 10 times bigger...

Am I on the track of a nasty bug, or can anyone shine another light on this ?

[Monika Gause]

So both documents are Large Canvas documents?

What happens when you drag the symbols into the new document with the Alt key pressed?

[Peter Villevoye]

I'm trying to figure this out for a colleague, who gave me two files to test it with.

Using alt-keys while dragging doesn't affect the erratic nor normal behavior.

Copy/Paste a correct symbol from a large canvas to a small canvas, stays in correct size. 

Copy/Paste an incorrect symbol from a small canvas to a large canvas, doesn't correct itself. 

Screen 1: the Basis.ai-document (Large) in which the Symbols have been created.

Screen 2: the OSF Symbols.ai symbols file, also at 57 x 57 meters, without content.

Screen 3: an initially A4-sized new file, with a symbol at 1/10th of its intended size.

(Note how the symbols in this last screen also don't show their type anymore...)

While testing, I also got the impression that an open document's canvas setting may affect the behavior of any subsequently opened symbols file. But I'm not yet sure about that. It takes a lot of quitting and reopening files and libraries to test and verify all possible influences...

[Ton Frederiks]

Dag Peter,

did you enable this Preference setting?

 If you click OK in this dialog it keeps the size, if Not Now, you get the scaled version.

[Ton Frederiks]

En in goed Nederlands:

[Peter Villevoye]

That preference didn't make a difference. It had a good chance though, since .ai files are technically PDF files with just an ".ai" extension. So this setting might be involved in affecting the opening/importing of a symbol library. But unfortunately, it didn't.

Since I'm reluctant to supply my colleague's files to test the bevavior, I created some new and even much simpler files as an example, which reproduce the erratic behavior exactly, for anyone to try and tweak them.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ieiyrap8w82y3aet22nv9/Scaling-Symbols.zip?rlkey=7ykgbmltdovaj5b2ndcky...

01 - Start 8 meter.ai

The large size file (8 meter) containing the original star (2 meter) and the derived symbol 

02 - Symbol Library.ai

Hence without artwork (still 8 meter), and containing just the symbols (star appears okay) 

03 - Blank A4 file.ai

A new small size file (A4) in which I opened the library, and placed the star (0,2001 meter)

04 - Test in Library.ai

Copy of the Symbol Library file, with placed instance of its own star symbol (still 2 meter)

05 - Copied into A4.ai

Copy of A4 file, with copy/pasted original star and correct symbol (both now 2,0007 meter)

I'm beginning to become pretty sure that the scaling phenomena works somewhat okay in solitary files, but apart from exporting/importing PDF, it has not been fully tried and tested with regards to interchanging with auxilliary files and fragments like symbols. (I don't have the time to thoroughly test similar features and their behaviors like brushes, patterns, or CC Libraries, but I expect some trouble in those areas as well...)

Of course the work-around would be to create two libraries, derived from (and for separate use in) large and normal scale files. But I first want to make sure that this is the proper diagnose for the erratic behavior.

Another aspect is the shifting of sizes, probably due to rouding-off any calculations from points and inches (the standard in PostScript) to decimals in other measurements. This is also warned for as a "known issue" at the bottom of this FAQ: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/large-sized-canvas-troubleshooting.html.

[Ton Frederiks]

I think you are right, a Symbol library is just a regular old canvas size .ai file, causing large canvas symbols to be scaled in a large canvas document.

I thought you were talking about CC libraries, which gave the warnings I showed.

After checking the Preference to honor the scale on PDF import the warning goes away, but does not come back after unchecking the preference setting (you need to reset the Preferences to get it to appear).

Unchecked it gives me the small size when dragged linked from a CC library and the large size when alt dragged.

[Ton Frederiks]

Large canvas document objects and CC Libraries are also giving interesting but unneccesary messages about Save for Web when saving a CC large canvas library item. 

Double Click an item that was created in a Large Canvas Document in a CC library.

Change something and save...

Very interesting, but that was not what you wanted to do, so Ignore & Continue saves the file