Read Text Properties

[Dhiva5F96]

I need to do some operation(create as exe application) without using Plugin.
Is it possible to read the AI file text without opening Adobe Illustrator?

[superpanic]

If I understand you correctly, you want create a program that extracts text from AI-files (without using Adobe Illustrator at all). Sure it can be done. You could for example write a C program that parses the binary file. But it is not trivial. Unfortunately the current Illustrator file format documentation is not public, so you would have to reverse engineer it.

[Rick E Johnson · Accepted solution]

I wonder if it would help to parse the PDF portion of the .ai file, that is, if the file was saved with PDF data.

Even if you could, text is badly broken up in PDF so it would be an ambitious undertaking.

I've seen scripts that extract text from PDFs, which may work in .ai files.

Best of luck with this!