@v_kyr thanks and yes, we mentioned Zint was used as a locally installed barcode generator, and its eps output has the same effect as the bwipp eps file.
@R C-R indexing a text file simply means creating an index file that will aid the search efficiency for words within this text file. In order to build an index, raw plain text must be available, but the Postscript file has many extraneous stuff beside the text content (and the text content can be mingled)
@Lagarto thanks, I believe it can be a font issue as well. More specifically, we suspect a font issue with our system (not the eps file) that causes the problem with Illustrator, which we will have to resolve.
Finding out that Designer does not play well with eps on Windows systems is a surprised discovery.
We agree that this is a serious issue, because it would be disastrous to have a piece of artwork going into production without realizing that some element is missing. Affinity software is changing rapidly, and we are sure many things will be fixed. Until then, I can only use it as a secondary piece of tool. We lost tens of thousand dollars many years ago using FreeHand for more or less the same reason, i.e. not realizing we are missing some elements.
@Lagarto@v_kyr thanks folks for your work around suggestions.
At the meantime, we can save the barcode generated in svg format, and resave it as eps or ai with either Designer or Illustrator. The resulting eps will open without any issues by either applications.
If we have no control on the file format of these eps artwork submitted by clients, we can open these "problematic" eps files with Acrobat DC and save it as PDF. Open the PDF with Designer or Illustrator, and then resave in whatever eps or ai format. Again, the resulting eps files will open without any issues by either.
In summary, we met a problem with opening certain eps files using Illustrator, and thought that Designer would come in to rescue. But found out later with all your help that Designer has a platform issue with these files. We would have to leave it at that with Designer as it is not my place to dictate Affinity's path.
As an end user, we tend to agree with Lagarto that an app suited for professional market should be more robust, but we also understand v_kyr saying that it could be a business decision made by Affinity for the current moment. Things might change down the road. The mere fact that we are all here means that Affinity is already doing a pretty decent job. A++ for the Affinity team.
We have workaround as stated above, but would prefer to have a permanent solution, which we will have to take it up to an Adobe site since this is boiling down to an Illustrator related issue. (Though they might just say it is my own problem since it could be system specific)
I am just surprised that, since all Adobe app on our system use the same common files for Postscript interpreter and font set, the result from Acrobat is different from Illustrator or PhotoShop.
Many times in business, we have to deal with files submitted by clients rather than created by ourselves. We have to incorporate these client submitted files into our final output. Which means the choice of file format is not in our hands, and we need a reliable and trustworthy way of handling them.
Thanks all. If later we found a solution for our Illustrator problem, I would like to post it here so we have proper closure.
