Reducing size of Adobe Illustrator generated EPS files.
Recent versions of Illustrator produce EPS files whose minimal
size is about 70k. This can create problems when submitting
papers to the arXiv. Here is
a Python script which cuts
the minimal size to 20k: fix_ill_ps.py. This script
has a key advantage over Ghostscript's eps2eps in that eps2eps
converts the fonts to bitmaps, making it unsuitable for use with
psfrag. (At least this is true with Ghostscript 7, hopefully it
will be fixed one day…)
Important Note: This script is designed to be used with
EPS files saved in Illustrator 4 format. It will not work
on files in Illustrator 10's default format. It does provide
some improvement on files up to at least Illustrator 7, but
you're best off with saving as Illustrator 4.
To use under Unix, simply move the script to the directory
containing the EPS files you want to shorten and do "python
fix_ill_ps.py" and it will try to simplify all files in the
directory. Note: While Mac OS X is Unix, if you
use a Unix-type python installation, then you need to change the
line-breaks in the EPS file to Unix, not Mac, format (e.g. with
perl or BBedit). For use under Windows, see here. Note: This program has only
really been tested on EPS files generated by one particular
Windows version of Illustrator.