This note is to report a bug in Illustrator 8.0 and 9.0;
its use of %%BeginData does not conform to the DSC
specification.

Specifically, in the thumbnail section at the top of the
document comments section, it includes comments such as

   %%BeginData: 4312 Hex Bytes

According to the specification (PostScript Language Reference
Manual, Second Edition, page 648, describing the %%BeginData
DSC):

   "Note that <numberof> indicates the bytes of
    *physical* data, which vary from the bytes
    of *virtual* data in some cases.  With hex,
    each byte of *virtual* data is represented
    by two ASCII characters (two bytes of
    *physical* data).  Although the PostScript
    interpreter ignores white space in hex data,
    these count toward the byte count.

   "For example,

   "FD 10 2A 05

   "is 11 bytes of *physical* data (8 bytes hex,
    3 spaces) and 4 binary bytes of *virtual*
    data."

I am enclosing two such broken files sent to me by two
of my users (of dvips).  In both cases, the byte count
seems to be the total number of valid hex characters,
not including the extraneous % character that Illustrator
inserts at the beginning of the line, nor the line
terminators.  A simple analysis of the file shows that,
in the data section, we have:

   Total bytes: 4531
   Hex:  4312  White:  146  Misc:  73

So the DSC comment *should* be

   %%BeginData: 4531 Hex Bytes

The example on the following page (649) clearly indicates
that the byte count, even for hex, should include *all*
characters (the example they give includes an image
operator, and they specifically mention that all five
characters of "image", plus the newline following it, must
be included in the byte count).

The impact on my users is that, for a very widespread
version of dvips, they cannot include Illustrator files
when they are using certain combinations of options.
I am currently testing a workaround for the next release
of dvips, but clearly Illustrator must be fixed.

I am always happy to help in any way, so contact me at

   rokicki@cs.stanford.edu

if you have any further questions or if there is any way
I can be of help.

Thanks!

Tomas Rokicki