Keywords in EPS files

It is hardly mainstream, but I recently had the need to tag some EPS files. My understanding is that it is possible to add metadata to the comment and tags (keywords) to this filetype.

I used the DOpus native Edit Metadata to add a comment and several keywords to the attached EPS file. The comment wrote successfully, but the keywords never appeared. I repeated the operation on several more EPS files with the same results. Comment fine; keywords a no-show every attempt.

I then wrote a small script to do the job. The results were identical, but it did allow me to check that the keywords were appearing in the variable that I was the writing to the tags in the file. That proved to be the case with every EPS I tried.

It seems that I cannot write tags to EPS files. I have enclosed the spec of my system in case it is some kind of an update issue in windows. I did find a reference on the web to a problem Microsoft were having writing metadata in EPS files, but unhelpfully the reference did not provide a date.

sysinfo.txt (1.6 KB)

Beach and Sand.zip (267.6 KB)

Do you want Adobe software to read the tags? It uses a different tagging system and likes to ignore other metadata.

@auden I am able to tag your test file but there is definitely something strange going on. If I zip the tagged file, the tags disappear and they don't reappear after unzipping. In the following screen shots I zip and unzip alongside a sample jpeg for comparison.

image

That would happen if the tags were being saved in our private ADS stream, which would not survive being zipped.

WinRAR has an option to save Alternate Data Streams.

At the moment, I cannot even get Opus to save the tags in Opus and look at them in Opus. I will continue researching, but it seems odd I can write Comments. but not tags

Thanks for your suggestions.

Don't worry about ADS. You'll need a tool like ExifTool to write the data.

Try

@nodeselect
exiftool.exe -XMP:Subject="MyNewKeyword" {allfilepath}

Thanks for your suggestions, people, but after looking into it a bit further, as I do not generally use postscript vector graphics, it's simply easier to convert my EPS files into PDFs. No problems with keywords then and I can add metadata for my needs completely in Opus.

Nearly 30 years since Windows appeared and we are still fretting over postscript files :grinning:

It was worth a try but it seems that even ExifTool has a problem with eps....

@aussieboykie

The further I have gone into this, the more I have learned it is not worth the effort. Illustrator files and metadata are not the happiest bedfellows.

Converting EPS files to PDF is a breeze with Acrobat if you can overcome the font errors in vector graphics. My advice would be that unless you really, really need a vector graphic, rip the EPS into Photoshop and save it out as a PDF (fonts and all).

I'd take finding my EPS files over vector graphics any time.

Still no problems with your script, just carrying on testing as I have a bit of time.