Importing SVG with nested clip-path

Question

I'm having serious issues in Illustrator CS5 trying to import SVG files with nested clip-path properties.
Illutrator seems to create unnecessary groups, and messes up with group parents, effectively screwing things up.
Here is a minimal example :
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd" [<!ENTITY ns_svg "http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><!ENTITY ns_xlink "http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">]>
<svg version="1.1" id="main" overflow="visible" xmlns="&ns_svg;" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  <g id="piece-1">
    <g clip-path="url(#cpform)" id="form1">
      <g clip-path="url(#cplogo)" id="logo1">
                    <rect fill="#FF0000" x="10" y="10" width="1000" height="1000" />
      </g>
    </g>
  </g>
  <g transform="matrix(1,0,0,1,200,0)" id="piece-2">
    <g clip-path="url(#cpform)" id="form2">
      <g clip-path="url(#cplogo)" id="logo2">
                    <rect fill="#FF0000" x="10" y="10" width="1000" height="1000" />
      </g>
    </g>
  </g>
  <clipPath id="cpform">
          <rect x="0" y="0" width="150" height="150">
          </rect>
  </clipPath>
  <clipPath id="cplogo">
          <rect x="0" y="0" width="100" height="100">
          </rect>
  </clipPath>
</svg>
Such a valid SVG file displays fine in Chrome, IE, Opera, Firefox, but Illustrator fails loading it properly, because it creates two groups between "main" and "piece-1" (which is in itself not too bad), and sets piece-1 as a brother of another unnecesarry group from which piece-2 will descend. piece-2 and piece-1 are then clipped with piece-1 clip-path, which is just plain wrong and screws display.
Note that you can move piece-2 to the root of the document, which restores the display. But save this fixed file, and open it again : it"s back to its broken state.
Does anoyone know if this is fixed in CS6 ? If there is a workaround ?

Answer 1

AI doesn't care for the original structure of an SVG. It will merely try to retain the appearance based on its own internal logic, which of course matches how you would create a normal AI file. So no, you can't probably avoid it.
Mylenium