OLE embedded Adobe Illustrator Artwork files not rendering properly

Question

  I'm using BroadVision's Quicksilver.  I've attempted to embed AI Artwork
files as OLE objects (linked and not linked), but they don't render within
Quicksilver.  After working with their support team, they came to the
conclusion that it was an Adobe Illustrator issue because they were
able to reproduce the issue in Wordpad (not MS Word).
  The problem can be reproduced by the following steps (tested in Vista,
XP, & Server 2008):
:- Open Wordpad
:- Click Insert -> Object -> Create From File -> Browse -> Find and select a file -> Open
  Other variations on this theme encounter the same problem, including
pasting it from the clipboard.
  If you open a Wordpad document in MS Word and embed the OLE
object, it saves a preview of the image which is visible from Wordpad
if you open it later on (as long as you don't link to the original; if you do,
and attempt to update the link, the preview image will go away).  However,
subsequent alterations of the OLE object don't show up in Wordpad -- rather,
the image that was rendered in Word continues to be displayed (unless, of
course, you open it in MS Word again and re-save after the link is updated).
  It appears the support team at another company encountered a user
experiencing the same or similar issues with their product, but on
Illustrator CS2 as opposed to CS4:
http://www.graphpad.com/faq/viewfaq.cfm?faq=1309
  Unfortunately, the "export to another format" workaround won't suffice.
We're working with thousands of Illustrator artwork files that need to be
version controlled, and other technical documents will link to the same
Illustrator file.  When an AI file is updated, all technical documents
need to use the altered version; linking to an exported version of the
file just creates one more link in the chain that can create problems
or confusion.
  Even if the version control stuff wasn't an issue, exporting to other
formats seems rather limited.  If we export to other formats (eg, pdf)
the images render poorly compared to what they look like in AI.
  We've tried a number of things to work around this:
* Make sure AI [is/is not] already running
* Rasterize paths
* Alter the size of the image in AI
* Alter the size of the object in the target application
* 'Save as' with a different version of AI selected (for all versions)
* Saving as an EPS or PDF -- the former has the same rendering issue
  as AI files; the latter renders but the drawing is blocky, probably because
  the graphics are being rendered at a very low resolution and scaled up
  after the fact.
* Looking for or changing preferences in Illustrator that might affect it
* Altering color scheme and various other similar settings
* CS5 trial version -- same problem as CS4
* Save the [wordpad] document -> close -> re-open
* Switching between 'display as icon' and displaying the image
* Copy & paste from various sources (from AI -> Wordpad,
  MS Word -> Wordpad, etc)
  The only way I can get it to render in Wordpad (or quicksilver for that matter)
is if I embed the AI file in a Word/RTF document, then embed that in
the target application (which is awfully convoluted).  Furthermore, if the
embedded Word/RTF file links to the original file, when you open the
document containing the embedded Word/RTF it doesn't attempt to
update from the linked AI file, just the linked Word/RTF file.
  I'm sure there's other things we've tried to resolve this, but that's what comes
to mind right now.
  If anyone can help with this, or clue me in that it's a bug in AI, I'd sincerely
appreciate it.
-Brian

Answer 1

Well, no offense
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None taken.  I'm helping someone else solve a technical problem, I'm just not questioning their approach; I'm not a tech writer, so I'll pass your suggestions on.
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(...) you are trying  to solve one hell of a crooked workflow on the wrong end and the one  fatal flaw being that you insist on using an office tool to create  layouts and expecting it to render print-ready documents.  That just  cannot work. Even the most stubborn tech writers I occasionally work  with, recognize the need for eventually firing this at InDesign/ InCopy/  Framemaker and associated server versions and fuse the imported RTF/  Word documents and illustrations based on template layouts, scripting  and rule-based formatting, which can all happen automnatically on a  server with the respective software.
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I was mistaken when I described how things are version controlled.  They would prefer to embed the AI images in each document and have each document be version controlled (that is, if the image changes it should /not/ affect other documents).
However, I wasn't mistaken when I said there are thousands of already developed AI images.  The team working with these images has already procured a volume license for Framemaker and is hesitant to purchase other software unless there's no alternative, or the time savings would justify it.  I wish I could comment on the efficacy of your suggestion, but I'm not a tech writer; I'm unfamiliar with InDesign, InCopy, and FrameMaker.
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So for what it's worth, you are  probably wasting your time and resources on something that by its nature  starts out with a limited process. I'm not even sure if AI fully  supports OLE. I seem to remember having read about it not supporting  several features and commands....
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If we export to other formats (eg, pdf) the images render poorly compared to what they look like in AI.
What  do you mean? If they look "bad" in Acrobat or something, then you are  simply using the wrong export settings. which is perfectly fixable.
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 In Acrobat the SV graphics look beautiful at any scale, but if the PDF is OLE embedded in another application it looks terrible.
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If  they look "bad" within your word documents, then we pretty much return  to what I said in the first paragraph - there's a good chance it's  simply Word rendering the artwork poorly due to its limited abilities of  dealing with graphics of any kind. I would even think that manually  changing the graphics properties would improve appearance then....
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I'm not an expert on OLE; I made the [potentially bad] assumption that Acrobat would be responsible for rendering the graphic when a PDF is OLE embedded, so the application making use of the object would have limited control over the quality of the image it receives (if my assumption were correct anyway).
I know the host process can specify whether the image is rendered as an EMF or WMF image, otherwise I know very little about the OLE API and what limitations the host process can impose.
I'll keep tinkering to see if the PDF solution can be made to work.
In the meantime, would anyone like to make a determination as to whether this is a real bug in AI or not?
-Brian