Spot colour naming broken in X6.3 output ?

It looks as if custom spot colours created in X6.3 are not being correctly named in exported EPS or when pubishing to PDF.

Example:

  • I create a new, blank palette in My Palettes.
  • I add a colour named with a screen colour of C=10 M=20 Y=30 K=40 and save it. I cannot name it at this stage (typing anything in the name box changes the CMYK value) so I leave it blank for the moment
  • I mark it to be treated as a spot colour and change the name to NondescriptBrown

Next I create a document with one object, and I assign 100% NondescriptBrown outline to it. Good so far -- it shows correctly as 100% NondescriptBrown on the status line.

Export to EPS without a preview image -- making sure convert spot colours is off.

Open the EPS file in a text editor and look at the line: %%DocumentCustomColors: (C10 M20 Y30 K40)

That's right, the export has named the colour C10 M20 Y30 Y40 and searching confirms that the correct name NondescriptBrown does not appear anywhere in the EPS.

Looking at the palette's XML file I see:

So, it seems that X6.3 should be looking up the proper name in colors>page>color.name and using that for the export, but is instead exporting with the internal colorspaces>cs.name which is a purely arbitrary name that is not for external use.

I can fix the problem by manually editing the XML file by changing colorspaces>cs.name and colors.page.cs both to NondescriptBrown, so that the internal name is already the same as the correct export name, but clearly that should not be necessary -- and if CorelDraw can display the correct name on screen in the status line, it ought to be able to export it correctly too.

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Exactly the same applies when publishing to PDF, but is harder to prove, because its compression renders the file unreadable in a text editor.

 

 

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