Reducing size of Adobe Illustrator generated EPS files. Recent versions of Illustrator produce EPS files whose minimal size is about 70k. This can create problems when submitting papers to the arXiv. Here is a Python script which cuts the minimal size to 20k: fix_ill_ps.py. This script has a key advantage over Ghostscript's eps2eps in that eps2eps converts the fonts to bitmaps, making it unsuitable for use with psfrag. (At least this is true with Ghostscript 7, hopefully it will be fixed one day…) Important Note: This script is designed to be used with EPS files saved in Illustrator 4 format. It will not work on files in Illustrator 10's default format. It does provide some improvement on files up to at least Illustrator 7, but you're best off with saving as Illustrator 4.
To use under Unix, simply move the script to the directory containing the EPS files you want to shorten and do "python fix_ill_ps.py" and it will try to simplify all files in the directory. Note: While Mac OS X is Unix, if you use a Unix-type python installation, then you need to change the line-breaks in the EPS file to Unix, not Mac, format (e.g. with perl or BBedit). For use under Windows, see here. Note: This program has only really been tested on EPS files generated by one particular Windows version of Illustrator.