KB74646849: PackEdge - Format of SmartMark sets

Question

In which format are SmartMark sets saved?

Answer

SmartMark sets are saved as .GRS files. This was a very natural choice in the time SmartMarks were introduced but since Suite 7 our internal format has changed to PDF, this seems to cause some confusion.

To make things clear: what are actually stored inside a SmartMark set are the parameter settings of the different SmartMarks (annotations attached to the SmartMark objects).

It is thus possible to save a SmartMark set that contains imagemarks that use PDF images. As such a SmartMark set is not of a specific file type - it is neither a GRS nor a PDF file.

As one knows, it is not allowed to make cross-references (i.e., GRS file referring to PDF files and vice versa) but SmartMarks take care of this. When loading a SmartMark set that contains a GRS image inside a PDF file, the SmartMark engine will embed the image inside the PDF file (to avoid cross format references). This could make the file slightly larger (image embedded instead of referenced) but note that embedding imagemarks already happens in other circumstances (e.g.: the rerun option).

Of course, when re-running the imagemark, the SmartMark engine will always go back to the original (GRS) image. It's possible that in some future version we will switch to a more neutral format to store SmartMark sets (e.g. XML) but for the moment there are no real plans to do so.