Thanks for finding that SPWA. It was a great tutorial, and is exactly what I had in mind when I said, "...extraordinary measures (and with no guarantee of success)..." .
Although I have never had the pleasure of attempting to recover an AI file, when I have attempted low level recovery of other file types, the problem usually is never the toggling of a small number of bits (eg, like classical bit-rot), but is usually due to someone shutting down the power in the middle of a save, bad data in one area of the HD (ie, involving many bits), etc. In these cases, the user has to go in and repeatedly remove offending sections without mucking up something else. This gets old fast.
If someone has not programmed before, delving into postscript-like code in this way can be daunting, which is why my first recommendation is always to go back to a previously saved version of the file (assuming the user has these). If the situation makes it worth it to try this sort of recovery, I recommend that most graphics people find a programmer to do this for them rather than attempting it themselves.
Again, thank you for the find -- it was certainly a good read and could be an appropriate approach in some situations.
Cheers,
T
PS - BTW, I find the very existence of the content recovery toggle interesting. This must happen often enough to be worth Adobe including such functionality.
