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The Worm has Turned again - part 4 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

by Mike McNamee Published 01/10/2009

Surviving the Interface - talking to each other A problem that usually looms as soon as you exchange files between Mac and Windows users is the incompatibilities within the file systems.

In a perfect world you would like to exchange images and documents across the great divide and not suffer any loss of files, invention of new files, renaming of files, changing of interior file content or shifting of page layout. Sadly, without care such problems are almost inevitable. There is a tendency for champions of one operating system or another to poke fun at the 'offending' operating system.

This is pointless; remember that a file you send to a client which they are unable to open is a file you are not going to get paid for - even worse it may be the last file they ask you for! It is pointless railing against the stupidity of your client's operating system, they are not going to change - it is your job to send them files that they can use.

Differences Between PC and Mac Files: File Names When Mac users are working with files that will be passed on to Windows users via a Windows NT Server, it's safest to get in the habit of using the DOS 8.3 naming convention for your files. Windows 3.x and earlier require 8.3, and Windows 95, 98, NT, XP and Vista need the three-character extension. Mac users also need to take care not to use characters that are illegal in Windows file names. Mac OS only has one character that cannot be used in a file name the colon. The illegal DOS and Windows file name characters are:

? [ ] / \ = + < > : ; ' ,

The most common offender is the forward slash, illegal in Windows file names but popular with Macintosh users who like to include a date in the file name.

In addition to these illegal characters, Windows NT Server doesn't like file names that end in periods or spaces. When Mac users copy files ending in periods or spaces to an NT server, Windows clients connected to the server won't be able to access them. The same is true for file names that are the same as PC ports. These include: com1 thru com9, lpt1 thru lpt9, con, nul, and prn

Manually checking and editing a few file names is not too much trouble, but when you're moving dozens or even hundreds of files to PCs, you can save a lot of time by using a utility to do this for you. There are several shareware utilities that will make turn Mac file names into legal Windows file names (http://www.macwindows.com/filetran.html)

The URL threw up the little gem below - it is no relation!

'MacNames is probably the only Windows NT/Windows 2000/Windows XP name cleaner software that lets you quickly prepare files created in Macintosh and stored on a WinNT , Windows 2000 or Windows XP Server volume for use in a Windows computer as well as shortening Windows long file names for use by a Macintosh.'

The safest approach is for everybody to use an 8.3 convention, but this too has problems. Eight characters is a little constricting for a name and results in Professional Imagemaker receiving files from contributors named SWPP01.jpg, SWPP02jpg, and so on. This is all very well until two contributors use the same convention and InDesign builds a 'linked file' folder with them all in together! We have so many adverts called SWPP.jpg that we have to be very vigilant. The files from the better (and wiser) advertising agencies use file names such as M712556A.pdf . It may be more difficult to identify at a glance but they know and we know it is always going to transfer about with ease!

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Contact Mike McNamee

1st Published 01/10/2009
last update 09/12/2022 14:59:50

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