Re: PDF files sent from Mac to PC

[Deborah Snavely <dsnavely@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tom said, snipped:
About filenames, I'd add that if you move files around via disks (floppy, 
zip, etc.), note that Macs when read PC disks, they see the underlying DOS 
filename -- at least the Macs I'm familiar with. The underlying filename of 
"MyGoodBook.PDF" may be MYGOOD~1.PDF. This is the name the Mac sees, unless 
the new OS's have changed that, and this will be the file's new name on the 
Mac.

I'm currently working with both MacOS 8.6 and MacOS 9.0 in my home office,
and various flavors of WinNT elsewhere. One of the big treats of the new G4
was that I popped in a Zip cartridge full of WinNT-written directories and
files and saw the long file names. And then I hooked the USB Zip drive up to
the iBook and saw the uggy old shortened file names you so aptly describe
above. I *believe* the difference is the exact version of PC Exchange in the
OS, but I don't know whether one can get the improvement for the older
MacOS. There have often been incremental improvements of that sort available
from various freeware or shareware or third-party utility providers prior to
a major OS release. 

Anyway, on OS 9.0, the only file names fiddled with are the ones longer than
31 characters (WinNT, the nuisance, allows up to 40, I think). So
Ch6WebObjectsExerciseFiles-Mac.fm becomes something like
Ch6WebObjectsExerciseFil#D6F.fm when you view it from the Mac side, and is
unharmed by viewing from Mac (take the disk back to PC and the full-length
name appears). Of course, if you need to make changes to the file, it's
renamed. And in Frame, that means losing the book connection (though the
book file preserves the original name). In one contract that I'm working on,
a step I'm mapping for the trainers moving their old stuff from NT to Mac is
to set up all new book projects with Mac-length file names. Usually this
limit doesn't affect more than about 3 files in an average 600-page volume,
and they treat it as a no-brainer. 

Deborah Snavely, Senior Technical Writer, Aurigin Systems, Inc.

 

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