Forums | MacLife

Yeah, I have expander for Win98 but it said that it could not open it. The file came across with the data fork separated from the resource fork. I tried saving and drop-un-stuffing (is that a word?) them and neither would open... I forwarded to my home email and it opened on my Mac... but I'm not going to tell the client that. The LAST thing I want is to start converting files from home all the time.

My knowledge of file formats and being able to use Illustrator, Photoshop and Quark has given our department an edge that other packing design departments don't have. They end up having to out-source that type of work and it can add days to a project's time-line....

It kind of bothers me because sometimes it seems like Graphic designers send Mac formatted stuff ON PURPOSE, just so our PCs will have to fight with it. I mean, like Mac formatted diskettes and Zips... WHAT'S THE POINT? PC formatted disks are cheaper a lot of the time and they work on BOTH platforms! WHY, dear lord, WHY send a Mac formatted disk that we have to next-day to our Art Dept in Wichita to even open?!!?!?!?[/b]

I've heard good things about this for Mac Disks on our PC:
http://versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi … amp;db=win

I have to use it because we don't have a Mac with a Floppy drive any more. Who'd a thunk that one, eh?


But I think that most designers don't think about where the file is going. I try to make it a habit that if I don't know the final destination to send the file as a ZIP file, send a hybrid CD, or to send a PC formatted ZIP.

However, many people are using stuffit for free so they don't have the option to compress different formats - just .sit. And when they come over separated (separate data & resource) do they come from AOL? Those are the only systems I've seen that don't properly encode emails - most others apply some sort of encoding (binary, mime, base-64) to protect attachments. AOL seems to have a problem with this. See if those clients, if they're not on AOL, can turn on some kind of encoding options before they send the files, or if they can encode for mime or base-64 to accomodate your end (I've heard that Apple-Double, available in Entourage) doesn't always work as described. Do you know what email clients they're using?

And I just went through and ditched a buttload of old ZIP disks because they were failing. The new Mac format disks were the same price - it used to be how you described, but no longer. Until 3 days ago, I had no idea that it had changed.