In an ideal world,
you would contentedly edit your reports in whichever word processor
you like on your Mac, save it, and send it off to electronic
colleagues across the Internet. On your colleagues’ machines,
whether they use Windows or UNIX systems, the report would open in
their favorite word processor with no trouble at all. You can imagine
the same scenario with image files, presentations, magazine layouts,
Web pages, and spreadsheets.
Too bad we all
live in the real world. Even though you can send the same stream of
bits across the Internet, it’s tough to guarantee that your
Windows- and UNIX-bound colleagues will see a file exactly the same
way that you see it on your Mac. In theory, you’d think that if
you create, for example, a Microsoft Word 98 document on your Mac,
you would have no problem exchanging that document back and forth
with a Windows user who has Microsoft Word 97. Also in theory, pigs
can fly if you strap them to a hang-glider.
It Should Work
Just Fine…
Okay, so perhaps
the flying pigs crack is a bit harsh on Microsoft and software
developers in general, not to mention the pigs. In practice, most
applications are getting better at understanding the language of
their cross-platform siblings or using the same language. And most
cross-platform standards are just that, provided certain developers
haven’t taken it upon themselves to "enhance" the
standards with platform- and software-specific additions.
As a general rule,
you can make your cross-platform experience less painful by sticking
to the basic features of applications and standards. Even better, you
may want to view your documents or files on both Mac and Windows
throughout the creation process, so you can identify problems as they
crop up instead of after you’ve invested a lot of effort. This
compromise approach means you may not be able to get the full benefit
of these tools. What’s a Mac user to do?
This chapter
covers several variations on this theme. First, we’ll check out
some major applications that have cross-platform versions and see how
easy it is to work across platforms. Next, we’ll look at a few
cross-platform file formats, which were developed independently of
platform or expressly as cross-platform, and see how well they live
up to their billing. Finally, we’ll look at some Web standards
and how you can best take advantage of them on your Mac.
Applications
In the context of
cross-platform operation, we can talk about two types of issues.
First, there are the universal issues that crop up in lots of
different applications, and then there are the unique surprises that
individual applications throw at you. Here we’re going to talk a
little about both. We’ll start with the universal and work our
way to the individual.
E-mail File Exchange
Sending an e-mail
attachment is a common way to exchange files between two computers.
It’s faster and more convenient than a disk as long as the file
size doesn’t exceed the limits of the e-mail server. However,
sending files by e-mail introduces a translation problem, discussed
in the E-mail section of Chapter 5.
Files must be
encoded and decoded by e-mail clients of both the sender and
receiver, and all encoding methods are not created equal. As a
result, you may find yourself exchanging files between e-mail clients
with incompatible encoding methods, even if both machines are Macs.
If you run into a situation in which an attachment appears to be
corrupted on another machine, you should first try sending it with a
different encoding method.
Windows (and Web)
File Names
File names are the
source of another general problem in exchanging files between Mac and
Windows applications, as described in detail in the File Conversion
section of Chapter 2. The important point here is that Windows file
names require a three-character extension to identify the file type
and help the operating system determine which applications can open
it.
If you plan to
exchange files with Windows machines–or on the Web, which also
uses file extensions to determine how to deal with files–you
will want to learn, or make a handy list of, the Windows (and Web)
extensions for the file types you use most often. This chapter
includes the Windows file extension for the appropriate file types.
(For completeness, I’ve also included the relevant Mac Creator
and Type codes.)
You should note
also that, since the Mac OS doesn’t use file name extensions,
it’s quite possible to append, for example, a .gif
extension to a file but forget to "save as" a GIF file
type. This mismatch will cause problems when a Windows user (or a Web
browser) tries to open the file. A number of Mac applications now
automatically add the correct extension, but a little diligence is
required for those that don’t.
As a quick
reference, the table below summarizes the Windows file extensions and
the Mac Creator and Type codes for the applications and file formats
in this chapter.
|
Application and File Type
|
Windows File
Extension
|
Mac
Creator
|
Mac Type(s)
|
|
AppleWorks (formerly ClarisWorks) word processing,
spreadsheet, database, and graphics files
|
.cwk
|
BOBO
|
CWWP, CWSS, CWDB, CWGR
|
|
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) document
|
.pdf
|
CARO
|
PDF
|
|
Adobe Illustrator EPS
|
.eps
|
ART5
|
EPSF
|
|
Adobe Photoshop document
|
.psd
|
8BIM
|
8BPS
|
|
FileMaker Pro 3 or 4 database
|
.fp3
|
FMP3
|
FMP3
|
|
GIF image
|
.gif
|
(various)
|
GIFf
|
|
JPEG image
|
.jpg
|
(various)
|
JPEG
|
|
Microsoft Excel 98 spreadsheet
(template)
|
.xls (.xlt)
|
XCEL
|
XLS8 (sLS8)
|
|
Microsoft PowerPoint 98 presentation (template)
|
.ppt (.pot)
|
PPT3
|
SLD8 (PPOT)
|
|
Microsoft Word 98 document
(template)
|
.doc (.dot)
|
MSWD
|
W8BN (W8TN)
|
|
PostScript file
|
.ps
|
vgrd
|
TEXT
|
|
QuarkXPress document
|
.qxd
|
XPR3
|
XDOC
|
|
Quicken data file
|
.qdf (.qdb, .qdt)
|
INTU
|
BDAT
|
|
Rich Text Format file
|
.rtf
|
(various)
|
RTF
|
|
Text file
|
.txt
|
(various)
|
TEXT
|
|
TIFF image
|
.tif
|
(various)
|
TIFF
|