wmf files across platforms

[Steve Rickaby]

At 12:39 -0400 7/8/06, elizfee at abacom.com wrote:

>I have a problem transferring wmf files from a PC to a Mac. The files are imported by reference into a book of several chapters plus front matter and generated files. I am using a USB memory stick to transfer a folder containing the book file and associated files from my office PC to my home Mac in Structured Framemaker 7.0 (although this book is not structured). There are many imported graphics in the book, in the form of .wmf files. When I transfer a folder of these .wmf files from the PC to the Mac via the memory stick, Framemaker does not recognize these files. My Mac sees them as Illustrator files, but they are not changed to .ai files. They appear on the Mac with a .wmf icon (I think applied by Illustrator). When I direct Framemaker to the new path on the Mac, it cannot import the files. They work fine on the PC. Should I change the graphic format to something else Framemaker on the Mac can recognize? Has anyone dealt with a similar problem, and found as olution?

Mac FrameMaker can import WMF files ok, although they are not necessarily a good choice of format. Make sure that the files have a '.wmf' extension so that the Mac knows what they are. When you import them, check 'Show All Files' in the Import Files dialog to see the files.

The most likely cause of your difficulty is that *any* file going from PC to Mac (not just graphics files) lacks the signature data that Macs used to use to identify a file's type and creator. This will prevent such files from being listed in FrameMaker's Import File dialog unless you check 'Show All Files', because FrameMaker  cannot recognise the file as something it can import without signature data. The method by which you transfer the files shouldn't make any difference, it's just an issue of different file systems.

OS X now uses the file name extension as well, but of course FrameMaker knows nothing about OS X :-(

-- 
Steve