Need Help Mac to PC

[Harro de Jong]

Mary Haas wrote :

> Hello Framers,
> I will soon be converting my Mac Frame 7 documents to Frame 7 on the
> PC. My Mac is getting old and the organization wants the jobs on PC.
> My documents are both published (web-press) from high resolution PDFs
> and posted on the web as Web-ready PDFs. With no other help available
> to me, I am seeking advice from the Frameuser group.
> 
> Big issues:
> 
> Operating system:  Looks like I might be getting Genuine Windows XP
> Professional, SP2, with Media XPP2E. Will this system work with Frame
> 7.0 (already purchased)? Any known problems?

It'll work fine, no problems. 

> 
> Fonts: On the Mac I use only Adobe Postscript fonts (most often
> Helvetica family) and have never had any problems.  What kind of
> fonts should I buy for the PC that will always be reliable and
> problem-free for printing and web? Font technology has changed since
> my Mac fonts were purchased and my knowledge is not up-to-date.

Your best bet is to find Windows versions of the same fonts, or to
create those yourself using a font creation program like Fontographer. 

> 
> Acrobat issues:  I currently use Acrobat 5 on the Mac. Are there
> issues with newer Acrobat versions, and which version will work with
> Frame 7.0 on PC? 

Acrobat 7 works well with Frame 7, I'm not sure Acrobat 5 supports all
the features (mainly the File->Save as PDF command in FM). 

> I would like to make this transfer as smooth as possible and would
> greatly appreciate any help that you would like to share - even
> horror stories. 

The one thing that used to break when going from Mac to PC (we did this
a few years ago) is that in the Mac OS, you can use characters like \ in
filenames. Windows can't cope with \ (and a few others) in a filename.
If you edit a filename on the Mac and you use the Forward Delete key,
the filename might contain hidden characters which trip the PC. 
OK, two things: color management may also be an issue. I'm no expert on
this, but ISTR the Mac handles certain things better than Windows.
This'll be an issue more for the graphics than FrameMaker itself,
though. 
And another (This is starting to sound like the Spanish inquisition
sketch from Monty Python): the PC FrameMaker version doesn't support the
Publish & Subscribe mechanism. 


Harro de Jong