Transfering files from mac os 7 to windows xp:character problem

Discussion in 'Mac Basics and Help' started by mitilini, Jan 27, 2012.

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  1. mitilini, Jan 27, 2012

    mitilini macrumors newbie

    Joined:
    Jan 27, 2012
    #1
    Hello everybody,
    I am struggling almost a month on this.

    I have some files (FileMaker Pro) on a mac os 7. I mounted the external scsi drive (mac formateed) on the pc using MAcDrive. transfering works ok. but the file names (in the icons) are not recognised by windows.

    I used MacDisk and converted some Mac fonts (LWFN format) into PostScript Type 1 (pfb, pfm files) for Windows.

    Now when I change the windows settings and choose GrTimes for viewing the icons (the name of the files under their icon) the characters are recognisable by windows. But I can read the names of the Mac files but not the names of the Windows files (those in Greek).

    MacDrive has some option for showing file names for international use , but when I am reading the hard drive (mac) with this option and copying the files to windows, file maker can not open the files.

    When I am using the normal settings of mac drive and read the hard disk, I copy the files into windows, file maker opens it but the names of the files are not recognisable...

    I now it is complicated.

    But please shed some light here...

    Mac os 7 uses MAc Roman encoding, and windows xp uses UTF-8.
    what should i do. is it just a matter of transferring font files from mac to pc ? ( i laso used transtype and converted some fonts).

    or should I tell windows to use a different character encoding to read the filenames?

    people I am in a mess in my mind...sorry
     
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  2. wrldwzrd89, Jan 27, 2012

    wrldwzrd89 macrumors G5

    wrldwzrd89

    Joined:
    Jun 6, 2003
    Location:
    Solon, OH
    #2
    It's not clear to me what is happening, exactly. Several things could be going wrong here. Unfortunately, each one has a different solution - so you may need to combine the solutions to get stuff working.

    If the problem is characters in the file names that are invalid for Windows, there used to be a program called Mac2FAT that would fix this issue en masse. Sadly, it no longer exists... but there is an alternative solution. If you can get the files in question onto a Mac OS X machine, compress them with 7zX (choose 7-zip as the archive format), copy the resulting .7z archive to Windows, and decompress it there with the official 7-zip utility, any file names found in the archive that aren't valid for Windows will be automatically fixed on extraction.

    If the problem is that the files transfer okay, but aren't readable after the transfer completes, the most likely cause is that the files make use of the resource fork, which Windows doesn't understand. The way to fix this depends on the program that created the files - usually the option you want is called "Flatten", "Send to Windows", or something similar.

    If neither of the first two issues turn out to be what's happening then odds are you've got an encoding issue. For plain text files, this problem can be fixed very easily with Bare Bones Software's TextWrangler. It can also correct the line endings to the format Windows expects.
     
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  3. mitilini, Jan 28, 2012

    mitilini thread starter macrumors newbie

    Joined:
    Jan 27, 2012
    #3
    thank you

    you r giving me some hope.
    i will try the 7zip method and let u know.

    the issue is only with the file names in windows. the contents of the files are correctly shown in windows.(FileMaker Pro files)

    I enabled support for mac os greek in windows.

    I also installed some mac fonts on windows through a converting tool supplied by MacDisk software.

    When I use a specific mac-based font (GrTimes) in windows appearance settings, Windows correctly shows the names of the files under question. When I check the character map of this font, the encoding is totally messed up and does not follow the pattern of the Mac-Greek encoding, which normally mac is using when Greek language is set as input in Mac OS.

    do not bother on the last, i think i just wrote it to get it out of my head and clear it on my mind.

    will try the options you mentioned and see what could be done..
     
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  4. Harold681, Feb 6, 2012

    Harold681 macrumors newbie

    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2012
    #4
    The solution I used is to use automator. I use two simple modules of automator: I use the "Get Specified Finder Items" followed by the "Replace Text". By choosing the "ADD" button I can then search for the files with the character I need to change and then copy all of these files into the "Get Specified Finder items" module. This module then passes these files on to the replace text module. I input the needed changes to file name. This works for me.
     
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