MAC <---> PC

Which formats work on both?

[kingkelly]

In september, me school will be pure MAC, which is bad for me since I'll be a design major and the last mac i used was in B&W...

Will illustrator and Flash files made at school on a MAC be useable on my PC at home? Or will my stuff i make on my PC be able to be edited at school on their Macs?

If anybody knows examples of program formats that work both ways please post them here.

[mivox]

Virtually ANY software package that is available for both Mac & Windows will output native files that are readable on either platform. I've used Adobe, Macromedia and *shudder* Microsoft products extensively bewteen Mac & Windows, and never had a problem with the Mac version of a program opening a file from teh PC version, or vice versa... (except when trying to open Word files with strange Windows-proprietary format graphics in them... had to go back to the Windows machine and translate all the graphics to gif or bmp format, before sending all the files back to the Mac.)

[bird]

For any software, if it is available on both platforms, you can generally expect its files to transfer seamlessly. With software only available on one side, stick to "standard" file formats, and you can expect the same.

[pageoneresults]

There is one issue that may creep into the equation, fonts. Mac users typically use PS (PostScript) fonts and PC users us TT (TrueType) fonts. The two are not compatible.

You will need to install the Adobe type library on your PC so that you have the PS versions of the fonts available. If not, you are going to get error messages stating that a font is not available on your PC or vice versa.

[mivox]

Mac users USED to typically use postscript fonts... 99% of my fonts are TrueType, and have been since the late 90s. ;)

TrueType is becoming something of a cross-platform standard. When you install new software on a Mac, the default font pack installed with it is almost always TrueType.

[pageoneresults]

Ah-ha, thanks for that info mivox! Our graphics department is still running into issues where a file is sent from a PC and it uses TT. I don't think our graphics department has installed a full set of TT fonts yet. I'll have to alert them to the issue, thanks again!

[mivox]

My feeling is if there is anything you can install on a Mac that will make it happier to talk to a PC, it's worth the time to do it... fonts included.

(Also, it is considered good manners to include your font files with any graphic job you submit electronically, if you've used anything outside the top 5 most common fonts. Your customers sound like they need a bit of slapping around! hehehe)

If a client gives you a bunch of TT Windows fonts, there's a Mac shareware program called "True Type Converter" that will convert the PC TT fonts to Mac TT format... easy as pie. :)

[pageoneresults]

Also, it is considered good manners to include your font files with any graphic job you submit electronically, if you've used anything outside the top 5 most common fonts. Your customers sound like they need a bit of slapping around!

Yup, try explaining that process to clients who are totally clueless about collect for output. We use an extension called Extensis that replaces Quarks standard collect routine and now collects fonts and organizes them based on your parameters. I remember years ago hunting through font suitcases to gather fonts, how tedious was that?! ;)