If you are having trouble making or maintaining connections with Macintosh computers, or trouble receiving them, please review the following tips for a solution to your problem.
Overwriting Files with Identical Names
Some Macintosh directories and files may have names that are identical to the those being transferred from your PC. When this happens, you get the message, "Replace items with the same names with the selected items?" If you click Yes, the files and directories on the PC will overwrite those files on the Macintosh that have the same name. The original Macintosh files will be lost.
Problems Controlling a Macintosh
When a PC user is controlling or observing a Macintosh computer, the following problems may occur.
The colors in the Control or Observe window of the PC may not exactly match the colors on the Macintosh.
When the Macintosh is running FrameMaker 4.0, the text in the FrameMaker menus may not be visible to the PC controller or observer. Make sure the Macintosh user has switched on Support Bypassing QuickDraw in the Preferences dialog box.
Buttons on a Macintosh application may sometimes not be visible to the PC controller or observer, but they are still functional.
Problems Connecting to a Macintosh
Make sure the Macintosh user is running a compatible version of Timbuktu Pro for Macintosh.
Cross-Platform Passwords Cannot Use Extended Character Sets
Characters that are not shared between your PC and a Macintosh cannot be used in passwords. Passwords that are to be used across platforms should consist of the basic characters that both platforms share.
Extended Characters and File Transfer
If you are using the Exchange service with a Macintosh, you may notice that some of the file names in the lower panel of the Exchange window do not appear correctly. This is because some special characters (usually referred to as upper-128 ASCII characters) may not map correctly between Windows and Macintosh systems. Examples of these special characters are ones that require the use of the CTRL or ALT keys. This special character limitation also applies to passwords.
To ensure cross-platform compatibility, use only the characters that are visible on your computer's keyboard (with or without the SHIFT key). If you want to compare cross-platform character mapping in more detail, you can check the character resources on each platform by using the Windows Character Map accessory program and the Macintosh Key Caps program.
File Types Are Not Always Recognized by the Other Computer
If you transfer certain kinds of files to a Macintosh, the files will not appear in the directory dialog box when you attempt to open them from the corresponding Macintosh application. This is because Timbuktu Pro does not know the correct Macintosh Type and Creator values to assign to Windows files during a Send or Exchange session.
You can, however, edit the filemap.ini file, which ships with Timbuktu Pro, so that Timbuktu Pro will translate any 3-letter extension of a DOS file type to the appropriate Type and Creator values for a Macintosh file type and vice versa. See File Extension Mapping.
Copying to a Macintosh Floppy Disk
If you are using the Exchange service to copy files to a floppy disk on a Macintosh, you may get an error message that the floppy disk is full even though the Macintosh user has just deleted files from that disk.
To work around this problem, close the Exchange window and open a new one to the same Macintosh. This causes Timbuktu Pro to recheck disk space available on the Macintosh floppy disk.
Macintosh File Format Information
A Macintosh file consists of a resource fork and a data fork. Timbuktu Pro copies only the data fork and uses the information in the resource fork to set file properties. Therefore, any Macintosh file that has an empty data fork—for example, the Shrinkwrap.Frontier file—is copied to a file with zero contents on a Windows computer.
Line Breaks Not Inserted
When Timbuktu Pro copies a Macintosh text file to your computer, no additional control characters are added to force line breaks. When such a document is opened on some PC text editors—for example, WordPad—it is displayed as a single, very long line. A workaround is to open the document with a word processor that has an automatic word wrap feature, such as Microsoft Word, and then save the document in an appropriate PC format.