Quark Forums

Hi,

just upgraded to QuarkXpress 7.  I have alot of logos stored on a network share (Small Business Server 2003) which are .eps files.  In previous versions of Quark, and in Quark 7 at the start of this week, I had no problems with said files. When i import the eps logo it comes in as a grey box with 'Postscript Picture' and the name of the file.  This is not the problem.  The problem is that when I try to print the logo wont print, either to the printer or to pdf.  When i double click or go to Utilities > Usage > Pictures it tells me the image is missing.  So i go to the network share and update it. It tells me then the status is ok but straight away if i double click on the image it tells me it is missing.  What could have changed in the last few days. I copied the logo to my desktop and QuarkXpress 7 both imports it and the status stays at ok all the time.  CAn't understand it at all.

Are you on a Mac? Are you saving a PICT preview from XPress? If so, that PICT preview is not going to stay with the EPS file when you save to the server. It's a PC server and it doesn't support resource forks.

If you have never heard of resource forks, then here is the difference between PC file systems and Mac file systems. A PC will use a three letter extension to a filename and the OS uses that extension to tell it what program to open the file with. On a Mac, you don't need that (or didn't used to anyway). A Mac will store the information about it's file creator in the resource fork. The actual data in the file is stored in the data fork. But PC's don't recognize the resource fork, so when you save an EPS file (which uses resource forks on a Mac) to a PC server, that resource fork is discarded. PICT previews are stored in the resource fork. So, essentially, your preview is tossed and you get a gray box.

 I'm betting it's a PICT preview because that is the default on an XPress install to a Mac. Use a TIF preview and see what happens. TIF previews are stored in the data fork.

eyoungren I understand what you're saying, kinda, but cannot accept that as a definitive answer as this morning, obviously after a few restarts, I reimported one of the logos that was giving me hassle and it is now coming in perfectly and printing as well.

 Well, to be honest, I am not a network expert. I just have the unfortunate responsibility of managing a PC server and about 18 other PCs. Composing uses 2 Macs, so we have to deal with SBS 2003 server because that's what the boss says. 

In any case, I can only relate my experiences. If it's working for you now - great. For us though, if we use a PICT preview in an EPS file and store it on the PC server, we lose the preview. I've been in the habit of using a TIF preview for a very long time though so it's not rampant for us. It irritates me though that the default in saving an EPS from Illy 10 is a Macintosh (PICT) preview.

We also had an issue a while back where XPress was not picking up modified TIFF files. We had to reimport them. I finally gave up in frustration and went to DAVE. No problems after that. 

Thanks alot for your replies.  Its just funny that this is happening now with logos i have used extensively over the past few years over both networks on SBS 2000 and 2003, which I manage, whereas pre-QuarkXpress 7 there was no problems at all.

Thanks again.