Quark Forums

Hiya there

** THIS PROBLEM OCCURS FOR ALL QUARK FILES and LEGACY FONTS***

I recently installed and commissioned 2xUbuntu servers for my company (We work in design).

 I will try and explain the problem the best way I can. (I Right, I have created a directory on my server, /data/Studio in this folder there are numerous design files, some QuarkXpress and legacy font files.

 These are used by designers who are on macs, when they put the files on the server they can access them and the work perfectly. I wanted to implament a sync between the two boxes using Unison and also incremental backs using 'Back in Time'. Now the incremental backups work fine as far as the server are concerned, however when someone deletes the file and then I restore via Back In Time the file (QuarkXpress or fonts) are no longer useable on the mac.

My newest concern is that peforming the sync will also appear to damage the files, rendering them useless. I am truely and utterly stumped and I have exhusted any avenue of fixing this that I am aware of.

 Thanks for any help you can provide!

p.s. After the restore, the mac still cant open the file however on doing an inspection on the file;

jl@bellside:/data/Studio/Test Sync/BAPC$ file "5717527 - BAPC B_c"
5717527 - BAPC B_c: Motorola Quark Express Document (English)
jl@bellside:/data/Studio/Test Sync/BAPC$ md5sum "5717527 - BAPC B_c"
199c98733f1d8cfcc213f66ad305b65f 5717527 - BAPC B_c

So the server still sees it as a Quark file, but the macs dont! Help!!

 Jamie

Jamie. Are your Mac users in the bad habit of not adding a three letter extension to the end of their filenames? Have them add the proper three letter extension and see if this works for you. Macs don't store info in the same manner that Linux/Windows does. So, using a three letter extension will force the Mac to recognize what program to use when the file has lost it's association with the application.

.qxp for QuarkXPress 6/7/8 (Documents)

.qxd for QuarkXPress 3/4/5 (Documents)

.qxt for all versions (Templates)

.qxl for all versions (Libraries)

.qxb for all versions (Books)

HTH. 

 Thank you very much for your speedy reply.

 They don't have extensions on the files, and we are talking thousands of files that span a number of years. So changing them all back is not really an option.

So in future do you think that saving the file with the extensions in macs will help the issue?

 The files currently don't have any extensions...

Jamie

Yes it will. As to the previous files, there is a standard applescript that ships with the Mac OS that will batch add a suffix to any files dropped on it. You could run that as needed. Or someone could probably modify it to scan your server and add the three letter extension.

What's happening here is that Mac files use two forks to store info. There is the data fork and the resource fork. The resource fork holds all the info that causes the file to be associated with a certain application. Linux/Windows OS use a single fork – the data fork and the resource info is stored in the data fork.

When you do things like you are doing there becomes just one fork and thus the Macs lose their association with the application. But OSX because it's Linux based also uses a three letter extension association scheme (just like Windows/Linux) and can by using that three letter extension associate the file with the application.

So, in short by using a three letter extension the files in question won't lose their association with the program. 

eyoungren:

But OSX because it's Linux based…

Should that be UNIX based? I'm not really a techie, so maybe its one of those distinctions without a difference.

No, you're right Mig. And the distinction is a difference. Kind of like say Windows XP Home, XP Media, XP Pro, etc. My bad. Thanks for the catch Mig.

OSX is Unix based, 

Thank you for your response again!

Going to give it a go today, however will the quarkfile stills be able to read the fonts that have the same issues? Assuming this is also an extension problem...

Fonts are an entirely different issue. There's usually no extensions associated with them unless they are true type, open type, or a dfont. If your Mac users are using any postscript fonts they likely don't have extensions. And once the fonts register as a 0k file, you've lost them.

I don't have any easy solutions for this. We store our fonts on our Macs for this reason. I've had too many fonts drop out to 0k when stored any anything that wasn't a Mac.