Open notebooks created in Window with Macintosh computers

[Doris S.]

Hi there!

I have the following problem:

I created notebooks with Mathematica 4 on a Windows PC. I stored it
with "Save As..." as Name.nb . Then I sent it by email as an
attachment to a Professor of mine. He is using a Macintosh
(Mathematica 4 / 4.1). When he saves the attachment on his hard disk
(as Name.nb) Mathematica doesn´t recognize this file and doesn´t open
it. Changing the name of the stored file to Name.txt and then again to
Name.nb solves this problem, the notebook can be opened.

How do I have to save the notebook or send the attachment that the
notebook can be opened at once without renaming the extension?

I appreciate any help!
TIA

Doris S.

[George Woodrow III]

Try opening the file from within Mathematica, using the open command,
instead of double-clicking on the file's icon.

When mac files are sent as a plain attachment, it loses the creator
codes that in OS 9 and before are needed for the Mac to figure out what
program to open when the user double clicks on the file. In OS X,
either the creator code or the extension will work. (Of course, the PC
does not make the special invisible file in the first place.)

If your professor sees a generic icon for the .nb file, he will have to
open the file from within Mathematica, or use any of several different
utility programs to change the creator code to 'Mathematica'. I believe
that there are utilities that will automatically assign the file's
'owner' based on the extension, but I have no examples.

george

[Andrzej Kozlowski]

At least as far as this aspect is concerned there is no more such thing
as a "Macintosh". The Mac behaviour in this respect is different on
classic MacOS (System 9.2 and earlier), MacOS 10.2 (and there may also
be a difference between 10.1 and 10.2). Under Mac OS 10.2 I do not have
any such problems. Under the classic Mac OS you certainly would have a
problem, but normally changing the extension would make no difference
(unless additional software is installed) so I am a little puzzled by
that part of your message. In any case, I think it will be next to
impossible to help you without knowing exactly which version of Mac OS
your professor is using.

Andrzej Kozlowski
Yokohama, Japan
http://www.mimuw.edu.pl/~akoz/
http://platon.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/andrzej/

[P.J. Hinton]

On Thu, 7 Nov 2002, Doris S. wrote:

> I created notebooks with Mathematica 4 on a Windows PC. I stored it
> with "Save As..." as Name.nb . Then I sent it by email as an
> attachment to a Professor of mine. He is using a Macintosh
> (Mathematica 4 / 4.1). When he saves the attachment on his hard disk
> (as Name.nb) Mathematica doesn´t recognize this file and doesn´t open
> it. Changing the name of the stored file to Name.txt and then again to
> Name.nb solves this problem, the notebook can be opened.
>
> How do I have to save the notebook or send the attachment that the
> notebook can be opened at once without renaming the extension?

I suspect that your e-mail software is labeling the attachment with the
generic APPLICATION/OCTET-STREAM MIME content type/subtype, which usually
has no default action associated with it because it refers to what appears
to be unknown data.

The safest thing you can do is to ensure that both your and your
colleague's e-mail client software is configured to associate Mathematica
notebooks with the APPLICATION/MATHEMATICA MIME content type/subtype.

On your side, that means making sure that the extension .nb is associated
with APPLICATION/MATHEMATICA. On the colleague's side, that means making
sure that attachments with the type APPLICATION/MATHEMATICA are opened by
the Mathematica front end.

You will need to consult the documentation for your e-mail software to
figure out how MIME types are configured.

--
P.J. Hinton
User Interface Programmer pa...@wolfram.com
Wolfram Research, Inc.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone.