[thelist] Mac Users: Problems viewing RTF

[Erik Mattheis]

>I'm terribly sorry, but could you define "worked fine"?  For me, "worked
>fine" means it opened in a browser window straigh away, and I take it this
>isn't what's happening on Planet Mac.

At the present time, I'm 99% positive that it's impossible to view a 
RTF or DOC in any Mac browser window ... I believe that's an Active-X 
thing which isn't here for Mac (although there is an "Enable Active-X 
in IE 5 Mac's preferences).

By "worked perfectly" I mean it downloaded to my desktop with the 
correct filename, I double clicked it and it opened up in Word with 
all punctuation displayed as intended.

>  > Two Horrible things happen for me in IE 5 Mac:
>>  The file is always saved as links_goto.asp.
>
>I know :o(  It seems that you can drag this to ClarisWorks and it opens,
>though. If you go straight to the .rtf file [
>http://www.satinslippers.com/forums/mods/uploaded/MaidenPieria/latentimage.r
>tf ] skipping the whole links > database > hitcount interaction (which I
>don't want to do), my Mac people still have to drag it somewhere to open it.
>What *should* be happening?

The server MIME type seems to be correct and I'd think if you added a 
notice to Mac users to drop the file on their word processor's icon, 
you'd be doing everything a web mistress could do.

PS - is links_goto.asp a redirect? How are you doing it ... I think 
most sites that do something like that have a meta refresh and/or 
JavaScript redirection to the actual file and it is saved with the 
correct name.

____
Following is useless info from someone who only half understands why 
the Mac file system sometimes doesn't work as one would expect:

When you double click a file ... files have a type/creator - the type 
being what kind of file it is (jpeg, gif, plain text, rich text) ... 
the creator being the program that will open up the file. If you 
download a file from the web, it's not going to have a type/creator, 
but the (browser or system wide setting) will put a type/creator 
based on the (server MIME type/file extension) ... I've never been 
able to tell what takes precidence in what situations ... all I know 
is that every time you update RealPlayer it claims everything that it 
might have a remote possibility of being able to play, even if you 
tell the installer not to. Then you realize it's making your Mac 
crash six to twelve times a day despite that fact you're not using it 
and you throw away RealPlayer only to install it again a month later.

Anyway ... If the file is downloaded and a creator is not added, 
double clicking it will give you a list of applications that may be 
able to read it based on the type. What happens on any particular Mac 
is going to depend at least somewhat on the order in which things 
have been installed ... for example if a browser is installed after 
ClarisWorks, a downloaded file may be saved with the browser's 
default type/creator for RTFs ... but if it's the other way around 
ClairisWorks may tell the browser to start saving RTFs so they belong 
to it.

-- 

- Erik Mattheis

Wants to see a flying saucer.

(612) 827 3963