Question on jpg attachments

P

Primavera

Registered
Hi there all,
A small but confusing situation happens when I send simple .jpg files to Windows users. Whenever I drag and drop and image into the email then send it , an additional .txt file apparently goes along with it. when I send two files the windows user sees four files and thinks there are files they cannot open. Is there a way to prevent this?

Any help would be great.
Thanks
 
Download GrimRipperCM and delete the resource fork of the files before you send them. The resource fork appears as a second file to windoes users.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9105

Deleting the resource fork won't make the files useless to you on your Mac, you'll just lose the preview image and the file will appear as a generic jpg to you.

It's best though to do it to a copy of the file you wish to send then delete the copy after you've sent it. Remember that most images you see on the internet or get from the net don't have the resource fork anyway.

Try it out and you'll see how it works.
 
Here's the Read Me from Grimripper. It explains the resource fork.

Resource fork?
What the heck is this? Below is a short introduction for recent switchers.

Resource fork is a legacy thing dating back to Classic Mac OS. Mac OS filesystem allows a single file to have two "forks": data fork and resource fork. Data fork is usually the main content while resource fork can often be described as some kind of metadata glued to the main content (this is not entirely correct but for the purpose of this discussion should be good enough). Both forks are presented as a single file in Mac OS. With the advent of Mac OS X resource forks have been deprecated but the file system stills allows them you can find them in many places. So why do you care and why one would want to remove those resources? Of course the resource fork takes up the disk space sometimes not providing any useful information — but it is not a big problem given the sizes of modern hard drives. The more important thing is cross platform compatibility. When you send a file by e-mail (picture or document) the resource fork is detached from the original file and you end up sending 2 files. This encoding method is called AppleDouble, when one file with data and resource is split into 2 files. The common situation is that you send a document with resource fork to your Windows friends and they receive 2 files. If the e-mail client they use is not AppleDouble-aware it does not know that it can ignore the file with resource fork data and displays 2 attachments: one document and one that looks like garbage. Your poor friends of course suspect that you sent them a virus. This is a good reason to remove resource fork before e-mailing pictures or documents.

Now the question is what type of files contain resource forks that can be safely removed. Below is a short summary provided here as a guidance only and is not a definitive answer. Do not hold me responsible if something is not correct.

You can remove resource fork from:
1. Pictures: JPEGs, PNGs, GIFs, TIFFs, etc. (the resource fork stores previews and sometimes some info about the software that saved the picture)
2. Microsoft Office documents - Word (.doc), Excel (.xls) & PowerPoint (.ppt)
3. AppleWorks documents
4. Text documents — although classic Simple Edit and many other programs used to store style information (font id, size, font face) so after removing the resource fork you retain plain text without style.
5. Most other documents — in some cases documents created by Mac-specific applications the resource fork may store some information you don't want to lose. If you are not sure, don't remove the resource fork. You don't want to send esoteric file formats to your Windows friends anyway.

Do not remove the resource fork from:
1. Applications - all Classic and early OS X applications (not bundled) contain resource fork which is necessary and must not be removed.
2. AppleScripts - with the exception of scripts saved as plain text you must not remove the resource fork or you will destroy the script.
3. Some QuickTime movies (not flattened)
 
I guess I need to do this to each and every file?
Click to expand...
Yep.

You can quickly check to see if a file has a resource fork with GrimRipper.

Select the file in the finder and Control Click it. If you see an option to remove the resource fork then a resource fork exists. If you don't see that option then none does.

If you have Photoshop and you do a Save for Web you'll end up with a file with no resource fork. If you do a normal save and choose one or more of the Preview options in the Photoshop Save dialog you'll end up with a file with a resource fork. This is a good way to learn about GrimRipper. You can strip your new file of its resource fork.

The author has a sense of humor, if you install it with the double menu option you'll get submenus.

Delete Resource Fork -> Are you sure? -> Yes, I am responsible for my deeds and No, I do not know what I'm doing
 
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