Mac/Win compatible external file links

[Prof. Frink]

Hello,

I have recently learned that starting in September thanks to a joint venture I am going to have a couple dozen Windows XP users connecting to a database that up to this point has only ever been used by Mac OS X users and all the externally linked files are on AppleShare servers with links that are unintelligible to Windows.

My first blush impression was that this could be accomplished with Samba - unfortunately Mac OS X appears to want the link formatted smb://10.0... while Windows seems to be looking for 10.0... as it is any other Windows share.

I was thinking I would make a toggle so the user could select Mac or Windows and adjust the path automatically, the path is universal while the filename is unique, but I would like to make this as seamless as possible for the new users because the database is fairly intimidating to start with.

The next alternative appeared to be storing the files on an intranet server and linking them by URL - but I would really like to leave the files in a form that users can navigate to them outside of the database.

Unfortunately I have had no experience working with Windows in a networked environment and I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated, this website looks like a tremendous resource and I hope there is something I can contribute.

[CoArtist]

Hello,

Since this post was a few months ago, I am hoping that you have solved this issue. I have a similar problem and I have not run across a way to solve it.

I have bot Mac and PC users inputting data into the same database - image references from a shared server (Windows). The Mac users can't see the PC user's input images and vice versa.

Have you solved this issue?

Thanks,

[CoArtist]

Actually, the only way we have found is to purchase a plug-in from

Troi, http://www.troi.com/, but it required FM 7 or newer.

Let me know if you find any other way.

Thanks,