The Glimpse Facility - Note to Macintosh Users

The Macintosh, by default, creates "carriage returns" at the end of each line in a text file. In UNIX, a "line feed" is used to mark the end of each line in a text file. In DOS and Windows, both a "carriage return" and a "line feed" are used.

The WebCom servers run the UNIX operating system, and therefore expect a line feed at the end of each line in a text file. Since the MacIntosh system uses only a carriage return at the end of each text line, and not a line feed, UNIX software is unable to distinguish between different lines in a Mac format text file (more precisely, it thinks the file contains one, extremely long (run-together) line). This is not a problem for DOS and Windows files since they have the crucial line feed in addition to a carriage return; and UNIX generally ignores the carriage returns.

A number of WebCom services may not operate quite correctly if a text file used by the service is saved in Macintosh format. An index of all effected WebCom services can be found in the WebCom Technical Support FAQ: I'm a Macintosh user. How does this affect my ability to use WebCom services?

As for the WebCom Glimpse indexing facility, the following problems can arise as a result of this:

• If you transfer any of the files created by Glimpse to your Mac, save them in Mac text format, then transfer them back to your WebCom directory, they will no longer work properly. This should not be a problem since normally you would not do this; if you use our standard form interfaces and your Web browser to manage your Glimpse indexes, you will have no problem. If you do edit any of these files directly on your Mac, just make sure to save them in "UNIX format".

• HTML files (web pages) are not affected by this problem and generally work fine even if saved in Mac format. However, if you have a Glimpse search which matches a Mac format HTML file and you configure your search to show matching lines since the web page is in Mac format (no line feeds), UNIX will think the entire file is one long line; therefore when the matching line is displayed, the entire file ends up being displayed. This problem can be resolved, again, by saving your web pages in UNIX format.