afp:// versus smb:// network mounting

[born2print]

We usually use just afp but the length of some client's file names cause us to need to shorten the names then re-link them. On some larger jobs, this can literally take hours.

Using smb it seems we can avoid that issue all together, but we remember (vaguely) from startup assistance that we "shouldn't use smb because of some reason"

Unless there's a concrete reason not to use smb, we are considering retraining everyone to use this alternative when they run into a job w/ hugenormous file names. As of now, we eat the extra time and run all the risk of miss-linking a renamed support file.

[Joe]

I actually asked a Kodak engineer about this recently for Prinergy and he said, and I quote, "AFP or SMB is fine".

Disclaimer: Haven't tried it with Prinergy since we don't have it.

[born2print]

Thanks a bunch Joe, I'll report back here as I "refine" other details.

"har har har"

[Tracy]

I have a similar problem, Its only when I go to put the job on the server. I can stuff the file and then put it on the server.
I leave the job on my desktop (I know bad) till Im done then stuff.
When I get a lot of images that have long names its frustrating!
Prolly not helpful. my 2 cents.

[zox]

afp (Apple File Protocol) is on it's way out, as far as I know.
smb (Server Message Block) is Windows networking protocol which is in use more and more. It has even been reverse-enginereed to be able to use it on Unix and Linux (Open source implementation is called Samba).

Now, we don't have Prinergy but from what I know, you should not need afp to connect to it.
The only reason why you would need afp is if you are connecting from Mac to your server and you keep fonts there.
SMB doesn't recognize mac resource forks and your old mac fonts other than ones with .otf and .ttf extensions will be lost.

I hope this helps you decide if you need afp or not.

[Joe]

Actually fonts no longer do this on SMB.

[SA]

Have a look at this... http://www.thursby.com/products/dave.html ...Just one of the things it does is let your filenames go up to 256 characters.

[born2print]

Thanks gang...

Joe, you say the fonts don't get jacked up on smb any longer?
I think a test is in order... that's the only hitch anyone here remembers so we were thinking of loading files smb and fonts afp then work in smb (whew)
It would be great to just stay mounted smb...

[Joe]

You can't mix and match or they won't work. If you copy files to the drive as AFP and then try to work through SMB you will have problems. Same if you pick up an older job that was done using AFP and try to do it through SMB. Instant font corruption. So it's not all rosy. SMB also isn't a fan of files without extensions.

On a (maybe) related not, Apple has changed AFP in OS 10.5.6. Pre OS 10.5.6 anytime you mounted a network drive it would open a window for that drive. Drove me crazy as I have about 10 AFP drives mounted at bootup and I would get 10 windows open. They fixed that and it no longer opens windows when you mount a drive. On the other hand they broke my Nexus Shuttle application that was using Bonjour. When I submit files to Nexus via it about 75% of the time they error out so I tried un-mounting the AFP drives involved and remounted them as SMB and voila... no more problems.

[GinSu]

Thanks gang...

Joe, you say the fonts don't get jacked up on smb any longer?
I think a test is in order... that's the only hitch anyone here remembers so we were thinking of loading files smb and fonts afp then work in smb (whew)
It would be great to just stay mounted smb...

The problem I'm having with font resources on an SMB volume is that Adobe apps won't recognize them when loaded through Fusion or FontExplorer. Quark and all other apps I use will, but not Adobe apps . I copy the fonts from the SMB volume (they are still good) to my hard drive and load from there.

Joe makes a good point, fonts copied to an AFP volume won't work when that same volume is mounted as SMB and fonts copied via SMB won't work when mounted as AFP.

[born2print]

have I mentioned lately how much this forum rocks? :cool:
(for me to poop on!)

[Joe]

Thanks gang...

Joe, you say the fonts don't get jacked up on smb any longer?
I think a test is in order... that's the only hitch anyone here remembers so we were thinking of loading files smb and fonts afp then work in smb (whew)
It would be great to just stay mounted smb...

The problem I'm having with font resources on an SMB volume is that Adobe apps won't recognize them when loaded through Fusion or FontExplorer. Quark and all other apps I use will, but not Adobe apps . I copy the fonts from the SMB volume (they are still good) to my hard drive and load from there.

Joe makes a good point, fonts copied to an AFP volume won't work when that same volume is mounted as SMB and fonts copied via SMB won't work when mounted as AFP.

Hey GinSu, have you tried setting FEX up to copy the fonts to local drive instead of opening them from the networked drive? I always do this because I don't want anyone loading fonts from network shares. Seems like this might solve the issue with the Adobe apps.

[born2print]

Good point there, we copy fonts to local to use then toss (maintained on server just for organization, reuse and archiving)
This is a Kodak-Prinergy best practice (not to enable fonts from the server)

[Joe]

Good point there, we copy fonts to local to use then toss (maintained on server just for organization, reuse and archiving)
This is a Kodak-Prinergy best practice (not to enable fonts from the server)

Yeah, and suitcase used to throw a fit when booting and the network drive wasn't available to open a font that someone had opened from the network drive. Since then I always set the font management app to copy files to the local drive. If I find a co-worker opening fonts from a network share I give them an extremely dirty look!

[Joe]

ANd then we go to town!