Converting Mac Chemdraw images to PC gif images. How?

[Dr. Alan Wilson]

> At Bristol, we have the unfortunate situation of the Organic and 
> Inorganic Depts using Macs, while we in Physical Chemistry (including
> me, the webmaster), use PCs and UNIX.

Ditto!! However the WWW stuff is done on Macs so this is kind of an 
inverse problem...some of the following may therefore not be 
relevant.

> The text is just about do-able, but I'm having real problems converting
> the Chemdraw files.  The best I've come up with is to get the author to

My solution to the whole problem is not nice, but works. I use my PC 
to read in Mac files (eg Microsoft Word + embedded ChemDraw) which 
works ok. I then use Paint Shop Pro to cut out the images - drop them 
down to 8 bits and save as gifs. The rest of the processing is done 
on the Macs using Graphic Converter (resize, reduce res. to 72dpi, 
make transparent etc.) The good thing is that the Macs will read PC 
disks (if you have PC Exchange) and therefore anything I create on my 
PC can be read on the server (in fact I set my PC up as an FTP server 
and use Fetch on the Macs to pull over the images etc..)

So... what does this mean for your problem? I guess that if you can 
get people to write their stuff on a PC disk that would help. Mac 
files with OLE information shouldn't present a problem. If you have 
Mac disks with only ChemDraw files, again they are readable by the PC 
version and you can cut and paste them into PSP when they are open.

Sorry if this sounds a bit convoluted but it's almost going home time 
and I'm not ready for it...

Alan
 
Dr. Alan Wilson
School of Chemistry
University of Birmingham, UK
V 0121-414-7189
F 0121-414-4403
E a.wilson at bham.ac.uk
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