Advanced Photon Source

A U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science,
Office of Basic Energy Sciences national synchrotron x-ray research facility

Information Solutions: ICMS Best Practices

• Embed Fonts in Primary File PDFs
  When contributing a PDF as a primary file, be aware of the document's fonts. If the document contains non-standard fonts and the PDF is created without fonts embedded, the document may not optimize correctly when it is submitted to the ICMS, resulting in garbage characters. In general, it is recommended to embed fonts when creating PDFs.
  
  
• Thunderbird Configuration for ICMS Emails
  In order for automated emails from the ICMS to display correctly in Thunderbird, turn on "Display Attachments Inline" in the View menu. Checking this option lets you view embedded images and other file types inline, rather than as separate attachments. Without enabling the setting, emails from the ICMS will appear empty, and you must click on an attachment. Note, however, that enabling the setting can be a security risk, since you lose the ability to avoid opening a malicious attachment.
  

• Checking In OmniGraffle Files
  The Macintosh application OmniGraffle saves its native documents with the file extension.graffle. These documents are Mac OS packages that contain several pieces of content (images, XML files, etc.) The ICMS is unable to check in Mac OS packages since on non-Mac platforms, the package concept does not exist. To check in a native .graffle file, it is recommended that users first compress the file into a zip archive, then check in the .zip as the Primary File and attaching a PDF version as the Alternate File.
  
  
• Microsoft Office Documents: Recommendations and Known Issues
  • Microsoft Word:
    • Footnotes: a footnotes numbering error was identified in a document created with Word 2004 for Mac. The footnotes were correct on the Mac, but in Word 2003 for Windows, the footnote numbering restarted on every page. To fix the issue, save the document as an .rtf file on the Mac, then open it in Word 2003 for Windows and re-save it as a native .doc file.
  • Microsoft Excel:
    • Non-Letter Paper Sizes: when contributing documents created with Excel for Mac, selecting a Paper Size other than Letter (8.5" x 11") has no effect on the PDF created by the ICMS refinery, causing the resulting PDF to crop to Letter size. The workaround for this known issue is to select the desired Paper Size in Excel's Page Setup, and then print the document to a PDF locally. Check in this PDF as the Alternate File.