It's been a while-
I used to do contract work with a Mac shop, and they had some nice
print house stuff, but the primary reason it worked was a piece of software
called Xinet. This is a Mac file sharing software that makes mountable Mac
volumes on the Unix box and allows the files to be browseable by unix as
well. It would also allow your server to act as a seed router for the
Macs. They're at: www.xinet.com, I don't know if they have a linux port,
but I know that it just works.
There is another, called Helios, I had heard they were going out of
business, but I'm not sure. Now these are both proprietary, pay-for progs,
not cheap, so it depends on what your client wants to get done. IF they
have time adn patience to see if there is a free, working solution, then
they may be rewarded in the end, but if they want it up now and running,
I'd suggest the previously mentioned software pieces. This is what the big
print houses run on, and they do so because it is where they make their
money. It's termed as OPI (Open Prepress Interface), something about
workflow and such gets thrown in, but basically, it's a file server that
allows for free transfer of files between areas in a print shop from Macs
to press.
I have a friend that is really crazy on Macs and networking them, he
may have some more ideas on how to get your stuff to work, and with Macs
there are parts that are strange, for instance, the resource fork and data
fork of a file. These are held by the Xinet program in a directory, one
resource fork for each data file, both being put together on the Mac to
make a complete file, just straight file serving in that case doesn't quite
cover the bases. There are quirks to Macs, but the printers love them, and
from what I can tell, the printers in town are going to stck to the
original Mac OS until all of their tools are native on OSX, besides, they
have to re-train somewhat for OSX regardless, and no one wants to spend the
time and money on that right now. I think they'll be better off on OSX,
but I just don't think I could convince the MacHeads I know of that one
quite yet.
Thanks,
mbutler