Apple Aperture 2 - Manual (Page 129)

Chapter 4 Importing Images 129
I
Avoiding Special Characters
The most conservative filenaming conventions provide the most cross-platform
compatibility. This means that your filenames will work in different operating systems, such
as Mac OS X and other UNIX-based operating systems, Mac OS 9, and Windows. You also
need to consider filenaming when you transfer files via the Internet, where you can never
be certain what computer platform your files may be stored on, even if temporarily.
Avoid Example characters Reasons
File separators : (colon)
/ (slash)
\ (backslash) You cannot use colons in the
names of files and folders
because Mac OS 9 (Classic) uses
this character to separate
directories in pathnames. In
addition, some applications may
not allow you to use slashes in
the names of items.
These characters are directory
separators for Mac OS 9,
Mac OS X, and DOS (Windows)
respectively.
Special characters not included
in your native alphabet ¢ ™ These characters may not be
supported or may be difficult to
work with when exported to
other applications.
Punctuation marks, parentheses,
quotation marks, brackets,
and operators . , [ ] { } ( ) ! ; “ ‘ * ? < > | These characters are often
used in scripting and
programming languages.
White space characters such
as spaces, tabs, new lines, and
carriage returns (the last two
are uncommon) White space is handled
differently in different
programming languages and
operating systems, so certain
processing scripts and
applications may treat your files
differently than expected. The
most conservative filenames
avoid all use of white space
characters, and use the
underscore (_) character instead.