OT: Mail system trashes Swedish flag

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Wed, 2013-03-20 at 14:52 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
> On 03/20/13 14:41, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
> > I've just completed the first exercise for using inkscape, which is
> to draw a Swedish flag.  I saved it as a PDF and emailed it to a
> Swedish friend, but all he got when he viewed the image was an empty
> rectangle.  It seems the trouble is that somewhere in the mail system,
> probably in their Windows mail reader, text lines in the PDF were
> converted from Unix style NL termination to DOS style CR/NL
> termination.  Sure enough when I converted the file on my system using
> the command:
> >
> >     unix2dos -n -f SwedishFlag.pdf SwedishFlag+cr.pdf
> >
> > the output file displays as an empty box, using either okular or acroread.
> >
> > Does anyone know what's going on here, or how to send such a file to
> a Windows machine without it's being trashed?
> 
> At this point all I know is this....
> 
> Any PDF file to which I apply the conversion results in what you
> describe.  A PDF file contains binary information.  As such, I don't
> think the experiment is valid.
> 
> >From the man page...
> 
>       The Dos2unix package includes utilities "dos2unix" and "unix2dos" to
>        convert plain text files in DOS or Mac format to Unix format and vice
>        versa.
> 
> A PDF isn't a plain text file.
> 
> I would ask the recipient to check the file size they have received.

This much I know already.  The "-f" option is required to force the
conversion for binary files.  The file I get after the unix2dos
conversion is exactly the same as the file my recipient emailed back to
me, and suffers exactly the same problem as the one I convert on my own
system.  Which is how I know that it's carriage return conversion that
is causing the trouble with email and not something else.

The **real** question is: Why is it that when I email a PDF file to a
Windows machine it usually can be read without difficulty?  What's the
trouble with the Swedish flag?

> -- 
> >From now on, at least during winter time, Im going to blame all
> spelling an grammar erros on the cat sitting on my chest every time I
> sit down at the computer....

I suspect the cat has been on your chest (8-).

All the best - jon