Question : Text File Formats Mac to Windows

Hey guys -

I am finally trying out a mac - and am getting frustrated at what appear to be some pretty odd differences in how Mac encodes a simple txt file as opposed to windows.

When creating a new text file in Text Editor, or Pages (In pages to save as text, I simply select Share, Export) it has all the carriage returns I intended, and is simple to read.

The problem comes in when viewing that same txt file back on a Windows PC (either VMware fusion via sharing, another windows machine networked, or via dropbox's service) all of the carriage returns have disappeared?? It is one massively long single string.

I have attempted saving in UTF8, 16, Western (Mac Roman), etc... and still no changes when viewing a mac created txt file on a windows machine.

The whole reason I use .txt files for all my notes is it's guarantee of cross platform/application readability, so I am quite surprised to be finding this issue..

Any help/thoughts would be GREATLY appreciated - thanks!

Answer : Text File Formats Mac to Windows

Welcome to the frustration many people have had between *NIX and Windows/DOS for years.  UNIX, Linux and MAC since OS X use a single Line Feed character (hex 0A) for end of lines.  Windows/DOS uses the TWO characters Line Feed & Carriage Return (hex 0A and 0D repestively).  I think that MAC prior to OS X uses a single carriage return character.  Anyway ... that is all history.
My suggestion is to use a text editor that can handle the differences.  On Windows a great editor is UltraEdit/UEStudio but that costs $ ... a very good free alternative is notepad++ (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/) both of these editors can read and convert between the formats.  I am not familiar with editors for MAC ... perhaps some other experts will help here.