Zip Archiving in Panther
 

Choosing to Create Archive in the Panther Finder conveniently creates a .zip archive. Just wondering:

Is Apple moving away from StuffIt for some reason? (I wouldn't mind saving a few bucks on "Deluxe" upgrades every few years)

Is zip better compression? Or is this mainly meant as a better way for Macs to communicate (and ingratiate) with Windows on a network?

(Amusing anecdote: I recently sent a Mac-.zip file to a Mac friend who, despite his years of computer experience, put off opening it due to his anxiety that it was somehow "Windows-tarnished". He's experienced, but a dumb-ass.)

Thoughts?

I'm not a Unix god by any stretch of the imagination, but .zip files have been in the gnu distributions for a long time. I think the reason for the .zip being generated is mostly because apple's system is now taking more advantage of the already-built in tools.

That is, it's more of an open source unix thing than an apple thing.

(at least that's my take.)

Re: Zip Archiving in Panther
 

Using Zip to archive files is not a good thing. Zip archives usually throw away resource forks of files. Maybe apple has done something clever with the zip archiving format for 10.3.
Then again, maybe not.

Oh, and by the way, we now have dead guys posting on MacOSXHints???

http://www.lostcarpark.com/news.php?item=14

Zip archives created by OS 10.3 contain extra folders with a bunch of files that start with . that contain the resource fork information.

Presumably, OSes that don't care about resource forks will ignore that extra stuff, while OS X will be able to reconstruct the resource forks.

Surprisingly (I'm sure it all depends), the extra information doesn't add too much to the zip file size (compared to the command line version of zip which strips resource forks).

Resource forks are usually very small. so the minimal size difference makes sense. It will be interesting to see what happens when these new zip files get sent to Windows folks.

I just tried it using SimpleText (100% resource fork) as a test victim.

Zipped it, sent it over the LAN to a PC, viewed it with WinZIP, seeing the (empty) data fork and the (full) resource fork, beginning with the '.'. Closed WinZIP.

Then copied the archive back to the Mac, unzipped it, double clicked SimpleText and up starts Classic, with SimpleText running fine.

Pretty schnazzy.

I sent two zip files to my Windows machine on my local network. One was made from Mac executable and data files, and the other I made using Windows executable and data files.

The resource fork files were intact on the windows machine after unzipping there. I copied the Mac folder back to Panther over the LAN, and found the executables had been destroyed (not unexpected). The text file was OK and readable (as expected).

The Windows zip file extracted nicely and worked as expected. The resulting folder also contained resource fork files.

So if we send Panther created zip files to windows users they will have some extra files to delete.

C A U T I O N ! ! ! ! !

I just used stuffit expander 7.0.3 on a Panther created zip file and expander destroyed it! I guess only Panther understands these new zip files. Perhaps someone else could verify, or check if expander 8 will work?

Test 2 - created an empty HFS+ disk image, and copied some Classic applications to it. Zip archived the .dmg file (2.5 MB -> 540KB) and copied the .dmg.zip file to the PC.

Opened in WinZIP. Big Data fork, tiny resource fork. Extracted only the data fork as a .dmg file.

Copied this back to the Mac, double clicked and low and behold the disk image mounts properly, with the Classic apps wait to be used.


PS - Wayne, good catch on Stuffit there. That one will surely bite some people using pre-10.3 systems.

Re: Re: Zip Archiving in Panther
 

Excuse me. I should have asked for deep thoughts.

The Stuffit Expander 8.0 version also mangles the archive.

Also, the only versions of Expander that will run in OS 9 or earlier are 7.0.3 or lower. Be cautious who you send these zip archives to, or you may be surprised with the results.

Shouldn't that force Apple to produce a stand-alone app for (at least) Jaguar? Not everyone is going to move to Panther.

Maybe Panther zips should just be used for archiving on one's own computer. Use Disk Utility or StuffIt for distribution.

avoid panther archiving until it is vetted
 

this is a potentially huge issue that needs some thorough testing.

for now, if one panther-archives, one should consider it unreliable.

testing here has revealed some other "archiving" issues regarding finder copy from one partition to another. developing...

Re: avoid panther archiving until it is vetted
 

Is this Zip archiving issue separate and unrelated to "Archive and install" choice when installing Panther?

Dave Dietrick

Re: Re: avoid panther archiving until it is vetted
 

yes, a separate issue.

we are discussing the new contextual menu item "create archive..."

Re: Re: Re: avoid panther archiving until it is vetted
 

Thank you,

Dave

My understanding is that .dmg files protect or hide the resource forks of files inside of them.

I believe you can archive a .dmg using zipit or dropzip or just about any compression tool and all of the resource forks of the files in the .dmg will still be preserved.

unzip?
 

I'm wondering how to unzip files created by zip archiving facilty of Panther. My default unzipper is StuffItExpander. So opening the zip file invokes SuffIt. Then there would be __MacOSX stuff which I assume the resource folk part of the original files.

Are there any ways to let Pahter to unzip? Or, am I missing something?

Thanks in advance.

Take a .zip file, and do a 'Get Info' on it. Where it says 'Open With' select the easily identified app 'BOMArchiveHelper' as the one to use.

Click the 'Change All' button. That should do it.