Re: [OT] Standard OS X Compression format
Re: [OT] Standard OS X Compression format
- Subject: Re: [OT] Standard OS X Compression format
- From: Brendan Younger <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 00:01:15 -0500
On Thursday, November 15, 2001, at 05:51 PM, Steve Gehrman wrote:
I think the Macintosh community would be better off if we could phase
out the .sit format and standardize on something that's open for Mac OS
X.
What should the new format be? .gz and .tar.gz don't include resource
forks.
Should we create a new format?
I think this is an important topic to finalize while OS X is still
relatively new. Something as basic as file compression/decompression
should not be in controlled by a single third party developer.
I can provide the open source application for compress and decompress
once we decide.
MacBinary, BinHex, and Stuffit have been the staples of Macintosh file
sharing for many, many years. Heck, I even have some MacBinary code
lying around that I could whip up to use gzip for compression. The BIG
problem, is that in order for your new, wonderful encoding scheme to be
of any worth, it has to find it's way into MILLIONS of Mac users'
homes. Stuffit, for those who are coming from non-Mac backgrounds,
started as (I believe) a high schooler's pet project and has morphed
into the de-facto encoding/decoding standard. Aladdin has done a great
service by providing a clean, fast, and free decoder for almost any type
of file encoding you're likely to find. As such, I would suggest that,
instead of furthering the proliferation of file formats, use .sit if you
are so inclined and use a combination of MacBinary and gzip (which
Stuffit Expander will decode for you) if you want an open, accessible
standard.
Brendan Younger