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Re: FTPClient Beta Released - Please test
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Re: FTPClient Beta Released - Please test


  • Subject: Re: FTPClient Beta Released - Please test
  • From: terry <email@hidden>
  • Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 22:08:44 -0600

A few points to add:

There used to be a(n) bug/oversight (I'm not sure if it's been fixed) in Stuffit, where long filenames would get truncated in tar.gz (and other?) formats when being decompressed, so that's one down side to using Stuffit to automatically decompress files. (Unless the bug's been fixed, in which case this is a moot point.) This may or may not affect users that download tar.gz files. (This may also affect .sit files too, but I don't know) I think it was related to the old filename length limitation in Classic Mac OS.

I think that gzipping a .dmg file to give to users is perfectly fine, unless your filename is too long, and then your .dmg extension is lost, and the file may not be recognized by the system as disk image.

Regardless of all of this, gzip is by no means a compression format of "unknown reliability", and, as was pointed out earlier, it *will* decompress with stuffit, on an out-of-the-box machine (with stuffit installed).

Disk images, I think, are easy for the user. They've been around for quite a long time, and I think users have gotten used to them.

I also think that users are just as happy with a folder on their desktop, so it some cases the disk image may not be needed.

The nice thing about Disk images is that they *can* keep track of resource fork data, and you're right, tar and gzip lose this information when it creates an archive. That's a problem where "classic" style resource forks are concerned. It's not that it ignores the data, it just doesn't know about it, and as such, it can't (without knowing about it) do anything with it.

So yes, stuffit can preserve resource forks, while tar (and gzip) can not, however, using disk images (that can preserve resource forks) as well as using gzip should be a fine alternative to .sit in most cases.

- Terry

P.S. Isn't this conversation a tad offtopic for "Cocoa Development"?

On Friday, August 9, 2002, at 09:47 PM, David Wright wrote:

On Fri, 9 Aug 2002, Aaron Kelley wrote:

On Friday, August 9, 2002, at 06:42 , Stiphane Sudre wrote:

Since DiskCopy creates 5,10,whatever MB Disk Image, you need to
compress them.

=> .sit

Since .sit is not a format necessarily recognized by every
OS/client/whatever (Proprietary format), encoding in .hqx helps
preventing download nightmare story.

=> .hqx

Two bad steps instead of one reasonable one: you need to compress a
file => .gz.

Wouldn't tar.gz be more proper from the unix standpoint than gut gz?

From a generic unix standpoint, it would probably be better not to use
disk images at all, and just stick entirely with .tar.gz's. I know I've
been annoyed when trying to download cocoa code at work (linux/freebsd)
and been stuck with nothing to mount it.

I realise though that they are alien to the majority of mac users.

Also, am I right to think that tar and gzip - unlike stuffit - will
ignore resource forks?

dave
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