[PLUG] Archive formats (was Re: StuffIt for Linux and Solaris)

[Leonard Rosenthol <leonardr@lazerware.com>]

At 6:31 AM -0400 7/11/01, Jeff Abrahamson wrote:
> Binhex you can get around. Pkzip, for example, understands binhex

	No it doesn't.  WinZip does, I believe, but PKZip doesn't. 
And of course, both of those are on the Windows platform - not Linux. 
But yes, BinHex is no big deal - there are a number of tools that can 
handle it.

	FYI: One nice thing that StuffIt does on non-MacOS platforms 
when it decodes BinHex (and MacBinary, etc.) is to offer the option 
of "reencoding" into either AppleSingle or AppleDouble - which is 
GREAT for servers that are then file-system mounted on a Mac.   Even 
cooler, is that the Windows version of StuffIt can deal with NTFS 
"forks" and can save/restore Mac shares on an NT server.


> and has a way nicer license than Alladin's closed source solution above.

	Huh?  PKZip is a closed source implementation.  Perhaps you 
are thinking of the InfoZip (<http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/>) 
implementation of the Zip file format which was created by Phil Katz 
(PK).


>  But .sit files are a pain, and Alladin's done a good job of
> convincing Mac users that sit is the only way to go.
	I have news for you - technically it is!  The StuffIt archive 
format is the only one that can completely save & restore all aspects 
of a Macintosh file and/or directory structure.  For that matter, 
it's also the only format that can completely save & restore all 
aspects of a Windows or Unix file/directory.  (NOTE: gnutar does 
pretty good for Unix, but doesn't handle Windows or Mac)


Leonard

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