Stuffit .sit

[pistooli]

My main machine is an iBook G4 running Leopard. But I also do use OS8.6 and OS9 a lot on other machines. I am looking for a way to create .sit compressed archives on the iBook, to be transfered to my older machines. Recent stuffit deluxe creates only .sitx files. I am aware that Stuffit 7.x can indeed extract .sitx, but I use 5.5 on my machines.

Can anybody advise me? Thanks.

[theos911]

You will want to find a version of Stuffit w/Dropstuff. I know v6 will create a regular .sit. When you have dropstuff, you can simply drag and drop folders to make an archive.

That said, I personally prefer .tar.gz as it is universally accepted across the Mac OS, Mac OS X, and Linux/BSD world. (I'm not sure if versions of stuffit before 4 can untar/unzip them, so you will want to check ahead of time if you are archiving for very early versions of stuffit.)

Just an FYI:

Expander 5.0 contained many bugs, and its file format was not readable by the earlier version 4.5, leaving Mac users of the time without a viable compression utility.
~wikipedia

[Forrest]

My 2 cents - zip is an easier method to move docs, pictures, music between OSX and your Classic macs. OSX 10.4 and later will create .zip files from the desktop by clicking 'compress' from the File menu. Stuffit Standard 7.0.1 will be able to unzip these files .zip files directly. If you want to move files from your Classic macs to OSX, then use the DropZip program from Stuffit 7.0.1

I believe Stuffit 7.0.1 also works under OSX.

Their were alternatives to Stuffit if you wanted to unzip on you Classic macs - I don't know if they're still available.

[Mk.558]

Here is the problem: .sit archives from 5.5 won't open with Expander 3. You will have to use the same version (or decompress with a higher version) for it to work.

.zip files don't properly handle Mac resource forks and icon database stuff. Don't use zip, especially if you cross the PC barrier. For all my pre-OS X compression, I use CompactPro - it is lightweight, does just as good as StuffIt, and works just fine off a floppy disk. However, StuffIt 5.5 does have useful built in features if you work with a variety of content from all over the place - .zip, .bin, .hqx decoding, etc.

If you can network all your computers with AFP via PhoneNET or Ethernet, then you won't have to worry so much about compression.

[pistooli]

OK, I found a solution. Stuffit 8 Standard works on Leopard and can compress both .sit and sitx via DropStuff

Also Stuffit 10 Delux does the same with a bit more elegant way, called MagicMenu. Just click on the file or folder, then press ⌘S. That simple.

[Scott Baret]

Your best bet is to get an old version of Expander. They used to bundle it with OS 9, and I'd say that's by far your best option.

Don't waste your time with current versions of Stuffit unless you want to deal with Smith Micro and their intense registration, e-mail flooding, and basic destruction of the original small business concept of Raymound Lau's masterpiece.

[pistooli]

Thanks. As stated above. v10 works just fine.