How Do I Zip/Compress A Folder On A MAC?

[thisistoto]

Eh?

[ffooky]

cntrl(right) click on the folder/file of your choice and select "Create Archive of "xxxx".

I'm not 100% sure whether the subsequent zip files are Windows zip compatible or whether there's a significant difference between BOM in Panther & Tiger.

You could also try cleanarchiver (http://www.sopht.jp/cleanarchiver/) which has the ability to miss out pesky .DS_Store files :-)

[Five]

use .zip for cross-compatability. I once got a .sit (I think it was called) and its almost impossible to open on a pc. I eventually found a way. at least that's how it was a couple years ago.

[willndmb]

stuffit expander

[Five]

yeah, that's the pc app that does it! but its the only one I could find and its not free

[willndmb]

got mine free??? http://www.stuffit.com/mac/expander/

[ffooky]

use .zip for cross-compatability. I once got a .sit (I think it was called) and its almost impossible to open on a pc. I eventually found a way. at least that's how it was a couple years ago.

Allume and its Stuffit products are increasingly shunned by the OS X community in favour of the zip format. I'm trying to remember a discussion about this on one of the Mac newsgroups and I think cleanarchiver was declared the best candidate for cross platform archives as it ignores Mac-specific stuff.

[Five]

dunno... now its $24.99-$49.99
http://www.stuffit.com/win/index.html

I wonder if there's a freeware alternative by now?

edit: I see, they have a freeware expander that can't compress available on that page.

[willndmb]

hmmm well i know mine compresses as well and it was free
but your right looks like they charge now for the compressing one

maybe i will give cleanarchiver a try too

[ffooky]

Can a Windows user see which (if any) of these decompresses succesfully ?

Don't worry, the content is just a picture of a bloke wearing a T-shirt advertising his favourite computer manufacturer :)

One is zipped with Panther's own built-in utility and the other was done with cleanarchiver (.DS_Store and icon ignored).

[U2Lynne]

Both of them decompressed just fine on my PC running NT.

[diggrd]

opened both fine on winxp pc
panther had extra file in zip that did not extract just a nameholder

[Five]

they both decompress perfectly with identical checksums

just the panther one has an additional apparantly useless file alongside the folder in the zip which has the same name as the folder. when I try to extract that file I get an error reading "The system cannot find the file specified"

[ffooky]

Nice, thanks for the help. Right, cleanarchiver gets the nod over the built-in utility but it's good to know that BOM archives are cross platform enough if that's all you have access to.

[willndmb]

why worry about those pc people anyway, let them come see the light and experience a mac :D