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From: Dik.T..Winter@f20.n226.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Dik T. Winter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Don't post stuff using stuffit
Message-ID: <616.2783DECE@busker.fidonet.org>
Date: 28 Dec 90 09:10:44 GMT
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Reply-To: dik@cwi.nl

In article <SBCHANIN.90Dec27174738@fiber-one.ai.mit.edu> sbchanin@ai.mit.edu
(Steve Chanin) writes:
 > 
 >      In response to the past few articles which mentioned problems
 > with stuffit, I'd say don't use it.  Use Compactor instead.  Compactor
 > is a $25 shareware copmression program which can produce
 > self-extracting archives if you want it.  Its performance
 > characteristics (better compression, comparable uncompress time) make
 > it a much better choice for network transferred software.  The
 > following is an article I posted to info-mac which compares Compactor
 > to Stuffit and Stuffit Classic.  By the way, I have no connection with
 > any of the individuals/companies responsible for these products.
 > 
I disagree.  For some reasons I still use a fairly old system (4.1 I believe)
and compactor refuses to work with systems before 6.0.2.  But also do not
use Stuffit DeLuxe, because not all archives compressed and stuffed by
Stuffit DeLuxe can be decompressed and unstuffed by UnStuffit DeLuxe.  (For
an example see in the sumex-aim archives game/atc-4.0 etc.)  So my advise:
use Stuffit 1.5.1 for which also non-Mac utilities are available to do
unstuffing.  (Why would you not want to unstuff on your Mac you might ask.
There are a number of reasons:
1.  I do not have a hard disk, and considering the prices of hard disks in
    the Netherlands, it is not likely I will have one in the very near
    future.
2.  Just now there are questions in the ibm-pc groups about programs to do
    unstuffing.  They want to use the Mac sound files on their pc; a
    perfectly valid request; but they do not have access to a Mac.
3.  I want to look at the stuff before I download.
etc.)

[Obl joke: ever tried to unstuff a 600k archive on a single drive Mac?
Who was more patient?  You, the Mac or Unstuffit?  Yes, it means swapping
disks over 1000 times.]

Btw, I have seen compactor working and it looks great.  What it is missing
(and all packing/compacting programs are missing it) is a dual progress bar.
All programs display their progress either in size of the original or in
size of the compacted stuff.  What I would like to see is a two bars (with
the same scale), one displaying original size, one displaying compacted size.
--
dik t. winter, cwi, amsterdam, nederland
dik@cwi.nl

 + Organization: CWI, Amsterdam

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