[thelist] Downloadable Mac files -- .ZIP or .SIT?

Shawn K. Quinn skquinn at speakeasy.net
Fri Apr 13 15:04:54 CDT 2007


On Fri, 2007-04-13 at 18:52 +0100, Conyers, Dwayne wrote:
> I would recommend all of the above.  When creating archives for PC
> users, ZIP is default

For *Windows* users, Zip is default. There is nothing about PC hardware
in and of itself that makes it default to any archive format. On my PC,
gzip'd/bzip2'd tar is considered the default.

Please do not use "PC" if you really mean "Windows" or "PC running
Windows".

> but I also use RAR for its more powerful extraction capabilities.  RAR
> also does EXE self-extracting archives...

Many people do not realize that RAR introduces a potential dependency on
non-free software where one need not exist (while source code is
available for UnRAR, it is only available under a non-free license), and
for that reason I would suggest staying away from RAR. At best, RAR
files are annoying for some users; at worst, they are inaccessible for
some of those users (if the UnRAR source will not compile properly on a
given operating system, or for users who only run free software).

With regard to self-extracting archives, thankfully, most sane archive
decompressors can just ignore the self-extract header (in the case of
Info-Zip's unzip program, I think it will say "junk" was skipped).
Especially in the context of the Web, it is important to realize there
are other operating systems out there; self-extracting archives are not
a panacea for multiple archive formats.

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn at speakeasy.net>




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