Stuffit ...

N

~~NeYo~~

iBud
i am intrigued, as to wat the deal is, with updates you download, and how they are compacted and so forth.
Coming from a Windows background, everything was "just" Zipped! ... that was simple...
Now, on the mac, its not hard, but sometimes confusing (when u aint used 2 it!)

i just wanna know... why? say, u download an "installer update" it comes as...
.dmg.bin

then wen u launch it, it extracts it 2... a dmg file, and then it mounts, and then inside the "virtual drive" is the file!

Now why is it done in this manner, and not so simple as zip?!
i can do it all, but i am just mythed!?!
BTW, hehe... i am "nearly" With u guys, on 10.1.2 :D

Cheers For ya info, guys!

NeYo
 
Well, the DMG file you're talking about is something that I absolutely LOVE about the Mac OS. It's like a virtual drive -- let's say that you're playing Unreal Tournament, and you get tired of popping the CD in and out to play it... well, make a "disc image" of it (either a .SMI or .IMG or .DMG depending on the OS) and you can readily "mount" that image, which is an exact duplicate of the CD. Store the SMI/IMG/DMG on your hard drive, and you've got double-click access to that CD without actually fiddling with the CD.

.SIT or .SEA are both stuffit archives. One requires that you have stuffit to extract the files, the other will extract itself (the .SEA... it stands for "Self-extracting archive). Both are pretty much the same.

What you get inside the .SIT or .SEA archive is all dependent upon who "stuffed" the file. Sometimes people stuff just a bunch of files. sometimes they make a disc image and stuff that.

If you've got StuffIt Expander or StuffIt Deluxe, you're good to go. It'll handle just about ALL kinds of compressed formats.

...and a big apology on behalf of Apple, who chose to let people decide how they wanted to compress their files and ended up with a ba-jillion different ways to do it. Also, a big apology from Microsoft for forcing you into a very limited list of options on doing just about everything.
 
Well, I am rather perplexed as to why people binhex their files these days, since the need to encode as ACSII has passed. Also, why are people compressing a compressed image? DMG is a format that incorporates a fairly nice compression scheme, and later Disk Copy versions for 9 could compress your image as well. I saw maybe 100k savings on a CD image after compressing it with Stuffit since it was already compressed.

Just as MP3s aren't found zipped or compressed for the most part, disk images don't need to be since they both implement compression. Sure you will get savings, but it isn't worth the extra CPU cycles to save a mere 100-200K these days when the file is already 5MB compressed.

This guy does have a point. Sure it is nice to have a few dozen compression formats supported, but when people are compressing a compressed file, or needlessly ADDING size to it by binhexing it, I start scratching my head and asking 'why?'
 
krevinek: You are absolutely right about the point on compression. I am annoyed too at people who compress their disk images. Thankfully, though, many downloads from www.versiontracker.com that are for OS X are in .dmg format and not stuffed beyond that.

What I REALLY love about .dmg disk images is their ability to retain the folder background that is a feature in Mac OS X. Now no more of that annoying stuff where people use folders to make graphics on the CD or disk image detailing how to install the software; just make a background. I believe this now applies to everything in Mac OS X, because the stuff is simply stored in the folder's hidden settings file (the .DS_Store, I believe).

IMHO, Stuffit is passé. Long live compressed disk images!
 
One reason many people stuff their DMG or IMG files is to retain the file type/creator codes of the DMG or IMG file -- for example, and this is a shady, bad example, people who use Hotline or Carracho to share their files typically have problems with their DMG or IMG files if they were downloaded FROM a PC or TO a PC. A workaround is to stuff the IMG or DMG file, and that way, when you unstuffit on a Mac, the DMG or IMG file has it's type/creator codes intact.

Otherwise, you download a DMG or an IMG file from or to a PC, and transfer it to the Mac, and the Mac has a brain-fart tying to figure out what to do with it. Disk Copy or Shrinkwrap will complain that it doesn't know what kind of file it is. You can fix this with ResEdit, but an easier way is to stuff the file, and that way, everything's peachy on the receiving end.
 
I haven't had any of these creator code issues with more recent versions of the software because it uses YOUR creator code database for the extention to figure out what it is, using Internet Config. If it is older (like Hotline 1.2) then it might have problems, but Carracho will never have this issue since it is Mac-only. Heck, I download from many PC servers for multimedia files that have no problem after downloading at all... figure that one out.
 
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