This information was provided by Claris Corporation on 16 March 1998, and incorporated into Apple Computer's Tech Info Library.

File compression and archiving is a way of storing a group of files and/or directories in one file, thus saving computer storage space and reducing the amount of time it takes to transmit them over phone lines or networks. Besides the backing up of important information, this can be helpful if files are too big to fit on a diskette or by reducing the amount of online/phone charges needed to upload or download a file from an electronic service or BBS.

The industry standards for file compression are StuffIt for the Macintosh and PKZIP for DOS based machines. Since both of these utilities have shareware versions, they are readily available through most online services In most cases, so they are easy to recognize, StuffIt files have a ".SIT" extension and PKZIP files have a ".ZIP" extension at the end of their filenames .

To use and access these files, they must be decompressed. Besides compatibility on their native platforms, there are utilities available that will allow you to open and decompress a StuffIt file on a DOS machine and a ZIP file on a Macintosh, thus making file transfer between the two platforms more seamless. Two such utilities are ZIPIT for the Macintosh and UNSTUFF for DOS machines.

ZIPIT for the Macintosh
This application has a similar interface to StuffIt and is just as easy to use. To decompress a DOS PKZIP file follow these steps:

1) Launch ZIPIT by double clicking on it's icon.
2) Pull down the FILE menu and select OPEN
3) Select the ZIP file that you wish to open by double clicking on it or by highlighting it and clicking on the OPEN button in the Open/Save dialog box. The Finder dialog will only show valid PKZIP files. If the file does not show up in the Finder dialog, it is either not a ZIP file, a corrupted ZIP file, or a self-extracting ZIP file.
4) Select the file(s) from the list that you wish to extract. If the ZIP file contains multiple files and/or directories you can select them all by doing a command (Apple) A (Select All.) To extract files, pull down the ZIP menu and select EXTRACT or use command (Apple)-E
5) Another dialog box will appear asking you where you want the files extracted. Navigate the finder until you locate the desired folder. If you wish to rename selected files or changed the target folder before the files are decompressed, change the name and/or folder name of each one, using the SAVE button to go onto the next file. If renaming of files is not desired, or to speed up the decompressing process, the SAVE ALL button can be used. This will not prompt for files to be renamed and will use the name contained in the original ZIP file and copy them to the selected folder.

Note: Make sure the filename ends with .FM for FileMaker files and .CWK or .CWS for ClarisWorks files before opening them. It is necessary to open a file through the File menu of FileMaker or ClarisWorks the first time instead of double clicking it when the file comes from a PC. Afterwards, you will be able to open the file by double-clicking it from now on.

UNSTUFF for DOS
This program has a similar interface to PKZIP and is command line based. For help on using UNSTUFF and for an explanation of it's command line parameters, type UNSTUFF by itself at the DOS prompt. To open a Macintosh Stuffit file on PC follow these directions.

SYNTAX: UNSTUFF [options] [archive name[.sit]]

1) For example to "unstuff" a StuffIt file called TEST.SIT, you would type at the DOS prompt. UNSTUFF TEST.SIT This will created a subdirectory called TEST in your current directory and copy all the files contained in TEST.SIT into it. If you wish to UNSTUFF the files in the current directory without a directory being created, you would type at the DOS prompt. UNSTUFF TEST.SIT -d. Macintosh filenames allow spaces and up to 32 characters. If files that are contained in TEST.SIT do not conform to the DOS naming convention (8 characters with a 3 character extension), UNSTUFF will strip out all the spaces and truncate the filename automatically.

Example:
"This Is A Test.FM" will become: "THISISATE.ST "
"This Is Another Test.FM" will become: "THISISANO.THE"

When unstuffing FileMaker Pro files, it is a good idea to rename the file so it has an ".FM" extension so it will be easier to locate and be associated in Windows with the FileMaker application. In the above example, to rename "THISISANO.THE" to "CLARIS.FM" type the following at the DOS prompt. REN^THISISANO.THE^CLARIS.FM (^=space)

Compatibility Note: ZIPIT is compatible with files created with PKZIP 2.x. The shareware version cannot extract files that are encrypted with a password. UNSTUFF is compatible with files created with Stuffit 1.5.1 through Stuffit Deluxe 3.0.3 but will not open a file that has been encrypted or optimized. ZIPIT for Mac can expand self-extracting .EXE files but UNSTUFF for DOS cannot expand self-extracting archives created by Stuffit for Macintosh.

Versions Tested: UNSTUFF Version 1.1 + ZIPIT Version 1.2 Availability: Both utilities are available on the Claris BBS.