Re: .sit files
It's not just that you _should_ unpack BootX on the Mac side, it's that
you have to. It is a Mac OS application, and therefore has a filetype,
creator code, and resource fork. While you might be able to extract the
bitstreams of all these (and the data fork), they won't do you much good.
What is a more serious concern is the use of a proprietary compression
format in Free Software. If you just compress the normall way with
Stuffit or Stuffit Lite, it will use an undocumented proprietary archive format.
While you may get good compression, this is probably not what debian wants.
I'm not sure, but I think if you select the option to create a "Stuffit
1.5.1 archive", then that format is documented. Don't take my word for
it though. You won't get as good a compression as the latest Stuffit
can do but BootX is small enough that it doesn't matter.
What I'd like to see is a compression format like bzip2 that provides
for multiple data streams and attributes. I believe bzip2 has already
been ported to the BeOS, which has file attributes (extra data streams
you can associate with a file); I'm not sure that the BeOS bzip2
compresses these but I _do_ know that the BeOS Zip does, it's just that
Zip isn't as good a compression as bzip2.
Here's a project for someone. Use a cross-platform application
framework like, say, ZooLib at http://zoolib.sourceforge.net/ and make a
compressor/extractor that is as nice to use as Stuffit and Stuffit
extractor are on the Mac. Use an open format like bzip2 and compression
source code that is gpl'ed like bzip2's is and create a compressor that
can compress multiple data streams for one file and create standard
formats that will handle any platforms files (POSIX with permissions,
symlinks, device files, BeOS BFS with attributes, Mac OS with resource
forks etc.). That would make a nice project for someone and be a truly
useful thing.
Mike
crawford@goingware.com
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