Attached Link: StuffIt Expanders for Mac & PC

Hello, there were occasional Mac/PC problems recently and I was able to track it down to a bug (or rather mis-feature) in StuffIt Deluxe 5.5 (and probably other versions). If you use StuffIt's built-in "ZIP > Encode" menu to create a ZIP archive, it silently uses MacBinary encoding, and there seems to be no way to turn this off - shame on them... The solution is to stop using the menu and instead use the separate DropZIP utility by them, because this can be configured. If you double-click DropZIP directly, it will startup as a normal program and you can set the prefences by menu. In the "MacBinary" pane, set it to "Never", OK-it and quit. After doing this once, just drag your files/folders onto the DropZIP icon and it will create a ZIP archive for every drag without the encoding problems. Your StuffIt Deluxe license fully covers all DropXYZ utilities, so there is no need to re-pay or re-register. Technical Note: MacBinary is obsolete in every respect today, there is *no* reason to use it - and the compression toolmakers would be wise to hide and disable it by default. If you send a Mac file to a Mac user, compress to .sit (which is much smaller and faster than any other solution and has no other disadvantages). If you send files to a PC (or a crossplatform audience), MacBinary will cause damage! Conclusion: *Never* use it! Note for PC users having trouble with garbled files out of ZIP archives which might be created on a Mac: Go to http://www.aladdinsys.com/expander/index.html and get StuffItExpander for Windows. It will not only expand all .sit and .zip archives, it is also aware of possible encoding problems. If an expanded file looks damaged, just drag it *again* onto Expander - if it turns out to be a Mac encoding, Expander will remove it. Note for Mac users having trouble with ZIP ".exe" files created on a PC: StuffIt Expander is a true can-opener... if the .exe files contain any portion of a valid ZIP inside, Expander will extract it - just give it a try, it can do no harm but will work most of the time. Hope that helps, MartinC

Thanks for the info.

Thanks martin! I was about to send Alladin a complaint since I was having this problem, too. PC friends who had Stuffit expander had no problems while those who tried to use the Winzip utility had problems with the .zip files. Great detective work! -Jim

Attached Link: http://www.sitec.net/maczip

I use Zip/Unzip(Fat) for Mac and never have any problems. The interface is a little clunky but the zip algorithm is clean (I have repeatedly tested its archives with WinZip)and it has a checkbox to only read the data forks. Plus it's freeware AFAIK.