Most popular compressed Mac format?

.sit? .gz? other? What format for eBook download?

[JayCee]

Another question about downloading my PDF format eBook for Mac users:

Stuffit Pro offers many formats, but which is the most popular/most expected/least problematic compressed format on the Mac?

Thanks folks!

[JayCee]

Ah! Think i'm missing a way to simplify things. Stuffit Pro can decompress ZIP files and other Windows types.

So maybe there is one compressed file type that will work on both Mac and Windows platforms? Then i won't have to provide separate Windows and Mac downloads. After all, the underlying eBook is in the cross-platform PDF format.

Is Stuffit the (defacto or otherwise) standard for Mac?

[travelin cat]

Yes Stuffit is the standard for a Mac.. has been for many years

[travelin cat]

Also, most Mac users understand what .sit apended to a file name means... not necessarily so with tar, uu, zip or even hqx...

[jezra]

If you are going to be offering compressed file downloads for Windows and Macintosh, use the .zip format. Windows XP can handle zip files without the need for a seperate piece of software. Mac OS 10 has zip decompression software bundled with it. However, to answer part of your initial question

which is the most popular/most expected/least problematic compressed format on the Mac?

The least problematic compressed format on the Mac is a compressed disk image as it does not require a 3rd party piece of software to work.

[JayCee]

Thanks all!

This is what i've learned so far:
1. The best cross-platform (Windows/Mac) compressed format is good 'ole .ZIP. This is also the requirement of Renderosity, the big online gallery.

2. There doesn't seem to be an inexpensive DRM program that works on the Mac OS. The Adobe Reader might be an exception, but their forum suggests that customers have lots of trouble with it.

[whoisgregg]

Stuffit *was* the standard for Mac, but with OS X I'm seeing more and more folks cozying up to .zip files.

[amygrech]

I used to use Stuffit, too.

Amy

[madmac]

Finder has direct support for Zip, since Panther. Just double click it and it is unzipped by BOM.

I will usually use zip now for most things.

I do use a tarball (.tar.gz) for open source software, but that it is what many are used to for that [I'm starting to go just zip though]

You could also just give a direct link to the PDF as well. PDF compression is pretty good and unless it is a huge book, you probably don't need to compress it in ZIP or anything. On OS X you don't have that problem of Acrobat [even if installed] wanting to load it directly in the browser... How I don't miss that ;)

[JayCee]

Thanks all!

Actually the PDF e-book is pretty big. 9.x MB unzipped, 7.x MB Zipped.

Even had to remove all embedded fonts to help keep the size down. Since i'm using Verdana and failing to Aerial, etc, this doesn't seem a problem. Wish i could turn up the graphics quality a bit though.

It's an art training e-book for digital artists, so besides the 158 pages, there are 180+ images. Makes it rather fat.

Cheers!