ZipIt is $10 shareware. After you pay your shareware fee, you will receive a password to disable the registration screen that appears whenever you launch an unregistered copy of ZipIt. Additionally, if you are registering from the United States, you will be able to encrypt (password-protect) zip file entries, and unzip other zip files that have been password-protected. To pay for ZipIt, please launch it and click “Print Registration Form.” Fill out the form, and mail it to me with $10 in check or money order. Please do not send cash. If for some reason you cannot print out the registration form, send me a letter including the following:
Your name
Address
Telephone number
Version of ZipIt that you are using (available in the about box)
Where you obtained ZipIt
How you can be reached, if at all, online
If sending a check, please make it out to Tommy Brown, and send the check and registration form to:
Tommy Brown
110-45 Queens Blvd Apt. 716
Forest Hills, NY 11375
I will send you your password either in the mail or at one of the online addresses that you specify.
Note: If you own Freddie v.1.2.5 or above, the Macintosh QWK reader by Kem Tekinay, follow the instructions in Freddie’s documentation, instead of the above instructions, to register ZipIt along with Freddie.
Legal notice: The $10 shareware fee is for ZipIt as a package. Technically, the $10 covers only that portion of ZipIt which is copyrighted by Tommy Brown. The code to zip and unzip files is copyrighted by others, as noted elsewhere in this documentation, and those portions of ZipIt are free.
Source Code
While I will not release the entire source code for ZipIt, I would be glad to mail out copies of the zipping and unzipping code upon which ZipIt is based. This code is available on many BBSes, but, if you want, please send me a disk and a self-addressed stamped envelope at the address listed above, and I will copy onto the disk the source to Zip 1.0 and UnZip. Both programs are written in C. You may send single-sided, double-sided or high-density disks.
Using ZipIt
Zipping files
ZipIt works just like a regular Macintosh program. To create a new zip archive, simply choose “New” from the File menu. You can also add files to an existing zip archive by choosing “Open…” from the File menu and then adding files. To add files, simply choose “Add…” from the Zip menu. Double-click on a file you want to add, or select the file and click “Add.” You may add as many files as you like. When you are finished, click “Done.” Next, choose “Save” from the File menu, and the files you’ve added will be compressed and saved into the zip archive. Note that files are not compressed until you actually save the archive.
Unzipping files
To unzip files from an existing zip archive, choose “Open…” from the File menu and open the zip archive. The number of open windows in ZipIt is limited only by available memory. Select the files that you want to unzip, or choose “Select All” from the Edit menu to select all the files. Hold down the command key while clicking to select more than one discontiguous file, or the shift key to select multiple files that are displayed contiguously. Choose “Extract” from the Zip menu or double-click on one of the selected files. Find the folder into which you want to put the extracted files, and rename the first file if you want by changing the name in the dialog box. Then choose either “Save” or “Save all.” If you choose “Save all,” all the files will be stored in the same folder, using their original names. If you choose “Save,” ZipIt will ask you where to put each file.
Note: If any file has a name longer than 31 characters (i.e., if it was zipped on a Unix-based system), ZipIt will truncate the filename to 31 characters. This may cause problems if there are multiple files which do not have unique filenames up to the 31st character.
Zip archive manipulation
In addition to simply zipping and unzipping files, you can change the zip archive in a number of ways.
Renaming files. To rename an entry in the zip archive, select the file that you want to rename and choose “Rename…” from the Zip menu. If the file is a Macintosh file, and has been zipped using MacBinary, then in this dialog you may specify only the new Macintosh filename. The actual zip filename will change to a DOS interpretation of your new Macintosh filename. So for example, if you renamed an application ZipIt, the zip filename would become ZIPIT.BIN. The only time this would matter would be if this entry were unzipped by a program other than ZipIt. For more information on MacBinary in ZipIt, see the section on MacBinary below.
Adding comments. ZipIt supports comments for each zip file entry, as well as for the entire zip archive. To add or edit the comments for an entire zip archive, choose “Edit Zip Comments…” from the Zip menu when the desired zip archive is open. You will be presented with a dialog box into which you may enter your comments. You can include returns in your comments; in fact, if your zip archive will be used on a non-Mac machine, it would be advisable to press return after every line of comments.
To add comments for an individual file, select the file and choose “Edit Entry Comments.” ZipIt will not allow you to have more than 255 characters in an entry comment, and, if your zip archive will be used on a machine other than a Macintosh, you should restrict your entry comments to one line (80 characters) in length.
When there are comments for an entry, a small document icon will appear on the entry’s line. When there are comments for an entire zip archive, a document icon will appear above the scroll bar. You may click on these icons to view or edit the comments. This is functionally identical to choosing the appropriate menu command from the Zip menu.
To remove a comment, simply delete the entire text of the comment.
Removing files. ZipIt also allows you to remove files from a zip archive. Simply select the files to be removed and choose “Remove…” from the Zip menu. ZipIt will ask you to confirm that you really want to remove these files, and then will delete them from the listing. After you choose “Save,” the files will be permanently removed from the archive.
Getting detailed information. If you select one or more files in a zip archive and choose “Get Info” from the Zip menu, you will get windows giving you detailed information on the selected files. The first piece of information is the file name, both the Macintosh name and the name in the zip archive. (For more information about the nature of file names in ZipIt, see the section on MacBinary, below.) For files that were not zipped with MacBinary, the Macintosh name and the name in the zip archive will be the same. The rest of the information in the Get Info box should be self-explanatory.
Sorting the zip archive. You may choose any item from the “View” menu to sort the zip archive. You may sort the entries by order saved, file name, expanded size, zipped size, percent saved, zipping method used, date that the file was last modified, and whether or not MacBinary was used. Note: This does not affect the contents of the zip archive, only the order in which they are displayed. You may sort the zip archive in any of the above orders, except “Order Saved,” by clicking on the corresponding heading in the zip window. Viewing by order saved, the default, is actually not sorted at all.
Encryption
Encryption is only available in versions of ZipIt registered to users in the United States, due to the United States export law. You must register your copy of ZipIt to get encryption features; see the section entitled “Shareware,” above, for details. With encryption, you can protect a file so that it will be impossible to unzip without the proper password.
Encrypting a file. First, add the file to a zip window, if the file is not already there, by choosing “Add…” from the Zip menu. Next, select the file that you want to encrypt. You can encrypt files that have already been saved in the zip archive if you wish. Choose “Set Password…” from the Zip menu. (This choice will only be available on versions of ZipIt that have encryption enabled.) Type in the password you want to use, then re-type your password in the second field. Click OK, and a lock icon will appear next to the file. That means that the entry will be encrypted as soon as you save the zip archive.
Unzipping and decrypting a file. If you try to extract an encrypted file, ZipIt will ask you for the password to use when decrypting it. Simply type in the correct password, and ZipIt will be able to unzip the file. ZipIt will remember the password until you close the zip archive, so if you need to unzip it again you do not need to re-enter the password. You may also tell ZipIt the password in advance by selecting the encrypted files and choosing “Set Password…” from the Zip menu. If more than one encrypted file in a zip archive is encrypted with the same password, simply select all the files that use that password, choose “Set Password…” and type the password. This prevents you from having to enter the same password repeatedly.
Decrypting a file without unzipping it. You can remove the password from a zip entry while keeping it in the zip archive. After doing this, and saving the zip archive, a password will no longer be needed to unzip the entry. Select the entry that you want to decrypt (it must have a lock icon next to it, indicating that it is encrypted) and choose “Remove Password…” from the Zip menu. Unless the files that you chose were not yet saved, you will be prompted for the password to the entries. Enter the password, and the lock icon will change to an open lock. This open lock icon signifies that ZipIt will decrypt the entry as soon as you save the zip archive. Note: ZipIt does not check to see if your password is correct when you enter it. If you type the wrong password, ZipIt will not be able to decrypt the file and, after the zip archive is saved, the entry will remain encrypted.
MacBinary
MacBinary a protocol that was designed to facilitate file transfers of Macintosh files. It is a method of storing all the information necessary to recreate an entire Macintosh file in one data stream, instead of the two forks plus extra file information that the Macintosh normally uses. ZipIt uses MacBinary to store Macintosh files inside a zip archive.
Zip archives created with ZipIt are always compatible with other zip implementations. However, if you are zipping a file intended for use by a computer other than the Macintosh, you should not use MacBinary when zipping that file. If you do, then, after unzipping the file on the other computer, the resulting file will have extra Macintosh data.
You can control whether or not ZipIt uses MacBinary by simply clicking in the “MacBinary” column on the zip window. If there is a hollow circle there, then MacBinary will not be used to zip the file. If there is a filled circle, MacBinary will be used. You can only change the MacBinary status of a file before it has been saved. You cannot convert a file to MacBinary or vice-versa after it has been zipped and stored in the archive.
One consequence of MacBinary usage is that ZipIt keeps track of two separate filenames for each entry. The first filename is the name as it is written in the zip archive. For example, if you zipped a Macintosh application called “Cool World,” ZipIt would store the name as COOLWORL.BIN. If another zip program opened this zip archive, it would think that the name of Cool World was COOLWORL.BIN. This is useful because computers running operating systems such as DOS could then unzip the file. ZipIt, however, will always know that the name of the file is Cool World. So whenever you open the file with ZipIt, you will see that the name is Cool World.
You can see this feature in action. Add any Macintosh file to a zip window and click on the MacBinary oval. When MacBinary is on, you will see the “real” Macintosh name. When MacBinary is off, you will see ZipIt’s best approximation of the Macintosh name in a format acceptable to other computers. When renaming files, you can only change the name that is currently visible; that is, if the file is MacBinary, you can only change the Macintosh name, otherwise you can only change the zip file name. In fact, in the latter case, no Macintosh name is stored at all, so the only name that exists is the name as stored in the zip file.
You can control how ZipIt decides whether to use MacBinary. Choose “Preferences” from the File menu. You will see a choice, “Use MacBinary: Always, When needed, Never.” If you choose “Always,” then any file you add will have the MacBinary indicator filled in. If you choose “Never,” then ZipIt will never fill in the MacBinary dot. If you choose “When needed,” ZipIt will only use MacBinary if the file has a resource fork. You can always change whether or not MacBinary will be used on an unsaved file by clicking on the dot in the MacBinary column, no matter what the settings in the preferences dialog are.
One last note: If you unzip onto a non-Macintosh computer a file that ZipIt has stored as MacBinary, and then bring the file back onto a Macintosh, you will have to convert the file to a Macintosh file using one of the many Macintosh utilities that can convert MacBinary files to Macintosh files.
Linefeeds
ZipIt supports a smart way of converting text files for use on Macintosh systems. If the strip linefeed option under the Zip menu is checked, then ZipIt will strip the linefeeds from a file that it is extracting if the following conditions are met:
a) the file is marked as a text file in the zip archive or it has a special text file extension;
b) the file was not zipped on a Macintosh;
c) the file’s name does not match any of the special binary names (see below);
d) the preferences specify to strip linefeeds.
If all three of these conditions are met, then ZipIt will strip the linefeeds in a text file. It will do this in one of two manners. If the format of the file is such that each carriage return is followed by a linefeed, then ZipIt will simply delete all the linefeeds in the file. If the file consists of lines ending with linefeeds alone, not preceded by carriage returns, then ZipIt will change all the linefeeds into carriage returns. This is to support Unix-style text files. Note that ZipIt makes its determination about whether or not to strip linefeeds from each individual file as soon as the archive is opened. Therefore, you may override its recommendations for any individual file simply by selecting that file and checking or unchecking “Strip Linefeeds” in the Zip menu.
Special binary files. (If you are not comfortable with ResEdit, please skip this section, as ResEdit could potentially damage your copy of ZipIt.) There will be times when a binary file is incorrectly labeled as a text file in the zip archive. If you frequently unzip a binary file with the same name, and you would like to prevent ZipIt from stripping linefeeds from files with that name, you may do so. One example is the use of ZipIt to decompress QWK packets. The MESSAGES.DAT file is often marked as a text file, even though it is not, and stripping linefeeds in that file would probably result in its corruption. For that reason, an STR# resource, with an ID of 400, is provided. Using ResEdit on a copy of ZipIt, add a string containing the name of the binary file. Two such names are already provided: MESSAGES.DAT and ***.NDX (the latter matches all filenames in the form of three characters plus the “NDX” extension). Asterisks are permitted as wildcards, but only match a single character. There is no way to match more than one character.
Special text files. When a file is zipped, the zipping program puts a mark in the zip archive stating whether the file is a text or binary file. ZipIt assumes that the program that created the zip archive knew what it was doing when it made this determination, which is not always the case. Some files are obviously text files, however, such as files with an extension of .TXT, .DOC, or .HQX. You can add to the list of text file extensions that ZipIt knows about by using ResEdit. Open a copy of ZipIt using ResEdit, double-click on the STR# resource, open the resource with an ID of 401, and add or delete strings. Each string should consist of at most three letters — the file extension. Any file that ends with this extension will be recognized by ZipIt as a text file.
Customizing ZipIt
This section discusses the various options available by choosing “Preferences…” from the File menu.
Look inside each file to determine if it is a zip file. By default, when you choose “Open…” from the File menu, ZipIt will display any file that has a type of ‘TEXT’, ‘pZIP’, or ‘ZIP ’. However, you may have Zip files with other file types, or you may want to display only the real zip files. This option reads each file to determine whether it is a real zip file before displaying it in the open dialog box. This is slightly slower, but will display all zip files, and only zip files (not regular text files). For you advanced types out there, ZipIt checks to see if the first two characters of each text file are PK; if so, it assumes that the file is a zip file. In order to accept self-extracting archives, ZipIt will also display any file beginning with the letters MZ; consequently, all IBM executable files will be displayed by ZipIt, whether or not they are actually zip archives.
Do not put up notification dialog boxes while in the background. Under System 7 or MultiFinder, ZipIt may need to inform you of something while it is in the background. Normally, if ZipIt has to inform you of some fact, it will put up a dialog box (using the Notification Manager) telling you what it has to tell you, then allow you to continue to work (after dismissing the alert). Enabling this option will make ZipIt flash its icon in the Apple menu or applications menu and wait for you to switch it into the front before telling you anything. This may be less disruptive if you are working on something and do not want ZipIt to interrupt you.
Open an untitled window when first starting up. This option is on by default. It has ZipIt open an empty, untitled window when it first starts up if no documents were chosen from the Finder. If you turn this option off, then ZipIt will not open any windows when it starts up.
Always replace existing files; do not ask. If you are extracting files and choose “Save all,” then ZipIt will continue to extract files in the same folder unless it tries to extract a file with the same name as a file already existing. In this situation, ZipIt will normally ask you what to do in the form of another save dialog box. If you select this option, then ZipIt will not ask you what to do; instead, it will simply replace any existing files with the same name as a file that ZipIt is extracting with the extracted file. This option is potentially dangerous, as you could lose files without knowing it.
By default, smart-strip linefeeds from text files. If this is set, then ZipIt will attempt to figure out whether or not linefeeds should be stripped from text files when you unzip from an archive created on a computer other than the Macintosh. This preference should generally be set; you may always override ZipIt’s recommendation by selecting the entry from which you do or do not want to strip linefeeds, and choosing “Strip Linefeeds” from the Zip menu.
Binary file type. This allows you to set the Macintosh file type with which non-Macintosh binary files are stored when unzipped onto the Mac.
Binary file creator. This allows you to set the Macintosh file creator with which non-Macintosh binary files are stored when unzipped onto the Mac.
Text file creator. This allows you to set the Macintosh file creator with which non-Macintosh text files are stored when unzipped onto the Mac. All text files have the file type ‘TEXT.’
Use MacBinary… These options allow you to specify when MacBinary should be used by default. See the section on MacBinary, above, for more details. Remember that you can always change whether or not MacBinary is to be used on an unsaved file by clicking in the circle in the “MacBinary” column of the zip window.
Default compression… See section entitled “PKZip 2.04g” below.
PKZip 2.04g
Starting with version 1.1, ZipIt can both compress and decompress files in PKZip 2.0 format, and is fully compatible with PKZip 2.04g, the latest version as of this writing. A new preference has been added to accommodate the new compression technique, called “deflation.” In the preferences dialog box, you may now choose to have ZipIt default to either deflation or implosion. If you choose deflation, then whenever you add a file to an archive, ZipIt will default to deflating the file, and will display “Deflated” in italics to indicate this. If you choose “Implosion”, ZipIt will use the old method. When you add a file, “Best Guess” will be in italics, indicating that ZipIt will use its best guess to choose between implosion or shrinking (in most cases, ZipIt will choose implosion). You may always change the compression method used simply by choosing the new method from the Method menu. Note that “Best Guess” now means the best PKZip 1.x-compatible compression. Deflation will always be more efficient, but will not be compatible with older versions of unzipping programs.
To summarize: If you want to create the most compatible archives possible, go to the Preferences… dialog and choose “Default compression: Implosion.” If you want to create PKZip 2.0 compatible archives, or don’t care about compatibility but want the smallest archives, go to the Preferences… dialog and choose “Default compression: Deflation.” You can always override the default compression by choosing a new compression method from the Method menu.
ZTerm
(If you are not comfortable with ResEdit, please skip this section.) ZTerm provides a feature that allows you to indicate to ZTerm that zip files should be marked with a ZipIt creator. If you do this, then, whenever you double-click a zip file that you have downloaded with ZTerm, ZipIt will launch. ZTerm sets downloaded zip files to launch the application UnZip by default. Please read the following steps in their entirety before attempting this procedure.
1. Launch ResEdit.
2. Use ResEdit to open your copy of ZTerm. Make sure you have a backup just in case.
3. Double-click on the ‘STR#’ resource.
4. Double-click on resource ID 335, which should be called “Bin Detect”
5. String #4 should currently read “0pZIPpZIPPK”. Replace each occurrence of “pZIP” with “ZIP ”. Do not forget the space at the end. The string should now appear as “0ZIP ZIP PK”.
Warning: There are two invisible characters at the end of this string. These characters must remain there. For this reason, I recommend that you do not select the entire string and re-type it, but rather just select the two “pZIP”s and change them.
6. Close resource ID 335 and open resource ID 330.
7. Scroll to the bottom and click on the row of five asterisks. Go to the Resource menu and choose “Insert New Field.”
8. In the blank field, type “ZIP ”, without the quotes.
9. Save ZTerm and quit.
Future Plans
• Add a filename filter for the Open dialog box, so that, if the user selects this option, ZipIt will only display files ending with ‘.zip’ or ‘.exe’.
• Extension mapping for extracted files. Files ending in ‘.txt’ will become text files, files ending in ‘.doc’ will become Microsoft Word documents, etc.
• Recognizing and supporting folder structure. This means both including folders in archives, and recognizing pathnames and converting them to folders when displaying archives on the Mac. This will definitely be in the next version, as I have already begun work on it.
• Add an “Add All” command when adding files to a zip archive to add all files in the current folder.
• Possibly add a floating palette.
• Speed ZipIt up by making the file i/o routines call the Mac toolbox directly. This is another revision that I hope to complete for the next version.
Known problems
• Possible erroneous reporting of “Not enough disk space available,” but I haven’t been able to reproduce this one.
• Possible crashing during printing, especially using a Stylewriter. Since I don’t have one of these, I haven’t been able to reproduce this bug (background printing works fine with my Laserwriter), so if anyone else has this problem, please let me know.
• Possible incompatibilities with FileGuard.
Troubleshooting
The problem most often reported to me is that after transferring the file to another machine, for example an IBM, it is no longer unzippable. I have never been able to find a circumstance in which this is true, so I think that in these cases, the problem lies in the transfer process. Here are a few things to try if you are not able to unzip ZipIt-created files on your IBM:
• Are you using MacBinary in your terminal program? Make sure that you tell your terminal program not to use MacBinary when transmitting the zip file. Note that this is different from telling ZipIt whether or not to use MacBinary when zipping the files.
• Are you sending the file in text or binary mode? Some terminal programs allow you to specify — make sure binary is chosen, but not MacBinary.
• Try sending the file over with a different terminal or transfer protocol. If you were using ZModem, try YModem or XModem-1K.
• Have you tried using a diskette to transfer the zip file? Put in a disk, initialize it with Apple File Exchange or an equivalent program, then copy the zip file onto the disk using no translations.
• Try transferring the file to your other computer and then back to your Mac. Make sure that MacBinary is turned off both times (when sending and receiving from the Mac end). Can ZipIt still open the file, or did it get corrupted somewhere in between?
If you still can’t figure out the problem, please contact me and I’d be glad to help you out.
How to contact me
In order of preference
America Online: Tommy6
Internet: tommy6@aol.com
FidoNet: 1:2603/204 (Not Even Odd BBS) - Tommy Brown
GEnie: P.L.COOPER
Compuserve: 70314,3342
Forest Hills BBS: 718-268-1240 - Tommy Brown
Not Even Odd BBS: 718-997-1189 - Tommy Brown
Changes history
Version 1.0 - January 25, 1993 (intial release)
Version 1.1 - March 20, 1993
• Alert added when trying to unzip an unsaved file.
• Now beeps after unzipping only if unzip took more than one minute
• Whenever you open a file, the standard file dialog box now defaults to the most recently-opened zip file when extracting files. In other words, ZipIt will now default to unzipping files into the same folder as the archive. This was usually, but not always true in previous versions. (Thanks to Bill Kearney for reporting this.)
• Updated ZipIt to include Info-Zip’s version 5.0c10p1 inflating code. This code works around a bug in PKZip 2.04c. ZipIt 1.0 used version 5.0c7 of the Info-Zip code.
• Added elipses to end of the “Extract” menu command. This should have been there in the first place, but for some reason wasn’t. This also fixed a bug with help balloons not appearing for the “Extract” command in unregistered and internatonal versions of ZipIt.
• Fixed a bug in which ZipIt would choke upon attempting to open a zip file which contained very long (more than 255 byte) strings in the central file header. Now ZipIt will ignore any characters past the 255th in the extra, filename, and file comment fields of the central file header. Thanks to RichardJ11 on AOL for reporting this.
• Added totals at the bottom of the zip window. ZipIt will now display the total number of files in the zip archive, the total compressed size, the total uncompressed size, and the total percentage saved.
• Fixed a bug in which in some circumstances under system 6, the _IZIPTMP file was not being deleted.
• Fixed a bug in which under system 6, sometimes the zip file was unable to be renamed and was left as _ZZIPTMP. Thanks to CZiemer of AOL for reporting this. Many apologies to all the system 6 ZipIt users for this bug..
• Fixed a bug in which, under system 6, new zip files didn’t have their Finder flags properly initialized. This led to invisible zip files, zip files with strange colors, etc. Thanks to Booooooo, formerly of AOL, for reporting this.
• Added deflation! Also added new preference allowing you to control whether ZipIt defaults to deflation or implosion.
• Changed behavior of ‘special text file’ identification (ie recognizing files with extensions of ‘txt’, etc as text files) to be case-insensitive. Only a problem for zip files originating on systems with lowercase filenames such as Unix.
• Changed behavior of the menu choice “Strip Linefeeds” in the Zip menu. Here’s how it works now:
When you first open a zip archive, for each individual entry, ZipIt determines whether or not linefeeds should be stripped from that file. It bases its decision on the following pieces of information:
A. Do the prefs specify to strip linefeeds?
B. Is the entry marked as a text file?
C. Is the entry a ‘special text file’?
D. Was it made on a Mac?
E. Is it a special binary file?
It uses this information to determine the default setting of the menu item. You may always override this simply by checking or unchecking the Strip Linefeeds item. For example, if you have a text file which does not end with “.TXT” and was marked by the zipping program as binary, you can now have ZipIt strip linefeeds simply by checking the option under the Zip menu.
• Added ‘????’ to the list of file types ZipIt will open.
• Fixed a bug in which ZipIt would crash upon opening a zip file of more than 100 entries. Thanks Tony for first reporting this and Kem for furnishing a zip file which demonstrated this behavior.
• Fixed minor printing bug. (I couldn’t reproduce the crashing problem reported by Josh Dallagiacomo, but maybe the fix that I implemented will cure his problem as well?)
• Divided Preferences dialog box into two dialogs: One for “Miscellaneous” prefs, and one for “Compression” preferences. Also added a new preference allowing you to choose between ‘ZIP ’ and ‘TEXT’ for the file type for created archives. In general, you should use ‘ZIP ’, and should only use ‘TEXT’ if you’re using a terminal program which insists on adding a MacBinary header to any non-text file.
• Changed the Entry Comment and Zip Comment dialog boxes so that the prompt section is in the system font.
• Added an on-screen indication of whether or not linefeeds will be stripped from files when they are unzipped. This indicator works identically to the MacBinary indicator, in that it can be turned on and off by clicking on it. Clicking in this indicator is identical to checking or unchecking “Strip Linefeeds” under the Zip menu.
• Fixed a bug introduced only in 1.1 betas in which, under system 6, the default folder in open dialog boxes would always be set to the root folder of the startup volume.
• Fixed the behavior of the window positioning routine. On 9-inch screens, there is no room to stagger zip windows horizontally. Previous versions of ZipIt would just stick windows on top of each other in this case; now ZipIt will attempt to at least stagger the windows vertically.
• Changed the font used in displaying file comments so that a linefeed character is now invisible. Since zip comments usually have carriage returns followed by linefeeds, this should make most comments look nicer.
• When only unzipping a single file, the save all button is now dimmed (since 1.1b4 or so). Fixed Bus error that this was causing (1.1b10).
• Changed comment icon from a small generic document icon to a balloon icon. This is to prepare for the next release, which will include icons for every file, and will use the generic document icon to represent binary files.
• Fixed bug introduced in 1.1 betas (possibly present in 1.0 as well) that would cause printing an archive from the Finder to fail miserably.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to thank Kem Tekinay. Kem spent hours and hours with me, tracking down bugs, making endless suggestions, finding more bugs, and making more suggestions. Without Kem, ZipIt would probably be a TeachText in a world of MS Words. Not only that, but it would probably not work, either! (Or at least the progress bar wouldn’t update.) I really appreciate everything that Kem’s done. Thanks, Kem!
Next, Nick Sklavounakis deserves special thanks. It was he who suggested many of the finishing touches that make ZipIt work. In addition, he was very helpful to me in allowing people to obtain ZipIt from his BBS, Not Even Odd (718-997-1189). Nick allowed me to use his BBS both to distribute beta copies of ZipIt to testers, and final copies over FidoNet and the Internet. I’d also like to thank Sheppard Gordon, who extensively tested ZipIt.
The Freddie beta testers, especially Peter Stoller, also deserve special thanks. Peter helped to track down a bug that caused ZipIt to freeze in the middle of unzipping — not a pleasant thing to happen. In addition, thanks to Peter for helping me revise this manual. Thanks also to all the ZipIt beta testers for helping me debug ZipIt throughout all stages of its development.
Special appreciation goes to Bill Goodman, who came up with the perfect interface for any compression-type program.
There are three more important people whom I’d like to thank. Without Mark Adler, Richard B. Wales, and Jean-loup Gailly, ZipIt would never, ever have been possible. They wrote the portable code for Zip version 1.0 that forms the core of ZipIt. I would especially like to thank Jean-loup Gailly for all the help and suggestions he gave me, and for his permission to use his code in ZipIt.
Thanks to Samuel H. Smith, and those who ported his program to the Atari ST and Peter Maika for porting it to the Macintosh. I used this code as the basis for ZipIt’s unzipping ability. I’d especially like to thank Peter Maika for his permission to use his unzipping code as the core of ZipIt’s ability to unzip files.
Finally, I am indebted to all of the registered ZipIt users out there. You are the ones who made it worth my while to continue supporting and improving ZipIt. As long as you are still there, ZipIt will continue to be improved. Thanks also for the many valuable suggestions you’ve made. I’m only sorry I wasn’t able to include all of them in this release.
