tweaking Panther's zip feature

jfruhjfruh
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Hi there, here's a question on Panther's zip feature. I really appreciate it that Apple has put the capability to put a file in a zip archive right into the Finder -- I always hate it when Windows has something we don't! . However ... the default implementation of this feature creates a metadata folder called __MACOSX or some such in the zip archive so that the files unzip with all their metadata associations intact on a Mac. Unfortunately, almost all of my use of zip archives will be sending them to not-so-computer-savvy Windows users. I have no real desire to explain repeatedly to all of them that they should just ignore or discard that folder. Anyone know if there's any way to turn this feature off so that the Finder creates standard zip archives without metadata?



Thanks in advance,

jf

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    costiquecostique Posts: 1,084member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jfruh

    Anyone know if there's any way to turn this feature off so that the Finder creates standard zip archives without metadata?



    This is obviously a resource fork. If you know your files can live without their resource forks, you can strip them manually before zipping.



    1. How do you strip the resource fork? There are two ways: GrimRipper and Terminal (the cp command allows you to copy files ignoring the resource fork).

    2. How do you tell if it's dangerous? Try. Duplicate the file in question (so that you have a working back-up) by Command-D, give the copy of the file to GrimRipper, notice that the icon may be gone for good, and try opening it in the program which created it. If the file opens, you can safely zip it.

    3. Adobe Illustrator's, Photoshop's, QuarkXPress' documents and text files can be processed this way without losing important data.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    jfruhjfruh Posts: 34member
    Hmm ... this works fine ... stripping the resource forks seems makes them zip up cleanly. (The files in question will be standard xml, graphic, and .java files, with appropriate filename extensions -- stripping the resource fork shouldn't be too problematic in practice.) Unfortunately, Grim Ripper doesn't work for me ... perhaps it hasn't yet been updated for Panther? I'm not getting the contextual menu item it is supposed to provide, unless there's something else to install that I'm missing. And having to use the command-line cp option eliminates the convenience of the conextual zip menu! I guess I will go back to using DropZip for the time being until Grim Ripper is updated or I can find another utility to do this easily.



    jf
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