Creating ZIP files

tilt

Hi all



Other than buying a full version of Stuffit, is there a way I can create a zip file? I am looking for freeware solutions only for the present.



I could create an archive by marking all the files, right-clicking and click on 'create archive' but that does not compress the files. I need something that will work like Winzip on Windows, compress and create a zip file.



I checked Version Tracker, but there seem to be a few freeware apps that look like they have been abandoned, like ZIPIT fcor example. Is ZIPIT good enough for my purpose?



Thanks and cheers

jll

Quote:

Originally posted by tilt

I could create an archive by marking all the files, right-clicking and click on 'create archive' but that does not compress the files. I need something that will work like Winzip on Windows, compress and create a zip file.

But that does create a compressed zip file.



What are you trying to compress? JPEGs don't compress very well, if at all, since they are compressed already.

tilt

Thanks for the quick response JLL. I was trying to compress a few PDFs that I created. The combined size of the 11 PDFs was the same as the ZIP archive. Are PDFs too already compressed like JPEGs?



Cheers

jll

Quote:

Originally posted by tilt

Thanks for the quick response JLL. I was trying to compress a few PDFs that I created. The combined size of the 11 PDFs was the same as the ZIP archive. Are PDFs too already compressed like JPEGs?



Cheers

They can be.

sladuuch

Can't you get dropstuff for free? And in my experience, compression is kind of a hit-or-miss affair; results range from fantastic compression to archives bigger then the original. It all depends on what you're compression and the barometric pressure that day.

drumsticks

PDFs are not always compressed themselves, but compressing them is often difficult. If it is PDF compression you're after, you might want to try the "ColorSync Utility" located in "Applications > Utilities". There is a neat function to compress PDFs in it.



Beware, some of the compression is done such that you lose some information, so it's not completely lossless. Try it out. Depending on how you created the PDFs and what's in them, you might gain a lot, or not at all.

lundy

If you don't mind using the command line, just type



zip output.name.zip input.name



in the Terminal.



Apple's "Make Archive" menu item uses BOMArchiver, not zip, so this might have different compression.



Example:



zip ~/Documents/foo.zip ~/Documents/foo.pdf



then check the file sizes. I just tested it and it reduced a PDF by only 9%.

tilt

Thanks for all your responses.



Lundy, I come from CP/M and MS-DOS and a little Linux, so I am not scared of the CLI. Thanks for the tip. I shall try that out.



Drumstick, thanks. I tried Colorsync and it did not do anything to reduce the file size. I guess probably like JLL and you said, PDFs are not that easy to compress. BTW I created the PDFs by printing TIFF files of documents that I had scanned.



Sladuuch, one of my questions was that on Versiontracker there are so many utilities to deal with zip files and I wanted opinions from more experienced users as to which the better ones were. You suggest Dropstuff. I can try that out, however I think I shall go with Lundy's suggestion of using the CLI



Thank you all for your help



Cheers

kickaha

Quote:

Originally posted by tilt

BTW I created the PDFs by printing TIFF files of documents that I had scanned.

*bing bing bing*



I'll bet you anything they were compressed TIFFs. That's the norm. The TIFF gets placed inside the PDF wrapper intact, so you had a PDF wrapper around an already compressed image. Trying to compress it further isn't going to do much of anything.

tilt

That's probably it Kickaha



Cheers