StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version (5.2.0?) for Linux (x86) and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available. [1][2] The proprietary compression format used by the StuffIt utilities is also termed StuffIt.
StuffIt was originally developed in the summer of 1987 by Raymond Lau,[3] who was then a high school student at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. It combined the fork-combining capabilities of utilities such as MacBinary with newer compression algorithms similar to those used in ZIP. Compared to existing utilities on the Mac, notably PackIt, StuffIt offered "one step" operation and higher compression ratios. By the fall of 1987 StuffIt had largely replaced PackIt in the Mac world, with many software sites even going so far as to convert existing PackIt archives to save more space.
StuffIt soon became very popular and Aladdin Systems was formed to market it (the last shareware release by Lau was version 1.5.1). They split the product line in two, offering StuffIt Classic in shareware and StuffIt Deluxe as a commercial package. Deluxe added a variety of additional functions, including additional compression methods and integration into the Mac Finder to allow files to be compressed from a "Magic Menu" without opening StuffIt itself.
StuffIt was upgraded several times, but Lau had removed himself from direct development and major upgrades to the "internal machinery" were rare. As a result, the shareware utility Compact Pro emerged as a competitor to StuffIt's in the early 1990s through a combination of ease-of-use, better compression and higher speed.[citation needed] In fact, Compact Pro could uncompress StuffIt archives at roughly twice the speed of StuffIt itself. Compact Pro development has been discontinued and does not support Mac OS X.[citation needed]
A major upgrade followed in order to compete, adding the freeware StuffIt Expander in order to make the format more universally acceptable, as well as the shareware StuffIt Lite which made it easier to produce — prior to this anyone attempting to use the format needed to buy StuffIt, making Compact Pro more attractive. This move was very successful, and Compact Pro disappeared almost overnight.
Several other Mac compression utilities appeared and disappeared during the 1990s, but none became a real threat to StuffIt's market. The only ones to see any widespread use were special-purpose "disk expanders" like DiskDoubler and SuperDisk!, which served a different niche. Apparently as a side-effect, StuffIt once again saw few upgrades. PC-based formats long surpassed StuffIt in terms of compression, notably newer systems like RAR and 7z. These had little impact on the Mac market, as most of these never appeared in an easy-to-use program on the Mac.
With the introduction of OpenStep as the basis for what would become Mac OS X, newer Mac software lost their forks and no longer needed anything except the built-in Unix utilities like gzip and tar. Numerous programs "wrapping" these utilities were distributed, and since these files could be opened on any machine, they were considerably more practical than StuffIt in an era when most data is cross-platform. Although the writing was clearly on the wall, StuffIt did not respond to this change in the market, and when OS X was eventually released in 2001 they did not have a version supporting the new operating system.
Although it was late to market, Aladdin introduced the completely new StuffIt X in September 2002 with StuffIt Deluxe 7.0 for Macintosh. It was designed to be extendable, support more compression methods, support long file names, and support Unix and Windows file attributes. StuffIt X improves over the original StuffIt format and its descendants by adding multiple compression algorithms such as PPM, and BWT to LZW-type compression. It also added a "block mode" option and several encryption options. In January 2005, JPEG compression was added as a StuffIt X compression option (see the related 'SIF Format' below).
Until the 2005 release of Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger", StuffIt Expander came preloaded with the Macintosh operating system.
Although Mac files generally did not use filename extensions, one of StuffIt's primary uses was to allow Mac files to be stored on non-Mac systems where extensions were required. StuffIt-compressed files typically have the extension .sit, although newer Stuffit X-compressed files carry the file extension .sitx. Encrypted StuffIt archives created with the now-discontinued Private File utility will have .pf extensions. StuffIt-compressed ShrinkWrap disk images will carry .img or .image extensions. However, a Classic version of StuffIt is needed to mount the images or convert them to a newer format readable in Mac OS X.
Allume Systems offers free downloads of StuffIt Expander for Mac and Windows, which expands (uncompresses) files compressed using the StuffIt and StuffIt X format, as well as many other compressed, encoded, encrypted and segmented formats. The shareware application DropStuff permits the compressing of files into the StuffIt X format.
The StuffIt and StuffIt X formats remain, unlike some other file compression formats, proprietary, and Allume Systems charge license fees for its use in other programs. Given this, few alternative programs support the format.
See also : Stuffit Expander
StuffIt was originally developed in the summer of 1987 by Raymond Lau,[3] who was then a high school student at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. It combined the fork-combining capabilities of utilities such as MacBinary with newer compression algorithms similar to those used in ZIP. Compared to existing utilities on the Mac, notably PackIt, StuffIt offered "one step" operation and higher compression ratios. By the fall of 1987 StuffIt had largely replaced PackIt in the Mac world, with many software sites even going so far as to convert existing PackIt archives to save more space.
StuffIt soon became very popular and Aladdin Systems was formed to market it (the last shareware release by Lau was version 1.5.1). They split the product line in two, offering StuffIt Classic in shareware and StuffIt Deluxe as a commercial package. Deluxe added a variety of additional functions, including additional compression methods and integration into the Mac Finder to allow files to be compressed from a "Magic Menu" without opening StuffIt itself.
StuffIt was upgraded several times, but Lau had removed himself from direct development and major upgrades to the "internal machinery" were rare. As a result, the shareware utility Compact Pro emerged as a competitor to StuffIt's in the early 1990s through a combination of ease-of-use, better compression and higher speed.[citation needed] In fact, Compact Pro could uncompress StuffIt archives at roughly twice the speed of StuffIt itself. Compact Pro development has been discontinued and does not support Mac OS X.[citation needed]
A major upgrade followed in order to compete, adding the freeware StuffIt Expander in order to make the format more universally acceptable, as well as the shareware StuffIt Lite which made it easier to produce — prior to this anyone attempting to use the format needed to buy StuffIt, making Compact Pro more attractive. This move was very successful, and Compact Pro disappeared almost overnight.
Several other Mac compression utilities appeared and disappeared during the 1990s, but none became a real threat to StuffIt's market. The only ones to see any widespread use were special-purpose "disk expanders" like DiskDoubler and SuperDisk!, which served a different niche. Apparently as a side-effect, StuffIt once again saw few upgrades. PC-based formats long surpassed StuffIt in terms of compression, notably newer systems like RAR and 7z. These had little impact on the Mac market, as most of these never appeared in an easy-to-use program on the Mac.
With the introduction of OpenStep as the basis for what would become Mac OS X, newer Mac software lost their forks and no longer needed anything except the built-in Unix utilities like gzip and tar. Numerous programs "wrapping" these utilities were distributed, and since these files could be opened on any machine, they were considerably more practical than StuffIt in an era when most data is cross-platform. Although the writing was clearly on the wall, StuffIt did not respond to this change in the market, and when OS X was eventually released in 2001 they did not have a version supporting the new operating system.
Although it was late to market, Aladdin introduced the completely new StuffIt X in September 2002 with StuffIt Deluxe 7.0 for Macintosh. It was designed to be extendable, support more compression methods, support long file names, and support Unix and Windows file attributes. StuffIt X improves over the original StuffIt format and its descendants by adding multiple compression algorithms such as PPM, and BWT to LZW-type compression. It also added a "block mode" option and several encryption options. In January 2005, JPEG compression was added as a StuffIt X compression option (see the related 'SIF Format' below).
Until the 2005 release of Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger", StuffIt Expander came preloaded with the Macintosh operating system.
Although Mac files generally did not use filename extensions, one of StuffIt's primary uses was to allow Mac files to be stored on non-Mac systems where extensions were required. StuffIt-compressed files typically have the extension .sit, although newer Stuffit X-compressed files carry the file extension .sitx. Encrypted StuffIt archives created with the now-discontinued Private File utility will have .pf extensions. StuffIt-compressed ShrinkWrap disk images will carry .img or .image extensions. However, a Classic version of StuffIt is needed to mount the images or convert them to a newer format readable in Mac OS X.
Allume Systems offers free downloads of StuffIt Expander for Mac and Windows, which expands (uncompresses) files compressed using the StuffIt and StuffIt X format, as well as many other compressed, encoded, encrypted and segmented formats. The shareware application DropStuff permits the compressing of files into the StuffIt X format.
The StuffIt and StuffIt X formats remain, unlike some other file compression formats, proprietary, and Allume Systems charge license fees for its use in other programs. Given this, few alternative programs support the format.
See also : Stuffit Expander
Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StuffIt
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