Using Stuffit I can unZip PC files, but does this work the other way around? If not, is there a way to send compressed Mac files to a PC user?
As long as the source file is something readable by a Windows machine, and the Windows user has this software, or a comparable package, it should be no problem.
I’ve found that I can typically read PC files on a Mac but not the other way around. Don’t know—maybe compressing them enales you to do this, but I’ve never been able to get it to work for me.
I’ve never had any problem going either direction. There’s nothing magic about either platform that makes their files different. I usually manually rename Mac files on the PC so they have the proper file extensions, but many apps will open them either way and that has nothing to do with the OP.
As Schadenfreude says, Stuffit works great. There are a lot of other compression utilities for various file formats available here:
http://www.tucows.com/system/comp95.html
Yeah, but for the really hard to convert files (Mac–>PC), I’ll use HFVExplorer to transfer it to a disk image and fire up Basilisk, a really spiffy Mac emulator.
Winzip doesn’t seem to have too much difficulty with binhexed files.
I may be misreading this, but it sounds as if you’re asking if there’s a way to compress files on a Mac so that a Windows user can un-compress them. Yes?
If so, use the Stuffit utility called DropStuff. Go into the Preferences and change the “Make self-extracting for” field from Macintosh to Windows, and you’ll create a .exe file that a PC can open without any special software.
There’s also programs that’ll create zipped archives, too. Can’t recall names, but I’m sure you’ll find something called MacZip or MacGZip or the like…
The latest version of DropStuff for the Mac will let you save self-extracting PC “.exe” archives, which is probably your best bet, since you probably already have DropStuff (doesn’t every Mac user?)
All versions of Aladdin Expander for the PC will open Stuffit as well as ZipIt / PKZip / WinZip archives, but you can’t count on PC users necessarily having Aladdin Expander. (doesn’t have the marketr share of WinZip, at least not yet).
The program ZipIt, Macintosh shareware, will let you create .zip archives on the Macintosh.