.zip files corrupt fonts?

[wonderings]

We always seem to have issues with fonts that come in a zipped file. Does .zip corrupt or damage fonts? We were told by our B2B web people that they needed fonts in stuffit format (they say .zip corrupts fonts), which is no problem for us, but for some of our customers they all use .zip.

Should mention this is on a mac, one computer running 10.5.8, the other 10.6.1

[prepressguru]

What I have noticed is if clients create zip files with stuffit zip, it has problems. Stuffit had some very bad versions and people have not upgraded to the latest version which is much better. But you should mention to your customers is to use the built in zip function (right click "compress....") this work flawlessly and stop using stuffit zip or stuffit all together.

Goodluck

[esmith214]

Put everything into a folder and compress that. Always works better regardless of compression type.

[zoran]

It depends on what version of Mac compressed that Zip file.
I believe from Tiger and higher (or from Leopard, not sure) they implemented functionality in zip archive to retain resource forks.
Older versions of Mac OS could zip files but could not retain resource forks so older mac fonts would get corrupted.

I hope this helps.

[TigerPress]

Here is a PDF that we use to communicate this problem to customers when it happens.

[macphenom]

If you use a newer version of stuffit it has the ability to preserve the resource forks in zip archives. Just set your preferences to "Preserve Macintosh Content" for zip files

[Tech]

.zip doesn't corrupt fonts. Old and outdated compression apps does it inconsistently and leads people to conclude .zip always corrupt fonts. It's Psychology 101, if one gets enough .zip corrupt files they conclude it's useless and don't bother to understand the technology behind different file formats.

[bprint_tampabay]

macphenom has it right.

that is the real issue.