ALL MODERN ONLINE STORAGE FILE FORMATS WILL FU&^CK UP THE RESOURCE FORK (INCLUDING ADRIVE), so all files should be encoded in Mac Binary (in the old days of Mac aware Apache systems this was not the case, they did it for for you); So we inevitably have 2 choices:
1) Encode with Mac Binary (.BIN with stuffIt) and the downloader of the file will un-encode the file (with StuffIt again) and BAM… just like it was
OR
2) Do nothing and explain to the user the original "type" and "creator-codes" and have them use a utility (like "filetype" and fix the values), again, all the Data in the files remains intact no matter what method is used, but the files become unrecognizable to applications (and the Mac OS finder) when the resource fork is stripped
Now, things like ISO Files or toast images are not as important since you can direct the burning software to mount and burn the file by brute force (however, I still .bin them for the newbies so that pretty icons are not lost); but please don't expect the Finder to know what the file is.
JUST REMEMBER to ENCODE ALREADY BEFORE UPLOADING..
OK, just to clarify... .SIT and .HQX is for making the archive (like a zip file), a compressed or uncompressed version of many files jammed into 1 large file, but it still has nothing to do with the encoding into BIN (Mac Binary)
So to be absolutely as clear as possible...
UPLOADING....
STEP 1: Create the archive file (.SIT, .BIN, .HQX, .IMG, .TOAST... ect) with StuffIt
STEP 2: Encode the archive with "Mac Binary" using stuffIt, so an example of the end result will be "FileName.SIT.BIN"
Now upload the file
DOWNLOADING...
STEP 1: Download the wanted File
STEP 2: Un-encode (remove .BIN) with StuffIt
STEP 3: Uncompress or Extract with StuffIt