As has been covered, storing a file on an ftp server can render the file useless due to it losing its resource fork. I noticed though that sit, hqx and sea files still work in Stuffit Deluxe regardless if that has happened. I also noticed it with audio files. I guess some software was programmed to ignore the resource forks and have it still work no matter what? I wish all software from that time did that.
PS: I thought that we were all supposed to create .bin files for uploading everything. I see a lot of file attachments on the forum without the .bin extension. It's mostly sit and hqx files, but as mentioned Stuffit is good about that. I guess if people were uploading other file types it would be a problem.
Ok, to clarify... The loss of the "creator" will break the file's association, Not render it useless.
So, newbies will still have trouble with archives if they do not drag the file manually onto the unstuffit app or simply open StuffIt first and select the file. Either way the file will lose it's icon.
the reason we encode the file (make it a .bin), is to wrap it up in a neat little data bundle that preserves all file info from both forks and When it is unencoded, all is as it was including the "creator" or associated application.
The .bin process of encoding with mac binary does not compress or pack the contents like a StuffIt it archive, again, it simply puts the file contents and resource fork into a neat package with no compression added.
Hqx is a different story, it was made to be stored on non-Mac file systems and self extracts, but is better than a .sea since it cannot get compromised from loosing the resource fork.
lastly, files will all "still work" after being stored on non-Mac systems, but applications may crash and manual file fixing via "file type" of other utilities may be needed if the application does not "look" at the data file's contents and simply expects it to have been created by another app, and now that info is missing from a stripped resource fork.
Wav files will still have digital audio, text files will still contain text, but trust me, this encoding thing is absolutely critical if you plan to use your files without dedicating a lot of time fixing them