Compact Pro adalah utilitas kompresi data perangkat lunak untuk pengarsipan dan kompresi file pada platform Apple Macintosh. Itu adalah pesaing utama StuffIt di awal 1990-an, menghasilkan arsip yang lebih kecil dalam waktu yang lebih singkat, mampu membuat arsip yang dapat mengekstraksi sendiri tanpa menggunakan program eksternal, serta didistribusikan melalui shareware yang sangat membantu popularitasnya. Versi PC juga tersedia, ExtractorPC. Tidak ada program yang didukung secara aktif.
Sejarah
Ketika diperkenalkan pada awal 1990-an, Compact Pro (awalnya dikenal sebagai “Compactor”) bersaing dengan StuffIt, yang telah diabaikan setelah pengembang aslinya pindah ke proyek lain. Compact Pro menggunakan antarmuka yang bersih dan berbagai fitur baru yang dengan cepat menjadikannya favorit di antara para digerati. Itu dengan cepat mendorong StuffIt dari posisi kepemimpinan dan menjadi sangat populer di sistem BBS.
StuffIt 3.0 melawan balik dengan algoritme kompresi yang bahkan lebih kuat, versi shareware yang disebut StuffIt Lite dengan sebagian besar fitur yang sama, dan freeware StuffIt Expander yang dapat mendekompresi arsip StuffIt dan arsip Compact Pro. Compact Pro tidak pernah mendapatkan kembali momentumnya setelah rilis StuffIt Expander. Itu mempertahankan ceruk di antara pengguna setia dan sebagai alat persiapan untuk paket pengiriman “Penginstal Lebih Kecil” Cyclos (yang terutama digunakan oleh Perangkat Lunak Ambrosia), tetapi menghilang dari pasar pada akhir 1990-an.
Compact Pro juga berfungsi sebagai inspirasi untuk ZipIt, pengarsipan yang kompatibel dengan PKZip yang secara tegas dirancang agar terlihat dan berfungsi seperti Compact Pro.
Features
Like most archiver systems, Compact Pro’s primary purpose was to package up and compress files for transmission, then extract them again on the other side of the link. Unlike most systems, Compact Pro used a non-modal Mac-like UI that was widely lauded in the press.
Some of the more notable features included the ability to extract everything from an archive by double-clicking on it in the Finder with the ⌥ Option key held down, and automatically recognizing and converting BinHex formatted files back into native format without a separate step. Compact Pro also featured an easy-to-use system for splitting files into parts to fit on floppy disks, a feature that most archivers implemented in an external program, if at allAn odd, but oft-used, feature was the ability to include images and notes that would display when the archive was opened, using the same basic mechanism as TeachText.
Compact Pro also included the ability to produce self-extracting archives. Although this was becoming common in archivers at the time, its particular implementation was notable because the extractor “stub” code was quite small at about 13 kB (compared to StuffIt at 38 kB).In an era of 14400 bit/s modems, this was a worthwhile savings. Many considered even this to be too large to bother with, and there were a number of small third-party utilities to strip the stub off from an existing archive. Compact Pro’s stub could also expand files that had been split into parts, a rare feature at the time.
At the time of its introduction, Compact Pro offered, by far, the fastest and best compression on the Mac. In use, “Compactor files were never more than 1% larger than StuffIt Deluxe’s “Better”/”Best Guess” modes, but anywhere from 25% to 400% faster.” Ironically, Compact Pro was even faster than StuffIt at extracting StuffIt files, often at least double the performance. It also allowed background operation under MultiFinder. Its speed remained superior to most other systems even after major upgrades had ended. Testing in the late 1990s show it remaining significantly faster and smaller than versions of StuffIt from years later.
Normal archives created with Compact Pro use the .cpt file extension, while self-extracting versions used .sea. File extensions are not normally needed on the Mac, but were commonly used on archives because they would typically be stored on some other system that would normally require them (PCs for instance).
