If you're a PC user, you would be well-served to get the program WinZIP, which can handle a wide range of common archive formats. Macintosh users would do well to get Stuffit Expander, which also has a companion suite called Expander Enhancer to handle most of the formats you'd find on the net. Windows 95 and NT 4.0 users may want to look at VisualZIP Pro32. Addresses of sites from which these programs can be downloaded are available at the end of this document.
.Z - Compressed with the standard Unix
compress utility. To handle this file use
uncompress if you're on a Unix system. Use
WinZip on a PC. StuffIt Expander with
Expander Enhancer
will handle it on a Macintosh. It's possible that
gunzip will handle this as well, but I'm
not 100% sure of that.
.zip - Zipped file (compressed with a
utility like PKZIP. On a PC, unpack using PKZIP, gunzip,
WinZIP,
or similar utility. On a Unix host, unpack using gunzip.
On Macintosh, try StuffIt Expander.
.gz - Gnu Zip format. Unpack using gunzip
on Unix systems, "macgzip" on Macintoshes, or WinZIP on
PCs.
.sit - StuffIt file (compressed with
StuffIt)---a popular Macintosh compression scheme. Widely
understood by compression programs other than StuffIt.
.cpt - Compactor Pro file (another popular
Macintosh compression program).
.exe - Runnable file. Often a SEA file.
.sea - Self-Extracting Archive. This file
is runnable and will automatically unpack itself along with
any supporting files.
.tar - Unix tape archive file (tar). Unpack
on a Unix system using a command like "tar -xvf filename".
Macintosh users can handle these with a utility called "Tar"
and PC users can handle them with WinZIP.
.uu - UUencoded file. This format takes a
binary file and converts it to an ASCII representation that
can be sent through E-mail or Usenet news. Can be decoded
under Unix using a command like "uudecode filename". Mac
users can decode using UU Undo. PC users can decode using WinCode.
.hqx - Binhex format. Commonly used in the
Macintosh community to take a binary file and convert it to
an ASCII representation. Can be decoded using BinHex 4.0
or StuffIt Expander. PC users can often decode these using BinHex 13.
.ps - PostScript file. This is a widely-used
page description language developed by Adobe. It is built into
most high-end laser printers made in the last 10 years and
most users can simply send a file to a PostScript printer.
PostScript can also be viewed onscreen using a viewer like
Ghostscript. Ghostscript is a free utility that is available
for Unix, Macintosh, and PCs. Macintosh users can print using
Laserwriter Font Utility. Commercial packages like Freedom of
Press may be able to handle on PCs and Macintoshes.
.pdf - Portable Document Format (Adobe Acrobat
format). PDF files are smaller than PostScript, but retain
the layout of the original document. It is ideal for documents
like forms, worksheets, viewgraphs, etc. The Acrobat reader
can be obtained free of charge from
Adobe and is available for
Unix, Macintosh, and PCs.
.tex - This is a TeX or LaTeX file, a document
description language developed by Donald Knuth at Stanford
University. It is widely used in the mathematics and some other
science fields. To use the files, you'll need a complete TeX and
LaTeX installation along with supporting utilities. Free software
is widely available for most platforms, although I haven't seen
a robust public-domain TeX for the PC.
.gif - GIF image. Handled by most browsers. Can
be displayed by most image viewers. Use xv on Unix hosts.
.jpeg - JPEG image. Displayed in Netscape, but
not always by other viewers. Usually more compact than equivalent GIFs.
Can be viewed by a wide range of external graphic viewer programs.
.tiff - Tagged Image Format File. Commonly produced
by scanners. Can be viewed by some external viewer programs and
can often be imported into page layout programs.
.mpeg - Movie/animation file.
.au).
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