Excerpts from the updated Utilities/User's Guide file.
Special distribution notes for Auto UnStuffIt: The Auto UnStuffIt Installer may be distributed as provided for in the above, but certain restrictions exist for the distribution of turnkeyed, stand-alone archives, that is, those with the Auto UnStuffIt Shell installed. Software which do not constitute a commercial offering and which is being sold for $50 or less may be distributed with the Shell at no additional cost. Commercial offerings, including demos, and software which is being offered at a cost of over $50 require special licensing and payment of a negotiable fee. Please contact me with an offer. Include information as to the nature of your product and the number of copies to be distributed annually.
Unless exempt by written agreement, the following credit, as written or appropriately paraphrased, should be included in your documentation with your installation instructions:
“This program is being distributed in a StuffIt archive. StuffIt is a file compression, encryption and general purpose file archival utility by Raymond Lau. It is being offered as shareware by Raymond Lau. If you’re interested in obtaining a copy, send $20 to: Raymond Lau, 100-04 70 Ave., Forest Hills, NY 11375-5133, U.S.A.”
4. Auto UnStuffIt
Description:
Auto UnStuffIt is a turnkey system which allows you to convert an archive into a stand alone self-decompressing archive. Auto UnStuffIt consists of two parts, a Shell to be added to the archive to be turnkeyed and an Installer to add the Shell. The Shell currently works only with non-encrypted entries. This will probably not change. Turnkeyed archives already have an extra 15k overhead. Adding support for decryption will increase this. Turnkeyed archives may not be opened by StuffIt, UnStuffIt, or UnStuffIt DA directly. For now, you must change their types back to ‘SIT!’ before you can manually extract, add, delete, rename… entries. This will be fixed in future versions of StuffIt, UnStuffIt and UnStuffIt DA.
It is suggested that after you prepare an archive for distribution, you first make a back up copy of it. You can then turnkey the original copy. Developers may also change the turnkeyed archive’s creator and icon.
When a turnkeyed archive is run, all its contents will be extracted and saved into the same location in which the archive originally resided. Files with the same name as (an) archive entry(ies) will be deleted and overwritten. There is a warning though.
NOTE: The turnkey Shell adds about 15k to an archive. If your archive is not significantly smaller than the uncompressed version of your entries, then the Auto UnStuffIt turnkey system may not offer any advantage.
Operation:
To turnkey an archive, run the Auto UnStuffIt Installer. Select the Install… command from the File menu. The first time you issue this command, you will be asked to locate the Auto UnStuffIt Shell. After doing so and on subsequent Install requests, you will be asked to select the archive to be turnkeyed. Once you do so, the Installer will do its thing. Once an archive has been turnkeyed, it is suggested that you change its name and remove the ‘.sit’ suffix. Turnkeyed archives are standalone applications. Having the extension may confuse users into thinking it is a regular archive.
The Installer and Shell are distinct components. The Installer just copies everything from the Shell into the archive. That means I can update the Shell as needed without updating the Installer or vice-versa. So if the two have disparate version numbers, it’s all right.
NOTE: If you have Vaccine running, it will go off three times as the Installer adds in three CODE resources. If your Shell is legitimate, then this should cause no problem. However, there is an inherent weakness here. Make sure you obtained the Shell from a reliable source! If not, someone may have tampered with it and the Installer will be installing possibly dangerous CODE resources.
