Packager sits quietly on the iconbar (far left). Dragging onto it a directory of files will begin the archiving process.
'Oh my god, it's 3 meg!' Files these days seem to be getting bigger and bigger. This is not necessarily a bad thing although when large files need to be transported between computers, the files are usually collected together and compressed as one file. When this compacted archive reaches its destination, an application similar to the compressing application is need to restore the files. Common RISC OS archivers include Spark, ArcFS and PackDir.
WinZip, for the PC, can make archives that open by themselves (self-extracting archives), without the need to use a separate decompressor. This feature is missing (as far as I'm aware) from Spark and ArcFS. If you need to prepare an application to upload to your website or to archive a directory of files to pass on to a fellow RISC OS user then maybe I can suggest you use Packager.
After starting Packager, you can drag onto it's iconbar icon a directory of files or an application. A save box will appear from which you can save the generated archive. The archive created is a single program that when double-clicked on will expand out and recreate the archived files.
There are no tricky menus or options, however the generated archive can only be re-opened on a RISC OS machine. Alas, there is no compression involved- so a directory that is 32K in size will create a file that is 32K. Maybe I'll ask about implementing some compression, it shouldn't be too difficult...
An archiver that compresses and groups together files like ArcFS or Spark maybe, therefore, needed if you are dealing with lots of large files. On the otherhand, when you need a quick and no-fuss archiver I suggest you use Packager.
A lone directory, stuffed with expensive graphics.
Packager has now been turned it into a single file, ready for email or a website. Double-clicking on it will re-create the Art directory.