While Panther's Finder's contextual menu allows Zip compression of files with its "Create Archive of ..." this still requires bringing up the contextual menu, selecting the option .. and then 'cleaning up' the original file and newly created archive.zip. As Panther has the attached Folder Actions, I figured this could be used to shortcut the process and consolidate the file/archive within one place. Luckily "Sal from Cupertino" picked up on my query in this regard, and provided the following script to compile with the AppleScript Script Editor.
[robg adds: Read the rest of the hint for the script ... and I think "Sal from Cupertino" is probably Sal Soghoian, the AppleScript Product Manager at Apple (at least, that's what he was a few years back).]
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
tell application "Finder"
if not (exists folder "Done" of this_folder) then
make new folder at this_folder with properties ¬
{name:"Done"}
end if
set the destination_folder to folder "Done" of ¬
this_folder as alias
set the destination_directory to POSIX path of ¬
the destination_folder
end tell
repeat with i from 1 to number of items in these_items
set this_item to item i of these_items
set the item_info to info for this_item
if this_item is not the destination_folder and the ¬
name extension of the item_info is not in ¬
{"zip", "sit"} then
set the item_path to the quoted form of the ¬
POSIX path of this_item
set the destination_path to the quoted form of ¬
(destination_directory & (name of the ¬
item_info) & ".zip")
do shell script ¬
("/usr/bin/ditto -c -k -rsrc --keepParent " & ¬
item_path & " " & destination_path)
end if
end repeat
end adding folder items to
NOTES:Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20031115033508637