Hi Candace,
When opening the PeptideShaker cps file PeptideShaker will try to locate the needed files automatically. If the files are not found at the provided location, PeptideShaker will also check the folder where the cps file located and for a sub folder called data. If the files are still not found the user can locate them manually.
However, if you want to share the whole project or open it on a different computer, that is what the zip export is for. The zip file contains the cps file and a folder called data with the FASTA and mgf files. In other words all you need to open the project. And this should be exactly what you want.
As to the request for relative paths, given that PeptideShaker looks for the files in the same folder as the cps file (and in the data sub folder), I'd think that covers the support for relative paths too?
Best regards,
Harald