[mdlug] Archive formats (was "Linux Format" March issue available for download)

[Jeff Hanson]

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 2:12 PM, Aaron Kulkis <akulkis00 at gmail.com> wrote:
> But what's the installed base?
>
> What percentage of users even know where to get 7-zip?
>
> I'm not saying that it's a bad format -- only that it's
> not appropriate for the purpose for which the archives
> in question are being distributed.

The .7z format is obviously not as popular as zip.  But zip is not a
great standard either as there have been different incompatible
implementations over the years (WinZip being responsible for a lot of
them).  My favorite are the ones that store full paths with the
filenames instead of a hierarchy so you end up with a single directory
of 100+ character filenames with forward slashes.  On the warez scene
I see mostly RAR and some bizarre combinations like RARs of zips.  ACE
is very rare.  Microsoft's archive format of choice was CAB.

But ARC was the original compression format on DOS and Phil Katz
cloned that first with PKARC before developing PKZip.  The popularity
of ARC didn't keep it on top.  If you had a zip file that you didn't
know how to open then you just asked someone for help.

> The goal is to make the data as easily available to as
> many people as possible, NOT to optimize decompression
> time.
>

So do you mail DOC and XLS files to people?  I don't.  If they need to
open my files then they can download OOo for free.  I only send DOC
and XLS when somebody is paying me to.  Clicking File > Save As and
having to select a format is more effort than I feel is necessary and
I expect to be compensated for it.

Since 7-Zip is free and has better compression and standardization
than any implementation of zip that I've tried then I don't have a
problem telling people to download it either.

I'm not going to let the popularity of one "industry standard" limit
my technological advancement using another.