Zip compression gets complicated
Posted on August 13, 2003
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 78 views |
It seems that the folks who make the most popular Zip-compression software have taken to monkeying about with the format:
Both programs use the basic .zip file extension to designate both secure and standard files. The upshot? People who receive a file with .zip now won’t know until they try to open it whether it’s one of three types: a secure file accessible only through PKWare’s software; a secure file accessible only through WinZip; or a standard Zip file that can be accessed by any compression utility.
I spend roughly 90% of my time working on a Mac and I send most files to other Mac users, thus I tend to favourite the StuffIt compression format over all others. But when I have to send to a Windows user, or I don’t know what the receiver is using, then zip is the only way to go. Given the ubiquity of zip it doesn’t seem like a good idea to me to be creating multiple incompatible formats. It’ll only piss off the end-user.
C’mon guys, standardize! Trying to hold market share by obfuscation is absurd. ‘Course if it all backfires maybe StuffIt will become the defacto standard for Windows too? That’d certainly make my life a bit easier.