gprentice Messages: 260 Registered: November 2005 Location: New Zealand
Experienced Member
unodgs wrote on Tue, 13 December 2005 01:52
In this snapshot plugin directory is back. I had a little bug in makeinstall program and I missed it before. Sorry...
One question. Can I create snapshot in 7z format (www.7-zip.org). The archive would be much more smaller.
How much smaller would it be?
Are there any other pros and cons?
Can winzip and 7zip open each others archives?
What would happen if you tried to open 7-zip with winzip - hopefully it fails gracefully, if so, shouldn't be much problem swapping to 7-zip (if it's reliable). Also isn't 7-zip free compared to winzip - or do people just use a winzip-capable freeware utility anyway?? So many questions
(I have a feeling there's a bunch of other archiving products around too - I wonder how compatible they all are.)
mr_ped Messages: 825 Registered: November 2005 Location: Czech Republic - Praha
Experienced Contributor
7zip is not compatible with pkzip (Winzip) format, yet it *can* produce also classic zip (winzip) archives still gaining a small advantage (2% to 10%) in compression ratio when compared to winzip.
But it really shines when its own 7z compression is used, the gain with classic zip is marginal. (OTOH sometimes even 2% can make a difference)
With 7z compression it can go far far better than zip.
"Usually 7-Zip compresses to 7z format 30-70% better than to zip format."
Also I think the snapshot is mostly used by experienced developers, which are capable to download/install/use new compression tool, so no real pressure to maintain classic zip. And also there's no real problem (IMHO) to post both 7z and zip archives?
7z is available in source, win32 or linux executables (not very good support of different platforms for ordinary user, who doesn't want to compile sources).
And lately it is used by some install packages, as it's compression ratio is top class right now.