Why I can not upload .7z files here?

[soldar]

What motivation is there to use zip over any conventional format?

Um, ZIP is the conventional format.  A thousand times more used and widespread. Supported by all major OS.

[Monkeh]

What motivation is there to use zip over any conventional format?

Um, ZIP is the conventional format.  A thousand times more used and widespread. Supported by all major OS.

It's one conventional format.

Again, 7z exists and is common. It's the default format for a popular tool. Oh, and LZMA can achieve around 50% smaller compressed sizes than DEFLATE - which yes, does matter. Search the forum for people complaining about not being able to get zip files small enough (or using LZMA in zip, which may or may not work in 'all major OS').

It's out there, nobody is hurting you by using it, and adding it as an allowed upload will in no way harm the forum. It may harm the delicate sensibilities of a few whingers, but you'll probably get over it..

[Gyro]

It's a whole two mouse clicks to get 7zip to output zip format. 

[Monkeh]

It's a whole two mouse clicks to get 7zip to output zip format. 

It is, you're quite right. It's not many more mouse clicks to go get 7zip and be capable of opening more than just zip.

[tooki]

It's a whole two mouse clicks to get 7zip to output zip format. 

It is, you're quite right. It's not many more mouse clicks to go get 7zip and be capable of opening more than just zip.

Also, some users might be on corporate machines where they can't install programs.

Regardless, though, expecting others to install software just to cater to your whims is the height of arrogance. Just use zip like any sensible person would in this situation.

[IanB]

It is, you're quite right. It's not many more mouse clicks to go get 7zip and be capable of opening more than just zip.

I think that is not the point. If you are a publisher you probably wish to maximize your readership and minimize friction for your readers.

If you upload ("publish") a 7zip archive in a forum post, then you will find a significant number of people who may be able to help with your question will shrug and move on to another post.

If that's OK with you as a poster, then fine, upload away. Nobody is obligated to look at what you post.

[tooki]

Do we really need files larger than 4 GB?

Indeed. Given that the forum limit is 5000KB per post, the maximum file size is not even remotely a concern.

[Gyro]

I just had a thought, the quick way to be able to upload a 7zip file without requiring any forum changes would be to put it in a zip. 

EDIT: ... yes, that works, you don't even need to re-format any existing 7zip archives then. Solved, everyone can be happy! 

[Monkeh]

It's a whole two mouse clicks to get 7zip to output zip format. 

It is, you're quite right. It's not many more mouse clicks to go get 7zip and be capable of opening more than just zip.

Also, some users might be on corporate machines where they can't install programs.

Regardless, though, expecting others to install software just to cater to your whims is the height of arrogance. Just use zip like any sensible person would in this situation.

I do not see why I should cater to your whims either. As for corporate systems, perhaps people should be working at work, not spending time on personal forums - if they're here on the forum for work then they should have no problem asking for necessary software to be provided.

It is, you're quite right. It's not many more mouse clicks to go get 7zip and be capable of opening more than just zip.

I think that is not the point. If you are a publisher you probably wish to maximize your readership and minimize friction for your readers.

If you upload ("publish") a 7zip archive in a forum post, then you will find a significant number of people who may be able to help with your question will shrug and move on to another post.

If that's OK with you as a poster, then fine, upload away. Nobody is obligated to look at what you post.

If someone is unwilling to put the trivial effort in to open a file with numerous free (as opposed to the many very expensive proprietary programs people share files for..) solutions, then they clearly weren't interested in the first place.

[tooki]

It's a whole two mouse clicks to get 7zip to output zip format. 

It is, you're quite right. It's not many more mouse clicks to go get 7zip and be capable of opening more than just zip.

Also, some users might be on corporate machines where they can't install programs.

Regardless, though, expecting others to install software just to cater to your whims is the height of arrogance. Just use zip like any sensible person would in this situation.

I do not see why I should cater to your whims either.

Sticking to THE undisputed industry standard format is not a "whim". It's courteous and sensible.

[Monkeh]

It's a whole two mouse clicks to get 7zip to output zip format. 

It is, you're quite right. It's not many more mouse clicks to go get 7zip and be capable of opening more than just zip.

Also, some users might be on corporate machines where they can't install programs.

Regardless, though, expecting others to install software just to cater to your whims is the height of arrogance. Just use zip like any sensible person would in this situation.

I do not see why I should cater to your whims either.

Sticking to THE undisputed industry standard format is not a "whim". It's courteous and sensible.

Okay, so let's talk compressed tarballs.. or do you expect me to zip a tarball in a completely abnormal fashion? (you can't upload .gz, bz2, xz...)

In general I do provide .zip for most people - but why shouldn't I be able to use a more applicable format?

[Gyro]

Err, guys, you may have missed it, but I just solved the problem to everyone's satisfaction...

I just had a thought, the quick way to be able to upload a 7zip file without requiring any forum changes would be to put it in a zip. 

EDIT: ... yes, that works, you don't even need to re-format any existing 7zip archives then. Solved, everyone can be happy! 

I can't see any possible objections - Monkeh can upload his 7zips (or any other compressed format) and tooki doesn't have to open them!

[Monkeh]

For an example I just tried compressing about 62MiB of text.

Using zip, and the industry standard at that (DEFLATE), I could get it down to 10.4MiB. Using LZMA (not in a zip even though possible, because you wanted industry standard), that comes down to 7MiB. Still wouldn't make it up here, but this was a very fat example indeed.

It's not hard to see (and has happened - search the forum..) a circumstance where this is an issue - 7z, rar, or xz can't be uploaded, zip isn't small enough. Adding extra containers or renaming files in an invalid manner is not a solution. Uploading off-forum works, yes, but breaks the entire goal of allowing uploads to the forum - to preserve the file with the post.

Allowing a wider variety of readily openable formats allows for less storage utilization on the server and greater scope of uploading by users. The only impediment? About three people in this thread, apparently.

[tooki]

Also, some users might be on corporate machines where they can't install programs.

Regardless, though, expecting others to install software just to cater to your whims is the height of arrogance. Just use zip like any sensible person would in this situation.

I do not see why I should cater to your whims either.

Sticking to THE undisputed industry standard format is not a "whim". It's courteous and sensible.

Okay, so let's talk compressed tarballs.. or do you expect me to zip a tarball in a completely abnormal fashion? (you can't upload .gz, bz2, xz...)

In general I do provide .zip for most people - but why shouldn't I be able to use a more applicable format?

.tar.gz may be common in the *nix world, but it's extraordinarily rare outside of it, and of vanishingly small relevance to this forum. Windows (which, let's face it, comprises the overwhelming majority of computer users) and the Mac (which makes up almost all of the rest) all use zip, and a ton of programs (like Open Office, MS Office XML, Apple Pages/Numbers/Keynote, the Arduino IDE, and a ton more) use zip as the container for their documents or libraries, even if they might apply a different file extension.

But regardless of whether .tar.zip is customary in the *nix world, it WILL work, since those OSes can all open zip archives out of the box. (Not that there's any need to do the double wrapping anyway, AFAIK. Just a single zip wrapper should do just fine.)

Err, guys, you may have missed it, but I just solved the problem to everyone's satisfaction...

I just had a thought, the quick way to be able to upload a 7zip file without requiring any forum changes would be to put it in a zip. 

EDIT: ... yes, that works, you don't even need to re-format any existing 7zip archives then. Solved, everyone can be happy! 

I can't see any possible objections - Monkeh can upload his 7zips (or any other compressed format) and tooki doesn't have to open them!

Please don't call me out: I'm just objecting to Monkeh's ridiculous arguments and arrogance. (I'm not anti-7zip: I am pretty sure I have a 7zip-capable program on my computer.)

[Monkeh]

.tar.gz may be common in the *nix world, but it's extraordinarily rare outside of it, and of vanishingly small relevance to this forum.

This forum which has an increasing level of discussion of embedded systems running such OSes?

But regardless of whether .tar.zip is customary in the *nix world, it WILL work, since those OSes can all open zip archives out of the box. (Not that there's any need to do the double wrapping anyway, AFAIK. Just a single zip wrapper should do just fine.)

zip cannot contain file permissions. These are of relevance - executable bits, for example..  I shall endeavour to use .tar.zip to suit you, though..

Please don't call me out: I'm just objecting to Monkeh's ridiculous arguments. (I am pretty sure I have a 7zip-capable program on my computer.)

And what argument do you bring to the table for "disallow this format because most people don't use it"?

I am not advocating that everyone should drop what they're doing and start using other formats - only that we not be restricted from using them.

[Gyro]

Please don't call me out: I'm just objecting to Monkeh's ridiculous arguments. (I'm not anti-7zip: I am pretty sure I have a 7zip-capable program on my computer.)

Hey, sorry, I didn't mean to call you out - I agree with you!

I was just, somewhat flippantly trying to suggest a method of uploading unsupported file types such as already generated 7zip files, without having to modify the forum settings. There's always going to be one more file format....

EDIT:  It's Dave's decision at the end of the day anyway.

[Monkeh]

Please don't call me out: I'm just objecting to Monkeh's ridiculous arguments. (I'm not anti-7zip: I am pretty sure I have a 7zip-capable program on my computer.)

Hey, sorry, I didn't mean to call you out - I agree with you!

I was just, somewhat flippantly trying to suggest a method of uploading unsupported file types such as already generated 7zip files, without having to modify the forum settings. There's always going to be one more file format.

It's a method people are aware of and it's ugly. Yes, there will always be more formats, this is true, but it's not a great hardship to add a few common ones: 7z, rar, gz, bz2, xz.

It's not like modifying the forum settings is some arcane process involving command lines and complexity.

[rdl]

I've had 7-Zip for a long time, mostly just for opening oddball formats. I've always had it set to use .zip instead of .7z by default.

I don't use it so much anymore, since I found out the developer thinks it's a good idea to save a history of everything you do with it in the registry.

[Zero999]

I like the idea of 7Z being open source but at the same time ZIP has really become the standard.

With SVG I can't really see the point. Yes, I have Imagemagick and I can use them but for the purposes of this forum I just can't see the need and I can see plenty of people having problems with the. I mean, if someone posts a schematic in SVG I'll just skip the thread so it's not like it's a problem for me. I just think it is unnecesary.

What problems do you have with SVG? I can see more of a reason to use it than 7z, because it does something which none of the existing image formats used on the forum currently do: scalable vector images. Regarding your comment about skipping a thread because someone posted an SVG. You might not even be aware the thread contains an SVG. If someone posted it as an in-line attachment, it would load automatically, unless you configure your browser to block it. No doubt you already visit plenty of sites which contain SVG content and are completely unaware of it.

[soldar]

What problems do you have with SVG? I can see more of a reason to use it than 7z, because it does something which none of the existing image formats used on the forum currently do: scalable vector images. Regarding your comment about skipping a thread because someone posted an SVG. You might not even be aware the thread contains an SVG. If someone posted it as an in-line attachment, it would load automatically, unless you configure your browser to block it. No doubt you already visit plenty of sites which contain SVG content and are completely unaware of it.

As far as displaying graphics on a web page I don't care. If they display then fine; if they don't then I move on. I don't care.

I am thinking in terms of posting an attachment of a circuit or other graphic I might want to download and maybe annotate or edit and re-post. PNG, GIF, BMP, JPG I can do in no time with the simple tools I have. SVG requires me to fire up Image Magic which is complicated for me and very clumsy. I would just skip the thread. Or, if my life depended on it, I might just do a screen capture and use one of the simpler formats.

I am not saying there is no reason to use SVG. I am sure there are occasions when it is well justified but I think they are few and far between.

I would rather stick to simpler things. When we have a lot of people posting huge JPGs which could be replaced by a small PNG I would put more emphasis on educating those people than in providing SVG to the few who might benefit from it.

Just my opinion and not very strong.

[tooki]

zip cannot contain file permissions. These are of relevance - executable bits, for example.

What’s weird is that somehow, zip can contain them: at minimum, they are preserved when the zip round-trip is done on a Mac. (I just tested it to be sure, but I was already quite confident of this because lots of Mac software is distributed in zip archives, and a Mac application is actually a “bundle”: a folder with special file system attributes, containing sub folders and files with various permissions, such that the Mac presents it to the user as a single file. Plugins, photo libraries, installer packages, and many other Mac files are actually bundles. Zip is in fact the format used by Apple programs like Mail to preserve all the permissions and extended attributes when sending applications and other bundles across email, etc.) As a total aside, bundles are, IMHO, one of the best design decisions in the Apple ecosystem (one they inherited from NeXT, which fulfill the same objectives as the classic Mac OS’s resource forks, but in a more robust fashion in the context of the computer world at large).

My google-fu couldn’t find any description of how Apple accomplishes this, but I suppose one way would be to employ the same mechanism Apple uses on Mac OS X when copying onto FAT disks: creating a second file containing the metadata. (We call it a “dot file”, because it prefixes a period, e.g. the metadata for “example.txt” would be in “.example.txt”.) Another would be to use the extra fields in the zip format.

Certainly, from a usability perspective, it would be wise for Linux, etc. to adopt a similar system to allow zip to encode metadata properly. I’ve always hated the double-wrapped files, since it’s so easy to end up with unwanted intermediate files (like the uncompressed tarballs).

I shall endeavour to use .tar.zip to suit you, though..

Since I don’t use a *nix (other than macOS/iOS), you need not make that effort for little old me!

I am not advocating that everyone should drop what they're doing and start using other formats - only that we not be restricted from using them.

I actually agree with that. I just think your other arguments are silly, like claiming 7zip is more of a standard format than zip. You definitely came across as wanting other people to change formats.

[Monkeh]

My google-fu couldn’t find any description of how Apple accomplishes this, but I suppose one way would be to employ the same mechanism Apple uses on Mac OS X when copying onto FAT disks: creating a second file containing the metadata. (We call it a “dot file”, because it prefixes a period, e.g. the metadata for “example.txt” would be in “.example.txt”.) Another would be to use the extra fields in the zip format.

Certainly, from a usability perspective, it would be wise for Linux, etc. to adopt a similar system to allow zip to encode metadata properly. I’ve always hated the double-wrapped files, since it’s so easy to end up with unwanted intermediate files (like the uncompressed tarballs).

I'm fairly certain they use the extra field in a non-standard way (well.. it's standard to put whatever you like in there, but there is no defined standard I know of to encode Unix file permissions or extended attributes there - or any other gubbins Apple bolts on). As for other systems adopting it, we'll need a defined standard before we end up with an incompatible nightmare, and we already have a suitable container which handles (as far as I'm aware) all current varieties of permissions and extended attributes, which predates even zip.. As for intermediate files, all current tools are quite capable of handling compression without leaving intermediates.

I actually agree with that. I just think your other arguments are silly, like claiming 7zip is more of a standard format than zip. You definitely came across as wanting other people to change formats.

Where did I suggest it's more of a standard? I only said it exists and is reasonably common.

[tooki]

I actually agree with that. I just think your other arguments are silly, like claiming 7zip is more of a standard format than zip. You definitely came across as wanting other people to change formats.

Where did I suggest it's more of a standard? I only said it exists and is reasonably common.

Here, where you implied that zip is not conventional:

But I do not have problem with speed of ZIP.

So what motivation is there to use 7z over any conventional format? So that I could compress a JPG image 5% better?

What motivation is there to use zip over any conventional format?

While 7zip may be somewhat common, it certainly does not qualify as the convention, and most definitely not more conventional than zip!!!

[Monkeh]

I actually agree with that. I just think your other arguments are silly, like claiming 7zip is more of a standard format than zip. You definitely came across as wanting other people to change formats.

Where did I suggest it's more of a standard? I only said it exists and is reasonably common.

Here, where you implied that zip is not conventional:

But I do not have problem with speed of ZIP.

So what motivation is there to use 7z over any conventional format? So that I could compress a JPG image 5% better?

What motivation is there to use zip over any conventional format?

While 7zip may be somewhat common, it certainly does not qualify as the convention, and most definitely not more conventional than zip!!!

There, I fixed it. Please reseat your underwear.

[mariush]

I would be all for zip if it was fully open format, without proprietary stuff attached to it.

Have you guys read the latest specifications to it and the additions they added to it? Just recently they decided to add WavPack data compression to the other formats they had. They also added LZMA some time ago (what's used by 7zip)

We could have for example Apple decide tomorrow to default on using PPmd algorithm to compress zip files, instead of standard DEFLATE algorithm, and then you have zip files that can't be opened on Windows computers, because the unzip code Microsoft licensed from whatever company (or built by them, not sure if it's still third party software) doesn't do PPmd decoding.

I'm attaching a valid zip file compressed with the PPmd algorithm, made the archive using 7zip btw... on my Windows 7 the Windows Explorer unzipper can't extract the image inside but can parse the archive and show the contents.