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.