Comments on: 18 Years of ZIP format: Happy Birthday

By: antonio

antonio — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 22:03:02 +0000

hi my zipfile option on my desktop doesnt work at all anymore, like ill go to my desktop and right click. ill go to new and new zip file wont be there. where did it go?? i really need it

if you are going to answer my question please email me at fo_shizzle655@yahoo.com

thank you

By: Sum Yung Gai

Sum Yung Gai — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 04:44:40 +0000

I started with PKXARC back in 1985, and I remember this history well. There’s another reason why PKXARC was so much faster than SEA ARC, and that’s because SEA ARC did *everything* on disk, but PKXARC did a lot of it in DRAM. *That* was the major optimization trick. Remember, back then in 1985, most people couldn’t afford hard disks; everyone had floppies, and floppies are about as fast as glacial ice in the North Pole.

Anyway, later, I went to Info-ZIP on OS/2 v2.1 back in 1993, when I wanted to use native OS/2 tools. I used Info-ZIP OS/2 on Windows NT (3.5, 3.51, and 4.0) for years, since it worked so well on that platform, too.

Now, I use zip/unzip on GNU/Linux, and it’s still working just great. The ZIP format may be old, but it still works, is still relevant, and is used on just about any platform that you can think of. With ZIP, I don’t have to worry about whether or not Platform X has support. I can distribute anything that I want in a .ZIP archive, and anybody can use it.

If ever there were an example of why truly open file formats are necessary, ZIP is its poster child. You hear that, Microsoft?

By: Sachin Garg

Sachin Garg — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 22:36:50 +0000

Another Story discussing PKWare’s focus on “securing” the ZIP format.

By: Evangelist

Evangelist — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 11:42:32 +0000

ZIP is faster than most modern algorithms. This is why nothing ‘modern’ could replace ZIP.

It’s old but still has its advantages.

By: A. Hacker

A. Hacker — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 02:31:20 +0000

While zip is a great format, this splintering will hopefully cause a newer and still free format to be created for the future. The 4GB limitation is becoming more troublesome.

I’d also like to see LZMA and some of the other higher performance algorithms incorporated. unit or solid compression would be kind of nice as an option in certain cases

By: freeko

freeko — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 07:19:45 +0000

actually the deflate/inflate routine in many formats compression/image/doc.. (like in 7-zip,tif,png,svgz,all open-office formats,wmz,..)

By: Krisjohn

Krisjohn — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 01:36:05 +0000

While I huge proportion of Windows users use WinZip, not nearly enough of them use the latest version with the PPMd format.

By: Informed

Informed — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 18:34:07 +0000

Mike,

You have to remember that winzip operates on a windows platform as well as PKZIP, there are numerous other platforms that the world runs on, UNIX, Linux, I5OS mainframes, and Z series IBM Mainframes and all of them use the .zip standard..winzip has no product for them while PKWARE does…In the case of Mainframes its absolutly essiential when you talk about the size of files they use there, i.e. hundres of Gigabytes and Terabytes. Also many applications use the deflate routine inside hidden from you and I.

So calling the appnote in the correct way is essitential to making sure if I zip a file somewhere on some platform and you unzip it on your desktop with winzip, it will work. Also think about how many .zip archives are out there right now. How big of a job would it be to go back and change them to some new compression format?

By: Sachin Garg

Sachin Garg — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 15:05:18 +0000

You may find this page by ARC author interesting

http://www.esva.net/~thom/philkatz.html

ps. I have fixed the date in article above.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:35:12 +0000

But when most users are using WinZip, does controlling the appnote makes any difference?

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:32:54 +0000

Instead of what happened 18 years ago, shouldn’t we be more worried about what PKWare and WinZip are doing to the format now?

By: Informed

Informed — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:20:22 +0000

Actually Phill died in 2000 and his company PKWARE is going strong, its now doing data encryption using zip files and is growing fast. PKWARE still controls the App note for zip so any changes that are made come from them. But i agree phill won the PR battle.

Interesting note, the computer that Phil used to write the ZIP standard on (deflate and inflate routines) still exsists and I have seen it, still looks good. Its referred to as the “Mexican” because Phil bought the thing from a BBS out of Mexico and had it shipped to Milwaukee.

By: An old guy

An old guy — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 09:25:48 +0000

It wasn’t just an ill-informed boycott. Not many people care about ethical issues behind technology. Think Linux and Microsoft, its just a small loud minority which says it cares.

ZIP was technically superior to ARC.

By: Sandman

Sandman — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 09:11:05 +0000

Is it really a surprise that money can’t be made by creating something open and free?

and which also doesn’t needs support ;-)

By: Sachin Garg

Sachin Garg — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 08:02:36 +0000

Yes, I have read about that “big faceless corporation crushing a small guy” image which Katz gave to SEA vs PKWare case, when actually both were same sized companies. An interesting move.

Another interesting bit is that the same reasons why ZIP became the defacto standard (open-specifications and open-source Info-ZIP implementation) resulted in PKWare’s inability to make much profit from it.