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.ZIP Standard to Fragment?
fudgefactor7 writes "As IDG.NET tells us, the venerable .ZIP compression standard is about to undergo a bit of a schism. PKWare and WinZip, the "big two" in the .ZIP format biz are (unfortunately) going to be making their respective releases incompatible (to an extent) and an archive made with one may not be accessible from another. The problem lies with PKWare not giving information to WinZip, thus making WinZip to go it alone."
The post was a little hyped. PKWare and WinZip only split on the encryption of the Zip file. I for one have long since encrypted Zip files with PGP when I needed that security. Zip encryption has always been a joke, and I doubt that too many are going to replace what ever trusted methods they have come up with for PKWare or WinZip's new method.
It is too bad that they split, but I use Zip files for compression not encryption. The compression is still cross-compatible, so life will go on.
Should be compatible with all of them:
.zip files will probably continue to adhere to the old, universal format for the foreseeable future.
Neither PKWare nor WinZip encrypt archived files by default. This means the vast majority of
So it sounds like the only change is in the encryption methods used in each program.
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Correct...most users that want encryption probably do so after the fact, and thus the mainstream application of using zips shouldn't be effected. The only issue here that I see is if people, or more specifically companies agree to encrypt zip files for security purposes, they must make sure that a standard program is choosen/used to prevent corrupt file confusion.
Something clever...
you would think so from the article, but reality so far has shown differently. I have already run into two instances where someone using the beta copy of winzip9 used the new format by accident and those people using pkware or xp's built in zip readers could not read the file because of some header issue or something like that. Once they rezipped the file with the winzip8 option (aparantly that's what they did as both posts said something to that effect) no one had a problem reading the file. I hope that whatever issue is causing this is removed before the release version.
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Perhaps if you find Winzip annoying, you might like to try a nice OSS alternative zip program without annoying nag screens?
I like 7-zip, it's free, has a context menu, supports tar.gz (which the native WinXP unzipper doesn't do) and it's light-weight.
Never confuse feeling with thinking.
The unfortunate part is that this is even being called "zip" at all. These aren't, they're zip with proprietary extensions for a completely different purpose. Zip is being used as a brand name and being "embraced and extended". Truth be told these should now be called zep or something files, not misrepresented as simply zip compressed files.
What will this all break? Well for the suckers who use the encryption they're locking themselves into that one vendor's proprietary extensions. They won't be able to send their compressed files or archives and reliably assume they'll be readable. With zip now a standard part of many OS's (even WinXP now includes it) these mislabeled files will cause confusion and increased complexity.
What can folks do about this? First reconsider corporate licenses for these increasingly un-zip applications. No need to increase the Help Desk's burden with unnecessary/non-standard extensions. Send out a memo reminding folks about policies regarding encrypting company material, the management of the keys used, and the real quality of the encryption used. Look at the free alternatives to the commercial apps, there's little that these applications do that can't be done just as well with free tools.
Zip's value lies in it being a standard. Don't support inappropriate proprietary extensions to it.
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The DCMA explicitly allows reverse engineering for interoperability and this is precisely what WinZip would be doing. http://www.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.pdf, Page 5, Exception #2. Please read it for yourseld and grab a clue. The tired assertion that the DCMA kills innovation is tired and largely false (at least insofar as it is popularly presented on slashdot)
That's a real shame. I thought the zip specification was open to anyone who wanted to use it? I stopped using Zips about three months ago in favor of the 7zip format. 7zips are smaller and more secure. The best part about 7z's is that it's an open source format. Fully documented, and entirely free. They also tend to be a lot smaller than standard .zip archives. Just an opinion.
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We're not talking about the old password encryption methods; we're talking about the new AES-based encryption methods implemen ted in WinZip 9 and PKZip.
I think the reality is that PKZip is running far behind. I'll go so far to say that RAR is ahead of them. I use RAR over ZIP any chance I can; if it werent for compatibility with "administrative assistant" types, I would do everything in RAR. Better compression, better features.
The Zip format has changed, and you will see this reflected if a) the archive is bigger than 4Gb, b) contains more than 65,000 files, or c) the user turned on Bzip compression in PK. 95% sounds about right.
I think that ZIP is more like .bz2.tar instead of .tar.bz2. This means that you can extract individual files without decompressing the whole archive. This is probably why Sun went with ZIP for JAR files (because it's convenient to get at some .class files without unzipping the whole thing).
This difference is also probably why .tar.gz and .tar.bz2 are usually smaller than ZIP archives. I don't think ZIP runs different files together so it can't take advantage of longer streams.
If you look at the volume of archives posted to usenet (and elsewhere) it's pretty obvious that both these are simply trying to catch up to RAR. The only thing I use winzip for now is opening windows CAB files. And I'm pretty sure winrar does that, now, too.
Thankfully there's still some great Windows software around, like NSIS (by Nullsoft). It doesn't bother unzipping itself first (single EXE), it is small, it is powerful, open-source, .... The only thing that sucks is how you create an installer, you have to write a script in a language that's a mix between assembly, PHP and C. It's not at all hard if you're a programmer, but this is the reason why NSIS will never reach those stupid companies that put their Installer in an EXE in an EXE in a ZIP.
If someone were to make an NSIS-script wizard (for people who can't use the script-system) for basic actions and commonly used stuff, it would put InstallShield and friends to eternal shame.
...never mind.
I finally got through to the original IGN news article posting (and not just the slashdot replies) and it clarifies what the actual issues are. My parent post here didnt add anything useful.