Quote:
Originally Posted by Radertified
Zip cannot store Amiga filesystem specific features, such as comments, so it's out of the question.
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Hi, I did not come here to argue (or to start flame war) about archivers. I think we all know the state of the affairs with lha / zip in amiga and the problems they have and why people prefer lha...
Following we know for certain for zip
- Amiga attributes are easily broken if the file is ever decompressed in any other operating system
- To include file comments in zip files you need to add special flag both when compressing and decompressing
- There can be character set conversions that break the filenames
However, if we want to choose between a new container format and fixing bugs in existing one (and extending it backwards compatible fashion), fixing existing one would be in my mind a better option. There is nothing wrong in the zip-file format itself, it is well documented in a RFC and has working extension system. It is always about the implementation...
I just wanted to point out that zip-file format is better suited for random access of files. Obviously there is a risk that if zip is used as a container, there will be people abusing it. But it only takes a simple check to see what is the creator operating system to make sure we have a proper image. So there is always a trade off
Now, in order to steer the discussion to more technical side I made some comparisons. I tested with known adf-file (3DDemo1). Lets compare what are the effects of making file seekable with track accuracy (5632 bytes)
- ADF - 901120 bytes
- ADZ - 597108 bytes
- DMS - 617348 bytes
- Split deflate - 628245 bytes
So, obviously there is a price to pay if you make the compressed file seekable. But to me it looks like there would be a benefit as long as it is something that is dynamically tunable per file