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All this "no longer ancient" means is that zip is now out of the window. Its value has been lost.

The format has been perverted, and we can't trust zip as the "just works" option that will open in any platform, with any implementation, anymore.

All because somebody thought it a good idea to try to leverage the zip name's attached popularity to try and make a new format instantly popular.

Great job. This is why we can't have good things.



The same can be said of HTML. I realise that file archive formats are expected to be more stable (they are for archiving, yes?), but is it right to expect them to be forever frozen in amber? Especially when open source or free decompressors exist for every version of every system? ZIP compressed using LZMA is even supported in the last version of 7-zip compiled for MS-DOS.


>ZIP compressed using LZMA is even supported in the last version of 7-zip compiled for MS-DOS.

But then, why wouldn't you just use the 7z format?

The expectation with ZIP is (or was) that it'll unpack fine, even under CP/M.

Moving to '.zipx' extension was the right move, but it was done far too late.


Moving to the .zipx extension was definitely the right (and only) move. This is due to the fact that Microsoft's compressed folder code hasn't been updated in years and thus it isn't safe to send out any Zip files that uses any new features [1].

[1]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180515-00/?p=98...


Thank you Microsoft.

I hope if/when they upgrade their zip support, they only accept the new format if the filename extension is zipx.




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