Why I can not upload .7z files here? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Zucca
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 12, 2019, 02:06:27 pm
content: Any reasons for that?

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 12, 2019, 02:33:52 pm
content: Because nobody's bothered to put 7z on the list of allowed file types.Use zip or throw it in a tarball. Or just rename it to a supported file type and tell people to name it back. It's not that complicated.

author: Zucca
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 14, 2019, 07:38:11 am
content: Thanks Ampera,it would be cool if someone could add the .7z to the magic list.1 second Job and less irritation in this forum for the users.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2019, 10:35:47 am
content: Adding SVG (.svg) would be darn nice as well, especially considering how much better (clearer, but small size) they are for circuit schematics and such.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2019, 11:53:20 am
content: Obviously this forum cant support *every* filetype - there's a considerable benefit in standardising on a limited set so the readers don't have to install dozens of viewers or archive utilities to support a limited number of content creators who want to be different*.Also, the increasing prevalence of in-browser SVG support is *NOT* a good thing. See:https://blog.online-convert.com/svg-file-and-its-danger/A sandboxed external viewer that doesn't have internet access is *STRONGLY* recommended. Its therefore unlikely that the admin team will allow user contributed directly viewable SVG files, for the same reasons as not permitting this forum to host directly executable user contributed Javascript files.However, if you *must* be the 'nail that sticks out', may I suggest renaming 7z files, replacing the extension with .7z.zip, and SVG files with .svg.txt so its obvious to all that the file needs to be renamed without the final extension before use.* As there are FOSS zip archivers for Windows, OSX, Linux and Android, its a voluntary choice, unless you are running some really odd-ball OS.

author: Yansi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2019, 11:58:41 am
content: Please don't use the freaking 7z archives. I won't bother to install thirdparty bullshitware to be able to unpack those. Probably others won't either. There is little to no advantage of using this weirdo format over standard zip.

author: Yansi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2019, 12:01:58 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on October 14, 2019, 10:35:47 amWould be enough to teach people not to use a lossy compressed formats for such drawings. There is already a plenty of choice already: bmp, gif, png,..SVG is a pain in the arse to work with.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2019, 12:42:27 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on October 14, 2019, 11:53:20 amFuck that. It is the absolute best format for diagrams, graphs, circuit designs et cetera, exactly because it is vector graphics and thus scalable.What you mean isnot using a sanitizer on the inputs is not a good thing. Even JPEG and PNG libraries have had remote execution vulnerabilities; all file formats are somewhat a risk.For SVG, Alister Norris'SVG Sanitizeris the simplest whitelist-based one that would work just fine; it keeps only known-safe SVG elements and their attributes, discarding everything else. Drupal uses Daryll Doyle'ssvg-sanitizer, probably because it is more modular and allows easier configuration changes.A quick look didn't show any SVG sanitizers provided with Simple Machines (this forum software), but it would be trivial to incorporate e.g. the alnorris one to e.g. theSVG As Image AttachmentSMF mod. Heck, if Dave were to disable #hashtags (they fuck up C code snippets!) and interested in adding such sanitized SVG support, I'd be happy to create the mod and push it through the SimpleMachines forums.As it is, I currently just host the SVG files on my own site, and link them as images. (I usually hand-optimize the SVG files, and even convert text to paths. Mine never have any Javascript (although I might add some one day, if I make an animated or interactive SVG), and any CSS is strictly limited to element attributes; the files are entirely self-standing. Any external references, or references to my server, are as user-visible links, but even those are exceedingly rare. You see, I am not a hostile idiot, and neither are most of the users here.)

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2019, 12:45:42 pm
content: I would be against .SVG and against .7Z. And I would even be in favor of deleting .JPG which contain line drawings which should be done in .PNGlet's keep things simple.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2019, 01:21:37 pm
content: @Nominal Animal,You are a responsible member of this forum community, with an established reputation here. The odds of you deliberately posting malicious code here are vanishingly small.@All,However permitting SVG upload *WILL* encourage spammers, and as the drive-by variety never seem to check if their spam links actually work, filtering the SVGs will do little to discourage them.Trusting forums not to serve you malicious code is not wise. Even with the best of intentions, slipups can happen. e.g. When Dave first added Mathjax equation rendering support, I pointed out a arbitrary Javascript execution vulnerability, which he quickly secured. However for a couple of days it was wide open and anyone could have registered a new user and added any arbitrary script to any thread, served from the eevblog.com domain.It may be worth setting up any script blocker you are running to prompt before opening scriptable content from www.eevblog.com/forum/*

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2019, 03:32:38 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on October 14, 2019, 01:21:37 pmNo, I meant that in general, any non-new member posting malicious stuff is very small; it affects what one should consider a reasonable balance between security and usefulness.I am a very heavy SVG format user, and would like it to be more widely supported, because it solves two annoying problems for me: huge, and non-zoomable, illustrations.Anyone who thinks SVG files are a pain to work with, just tryInkscape, available for all operating systems.Quote from: Ian.M on October 14, 2019, 01:21:37 pmOkay, so instead of a sanitizer, make it a filter that rejects any and all SVG files that contain CSS or Javascript. To conserve server resources, SVG files could be only permitted for users with enough posts (a limitation which IMHO makes sense for all attached files). Again, the alnorris implementation is quite robust, and very suitable for SVG filtering, and Iamoffering to do the work myself if the feature is considered.With PNG and GIF files, the problem is that even with maximum compression and using indexed color mode to reduce file size, large enough images allowing zooming get easily into the megabyte file size range. Most users do not do even that sort of optimization, and tools really cannot do it heuristically (heuristic/opportunistic methods are too slow and processor-intensive to run on a server). That means the image files are large and thus slow to load, and I find it aggravating. If the image files are small, the details get lost.Considermy home page: it is about 22 kB, but sharp at any magnification/zoom, because it consists ofembeddedSVG images. That is, if you just copy the HTML file, the local copy will look exactly the same, and not depend on having a connection to the server: everything is contained in that one file. Yet, it is not even "optimized"; it is quite human-readable.For compression, I prefer xz over ZIP, because it yields smaller files with almost as fast decompression. (There is even a public domainembeddable xz decompressorfor limited use cases.) However, I understand that many OSes don't have any tools to natively handle those, I accept ZIP files.Quote from: Ian.M on October 14, 2019, 01:21:37 pmFully agreed. I never reuse passwords, because forum database security is never perfect. My browser clears all cookies, cache, and site data whenever I close it, and I do that at least daily. I use both NoScript and uBlock Origin, and similar other custom (strict) browser settings, but even then, I don't trust the browser to keep me safe. It is all a matter of balance between security and usefulness.Story time.A bit over a decade ago, I created a small engine in PHP for displaying web pages from static files (HTML or PHP) managed via groups by several overlapping administrators/editors, with customizable navigation menus, with overall navigation roughly reflecting the directory structure. It worked very, very well for several years, and was eventually used by the entire department.One of its features was that as an engine, it would be executed for an entire subtree of URLs (for all matching prefixes). To ensure it does not leak files, especially files or content not meant to be public, it was excessively paranoid about the URLs it handled. For usability, it URL-decoded and converted accented UTF-8 letters to ASCII (so that/yhtiö/äänestysbecomes/yhtio/aanestysand so on), then filtered the result accepting only known safe patterns (in particular, not allowing more than one consecutive.or/, removing all but the known safe characters (letters converted to lower case, digits, dash, underscore, slash, etc.), and so on).The directory tree under which it looked for content was absolutely anchored, and although it accepted symbolic links, it checked the owner and group of the directory the content was in, to ensure only content from known-published directories was provided.I would have preferred to write it in C instead of PHP, because then I could have added checks against runtime switch attacks (changing links in the hopes of hitting a race window), and the backwards directory tree walk (from target towards document root) could verify no ongoing shenanigans. (The backwards walk also lets users use shared navigation menus for a shared subtree.) However, for maintenance reasons, a scripting language was considered necessary, and all users with access to the files were "trusted" (under contractual obligations to do no such shenanigans), so PHP it was. I am not sure, but I might have written a Python version also. (I am writing this from memory, too lazy to dig up the actual code, so I might recall some details wrong too.)Now, that entire scheme comes together, when you understand that the security approach relies on group ownership. That is, users modify files using their own local user accounts (with personal default group), manipulate access controls via file and directory group, and had default umask of 002; i.e. by default, users grant the group rw access to the files and directories. To not risk their personal files, they need personal default groups also, so that their own home directories are owned by their own group. To grant access to additional groups, ACLs could be used, but IIRC were not needed in practice.The security approach of that engine is essentially twofold: the URL it gets is not trusted in any way and is filtered for both usefulness and security, and the content is only considered if in a directory specially dedicated for public information, based on its group ownership. Since system and user directories are never owned by the dedicated published-information groups, link/symlink/rename races are irrelevant, and there is no risk of any content administrator with no system administration access of publishing anything privileged or sensitive, other than copy-pasting such information explicitly.In fact, I had even designed a WYSIWYG editor, loosely based on TinyMCE (I wanted a floating toolbar, not content boxes), but nobody was interested in that (unless I were to do it for free); most of that work would have been filtering HTML code (since most browsers stuff really silly stuff in DHTML, like FONT elements), and mapping content between different HTML snippet templates (for layout "chunking"). Technically, the approach would have allowed two different users modifying different parts of the same web page at the same time. And the entire system would have worked even without any database at all.I didn't just come up with it one morning. Rather, it was a culmination of about a decade of web server maintenance, and trying to get webmasters to Do The Sensible Thing, often not cooperating with each other.. and basically the approach I could find with the least number of risks that did not unnecessarily limit the users.Since then, I have looked at existing web forum software, and to be honest, I don't trust them at all. I have considered writing my own from scratch, but because to do it in a secure manner, I would have to use several users and groups (to establish security boundaries), and current web hotels cannot provide such an environment, it would be limited to those running their own (virtual) servers, not just using a shared web hosting environment. The way most allow the forum software to create new (script-)executable files and directories indistinguishable form installed forum software files, is a horribly security risk: it escalates all security bugs related to file creation to privilege escalation. Me, I'd have a hierarchy of accounts, with the login and user account management isolated from normal operation, and all content files and directories owned by a dedicated user and group, with the service process belonging to that group, but running as a yet separate user. This means that the forum service processes cannot create executable files, and thus avoids script drop problems. The only downside is that the forum service cannot upgrade itself; it can onlytriggerit to be done by the real owner, either human or an automated script.A secondary stopper is that I dislike using a separate database to hold all content. For a forum, it is an unreasonable dislike; it is just that too often that dependence creates a fragile website, too often down due to limited database resources, or other issues with database connectivity. I can do it with flat files quite efficiently, but that is considered caveman style... So, I would need to do a bit of research into the different database engines (PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MongoDB) and how to map the security features I'd need to database access. (For SQL databases, a few database users would suffice, with proper read-write access rights to different tables. There are a few ways to pass the needed credentials safely, but it turns out that checking those credentials (password) is a significant part of the overall load in most cases, so finding a way to safely cache database connections would make it much more resource-friendly.)

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2019, 10:34:56 pm
content: Quote from: Yansi on October 14, 2019, 11:58:41 amHow, exactly, is a tool which supports a wide variety of formats 'bullshitware'?It's a common enough format. You want to cut yourself off from opening a whole load of common formats, that's your choice - but kindly don't shove it down my throat.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2019, 11:11:28 pm
content: 7z offers better compression ratios than the antiquated zip format. I think we should support it since it is open source.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2019, 11:25:04 pm
content: Quote from: Yansi on October 14, 2019, 11:58:41 am7zip is an open source archive format (unlike zip or rar).You can open them with the open source application 7-zip :https://www.7-zip.org/and other applications support it.As for benefits, there's actually quite good reasons to use it... if you check solid mode compression and a high compression preset, you can get high compression ratios, higher than what regular zip can do.

author: wilfred
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 14, 2019, 11:37:19 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on October 14, 2019, 10:35:47 amIf not having .7z files is not because Dave never bothered then this would be the second reason. Or the first.

author: SimonR
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 04:06:24 pm
content: Quote from: Yansi on October 14, 2019, 11:58:41 amThere is an advantage as far I know it supports files bigger than 4Gig whereas standard zip does not. Or at least the windows built in zip tool does not.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 04:17:21 pm
content: Quote from: SimonR on October 15, 2019, 04:06:24 pmZIP64 dates to 2001 - Windows has apparently supported it since Vista (only took 5 years for a trivial quality of life update, fairly fast for Microsoft..). Can confirm 10 handles it. Handles it at a maximum of around 120MiB/s with zero compression, as opposed to that 'thirdparty bullshitware' at over 1GiB/s..

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 04:26:25 pm
content: Do we really need files larger than 4 GB?There should be a very justified reason to post anything larger than 150KB. I hate opening a thread only to have my slow connection choke on a huge jpg which could have been converted and compressed down to a tiny png.Maybe we could limit the size of attachments for newbies until the have enough posts and understand that posting huge files unnecessarily is lack of consideration for others.I like the idea of 7Z being open source but at the same time ZIP has really become the standard.With SVG I can't really see the point. Yes, I have Imagemagick and I can use them but for the purposes of this forum I just can't see the need and I can see plenty of people having problems with the. I mean, if someone posts a schematic in SVG I'll just skip the thread so it's not like it's a problem for me. I just think it is unnecesary.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 04:30:36 pm
content: Quote from: zucca on October 12, 2019, 02:06:27 pmBecause the average user is unable to read .7z files. They are not good for public sharing.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 04:32:21 pm
content: Quote from: soldar on October 15, 2019, 04:26:25 pmNo. But that's not a reason to dismiss the use of the format entirely in favour of sticking to barely functional tools.7z exists. 7z works. There's no good reason to block it. Perhaps we should tell people not to upload software which runs on Windows, because some people don't use it? Or never supply source code in C++ because they don't like C++? Some people probably use PSpice, so we'd best ban LTSpice models!Quote from: IanB on October 15, 2019, 04:30:36 pmUh, who here is average and incapable of installing software? A significant portion of files uploaded here require one piece of additional software or another to read.

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 05:47:10 pm
content: ZIP is much more widespread than 7Z. ZIP is opened natively by Windows and by Linux Mint.

author: Yansi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 05:52:07 pm
content: It is not about being incapable of installing software, but about installing just yet another completely unnecessary software, for some hippie compression format, that has zero to null advantages.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 06:12:15 pm
content: Quote from: soldar on October 15, 2019, 05:47:10 pmThat's a reason to consider using zip. Not a reason to block the usage of 7z.Speed alone is a good reason not to use Explorer to handle archives.

author: Yansi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 06:17:00 pm
content: But I do not have problem with speed of ZIP.So what motivation is there to use 7z over any conventional format? So that I could compress a JPG image 5% better?

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 06:27:36 pm
content: Quote from: Yansi on October 15, 2019, 06:17:00 pmWhat motivation is there to use zip over any other conventional format?

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 07:13:18 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on October 15, 2019, 06:27:36 pmUm, ZIPisthe conventional format. A thousand times more used and widespread. Supported by all major OS.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 08:09:26 pm
content: Quote from: soldar on October 15, 2019, 07:13:18 pmIt's one conventional format.Again, 7z exists and is common. It's the default format for a popular tool. Oh, and LZMA can achieve around 50% smaller compressed sizes than DEFLATE - which yes, does matter. Search the forum for people complaining about not being able to get zip files small enough (or using LZMA in zip, which may or may not work in 'all major OS').It's out there, nobody is hurting you by using it, and adding it as an allowed upload will in no way harm the forum. It may harm the delicate sensibilities of a few whingers, but you'll probably get over it..

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 08:46:45 pm
content: It's a wholetwo mouse clicksto get 7zip to output zip format.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 09:05:58 pm
content: Quote from: Gyro on October 15, 2019, 08:46:45 pmIt is, you're quite right. It's not many more mouse clicks to go get 7zip and be capable of opening more than just zip.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 09:28:51 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on October 15, 2019, 09:05:58 pmAlso, some users might be on corporate machines where theycan'tinstall programs.Regardless, though, expecting others to install software just to cater to your whims is the height of arrogance. Just use zip like any sensible person would in this situation.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 09:30:15 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on October 15, 2019, 09:05:58 pmI think that is not the point. If you are a publisher you probably wish to maximize your readership and minimize friction for your readers.If you upload ("publish") a 7zip archive in a forum post, then you will find a significant number of people who may be able to help with your question will shrug and move on to another post.If that's OK with you as a poster, then fine, upload away. Nobody is obligated to look at what you post.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 09:30:47 pm
content: Quote from: soldar on October 15, 2019, 04:26:25 pmIndeed. Given that the forum limit is 5000KB per post, the maximum file size is not even remotely a concern.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 09:34:45 pm
content: I just had a thought, the quick way to be able to upload a 7zip file without requiring any forum changes would be to put it in a zip.EDIT: ... yes, that works, you don't even need to re-format any existing 7zip archives then. Solved, everyone can be happy!

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 09:40:21 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on October 15, 2019, 09:28:51 pmI do not see why I should cater to your whims either. As for corporate systems, perhaps people should be working at work, not spending time on personal forums - if they're here on the forum for work then they should have no problem asking for necessary software to be provided.Quote from: IanB on October 15, 2019, 09:30:15 pmIf someone is unwilling to put the trivial effort in to open a file with numerousfree(as opposed to the many very expensive proprietary programs people share files for..) solutions, then they clearly weren't interested in the first place.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 09:42:05 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on October 15, 2019, 09:40:21 pmSticking to THE undisputed industry standard format is not a "whim". It's courteous and sensible.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 09:48:21 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on October 15, 2019, 09:42:05 pmOkay, so let's talk compressed tarballs.. or do you expect me to zip a tarball in a completely abnormal fashion? (you can't upload .gz, bz2, xz...)In general I do provide .zip for most people - but why shouldn't I be able to use a more applicable format?

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 09:52:22 pm
content: Err, guys, you may have missed it, but I just solved the problem to everyone's satisfaction...Quote from: Gyro on October 15, 2019, 09:34:45 pmI can't see any possible objections - Monkeh can upload his 7zips (or any other compressed format) and tooki doesn't have to open them!

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 10:01:57 pm
content: For an example I just tried compressing about 62MiB of text.Using zip, and the industry standard at that (DEFLATE), I could get it down to 10.4MiB. Using LZMA (not in a zip even though possible, because you wanted industry standard), that comes down to 7MiB. Still wouldn't make it up here, but this was a very fat example indeed.It's not hard to see (and has happened - search the forum..) a circumstance where this is an issue - 7z, rar, or xz can't be uploaded, zip isn't small enough. Adding extra containers or renaming files in an invalid manner is not a solution. Uploading off-forum works, yes, but breaks theentire goalof allowing uploads to the forum - to preserve the file with the post.Allowing a wider variety of readily openable formats allows for less storage utilization on the server and greater scope of uploading by users. The only impediment? About three people in this thread, apparently.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 10:03:39 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on October 15, 2019, 09:48:21 pm.tar.gz may be common in the *nix world, but it's extraordinarily rare outside of it, and of vanishingly small relevance to this forum. Windows (which, let's face it, comprises the overwhelming majority of computer users) and the Mac (which makes up almost all of the rest) all use zip, and a ton of programs (like Open Office, MS Office XML, Apple Pages/Numbers/Keynote, the Arduino IDE, and a ton more) use zip as the container for their documents or libraries, even if they might apply a different file extension.But regardless of whether .tar.zip is customary in the *nix world, it WILL work, since those OSes can all open zip archives out of the box. (Not that there's any need to do the double wrapping anyway, AFAIK. Just a single zip wrapper should do just fine.)Quote from: Gyro on October 15, 2019, 09:52:22 pmPlease don't call me out: I'm just objecting to Monkeh's ridiculousargumentsand arrogance. (I'm not anti-7zip: I am pretty sure I have a 7zip-capable program on my computer.)

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 10:08:07 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on October 15, 2019, 10:03:39 pmThis forum which has an increasing level of discussion of embedded systems running such OSes?Quotezip cannot contain file permissions. These are of relevance - executable bits, for example.. I shall endeavour to use .tar.zip to suit you, though..QuoteAnd what argument do you bring to the table for "disallow this format because most people don't use it"?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.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 10:08:44 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on October 15, 2019, 10:03:39 pmHey, sorry, I didn't mean to call you out - I agree with you!I was just, somewhat flippantly trying to suggest a method of uploading unsupported file types such asalready generated7zip files, without having to modify the forum settings. There's always going to be one more file format....EDIT: It's Dave's decision at the end of the day anyway.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 10:13:05 pm
content: Quote from: Gyro on October 15, 2019, 10:08:44 pmIt's a method people are aware of and it's ugly. Yes, there will always be more formats, this is true, but it's not a great hardship to add a few common ones: 7z, rar, gz, bz2, xz.It's not like modifying the forum settings is some arcane process involving command lines and complexity.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 15, 2019, 11:54:08 pm
content: I've had 7-Zip for a long time, mostly just for opening oddball formats. I've always had it set to use .zip instead of .7z by default.I don't use it so much anymore, since I found out the developer thinks it's a good idea to save a history of everything you do with it in the registry.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 08:56:36 am
content: Quote from: soldar on October 15, 2019, 04:26:25 pmWhat problems do you have with SVG? I can see more of a reason to use it than 7z, because it does something which none of the existing image formats used on the forum currently do: scalable vector images. Regarding your comment about skipping a thread because someone posted an SVG. You might not even be aware the thread contains an SVG. If someone posted it as an in-line attachment, it would load automatically, unless you configure your browser to block it. No doubt you already visit plenty of sites which contain SVG content and are completely unaware of it.

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 10:42:33 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on October 16, 2019, 08:56:36 amAs far as displaying graphics on a web page I don't care. If they display then fine; if they don't then I move on. I don't care.I am thinking in terms of posting an attachment of a circuit or other graphic I might want to download and maybe annotate or edit and re-post. PNG, GIF, BMP, JPG I can do in no time with the simple tools I have. SVG requires me to fire up Image Magic which is complicated for me and very clumsy. I would just skip the thread. Or, if my life depended on it, I might just do a screen capture and use one of the simpler formats.I am not saying there is no reason to use SVG. I am sure there are occasions when it is well justified but I think they are few and far between.I would rather stick to simpler things. When we have a lot of people posting huge JPGs which could be replaced by a small PNG I would put more emphasis on educating those people than in providing SVG to the few who might benefit from it.Just my opinion and not very strong.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 11:19:56 am
content: Quote from: Monkeh on October 15, 2019, 10:08:07 pmWhat’s weird is that somehow, zipcancontain 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).Quote from: Monkeh on October 15, 2019, 10:08:07 pmSince I don’t use a *nix (other than macOS/iOS), you need not make that effort for little old me!Quote from: Monkeh on October 15, 2019, 10:08:07 pmI actually agree with that. I just think your other arguments are silly, like claiming 7zip is more of a standard format than zip. Youdefinitelycame across as wanting other people to change formats.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 11:35:47 am
content: Quote from: tooki on October 16, 2019, 11:19:56 amI'm fairly certain they use the extra field in a non-standard way (well.. it's standard to put whatever you like in there, but there is no defined standard I know of to encode Unix file permissions or extended attributes there - or any other gubbins Apple bolts on). As for other systems adopting it, we'll need a defined standard before we end up with an incompatible nightmare, and we already have a suitable container which handles (as far as I'm aware) all current varieties of permissions and extended attributes, which predates even zip.. As for intermediate files, all current tools are quite capable of handling compression without leaving intermediates.QuoteWhere did I suggest it's more of a standard? I only said it exists and is reasonably common.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 12:16:47 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on October 16, 2019, 11:35:47 amHere, where you implied that zip isnotconventional:Quote from: Monkeh on October 15, 2019, 06:27:36 pmWhile 7zip may be somewhat common, it certainly does not qualify as the convention, and most definitely not more conventional than zip!!!

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 12:25:57 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on October 16, 2019, 12:16:47 pmThere, I fixed it. Please reseat your underwear.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 12:31:32 pm
content: I would be all for zip if it was fully open format, without proprietary stuff attached to it.Have you guys read the latest specifications to it and the additions they added to it? Just recently they decided to add WavPack data compression to the other formats they had. They also added LZMA some time ago (what's used by 7zip)We could have for example Apple decide tomorrow to default on using PPmd algorithm to compress zip files, instead of standard DEFLATE algorithm, and then you have zip files that can't be opened on Windows computers, because the unzip code Microsoft licensed from whatever company (or built by them, not sure if it's still third party software) doesn't do PPmd decoding.I'm attaching a valid zip file compressed with the PPmd algorithm, made the archive using 7zip btw... on my Windows 7 the Windows Explorer unzipper can't extract the image inside but can parse the archive and show the contents.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 01:13:56 pm
content: Quote from: mariush on October 16, 2019, 12:31:32 pmYes, in practical terms we're stuck to a very small subset of zip. Are we even sure Windows handles Unicode?

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 01:20:12 pm
content: Who uses the default handling of zip files in Windows explorer anyway... it just plain sucks.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 01:54:46 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on October 16, 2019, 01:20:12 pmI think most people do, especially those in a corporate environment who can't install anything better.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 03:10:29 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on October 16, 2019, 12:25:57 pmLOL. We responded to what you actually wrote at the time. Going back and editing it doesn’t somehow magically put us in the wrong. You’re still being a total cock about this. I don’t even care about the supported formats much, I just want you to stop gaslighting everyone else and stop using hyperbole and stupid arguments instead of sticking to reasonable ones so as to produce a sensible discussion.Quote from: Monkeh on October 16, 2019, 01:13:56 pmYes, and it has for many years:Unicode support was added in Windows 7.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 03:13:04 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on October 16, 2019, 01:20:12 pmIn my experience in computer support, the answer is “the overwhelming majority of people”. Most people aren’t computer whizzes, and just want “easy”. And the easiest choice is usually what’s already there. Only when it fails to do what they need do they seek out something better. This is why OS defaults tend to dominate.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 04:15:55 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on October 16, 2019, 01:20:12 pmEverybody I know does. It works fine, at least in Win7. I use 3rd party tools for almost everything else but the zip handling is one thing that just works, at least for me.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 05:07:42 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on October 16, 2019, 03:10:29 pmAnd apparently you read into it something I did not intend. You don't need to be a cock about it yourself.QuoteThat's nice. They just have everything else from the last 20 years or so to sort out..

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2019, 06:02:22 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on October 16, 2019, 04:15:55 pmYup. I have Winrar,7-UPand other programs installed for when I need them but for quick, easy work I use ZIP most of the time. It is integrated with the OS and is most quick and easy to use. Most people will use ZIP and I will use ZIP because I know they will not complain. If I use anything else I can get complaints or questions. With ZIP zip, nada.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 17, 2019, 01:08:38 am
content: Quote from: zucca on October 14, 2019, 07:38:11 amDone

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2019, 07:49:44 am
content: Quote from: soldar on October 16, 2019, 10:42:33 amTry Inkscape. It's much easier to use. I'd rather edit SGV, rather than PNG. Forget BMP, it's far too big and editing JPG can be pain because of the artefacts. And is a screenshot really that difficult? It takes less than a minute to do a screenshot and paste it into your favourite image editing software.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2019, 07:55:08 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on October 17, 2019, 07:49:44 amCoincidentally... just went to Inkscape download page ->for Windows... it says ...... we recommend the free software 7-Zip to extract ...

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2019, 09:19:06 am
content: About two years ago I used Inkscape professionally for over a year and it is not for the faint of heart. Its interface is very difficult IMO.But the output files are quite nice.At work 7zip was adopted as "the standard". Although the software works ok and the 7z files are generally smaller than .zip, I still use the latter for wide distribution. You simply can't compare 30+ years of .zip with the infant .7z. And for huge files I used .rar, but I completely understand how its closed source is a problem.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2019, 09:28:48 am
content: Quote from: Monkeh on October 16, 2019, 05:07:42 pmWe all “read into it” exactly what you wrote at the time.Me calling you out on cuckoo “arguments” doesn’t make me a cock. You could have just said “oops, I miswrote” early on, rather than digging yourself deeper, and that would have been that. Instead you continue to try and flip it around on everyone else, even though we clearly are not responsible for what YOU wrote earlier. We cannot go by what you intended to write, only by what you actually wrote.