Talk:RAR (file format)

message: Is Alexander Eugene's son? brother? step-brother? Does anyone know? -andy 80.129.105.18 14:48, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I suppose Eugene won't be against if I publish here a part of our correspondence: Alexander is my brother and he is handling business related stuff. Development is still my task. - Eugene Roshal May 9, 2006 00:24 (UTC) Artem-S-Tashkinov 06:37, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relation Eugene & Alexander Roshal 

message: The comment "Older versions of the file format used a proprietary but strong encryption algorithm" seems questionable.  Are there any references to verify this?
The statement "RAR provides effective lossless compression of Linear PCM audio files (commonly stored as .wav or .au) where other generalised compression formats (zip, 7-zip) do not. The compression ratio is typically between 50%-90% dependent on the complexity of the source audio and the predictability of the incoming waveform." is unclear and misleading.
:"between 50%-90% dependent on the complexity of the source audio and the predictability of the incoming waveform"
:Does this add something? All compression, no matter what the source is, depends on the source entropy (i.e.: complexity and predictability) --Outlyer 14:41, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but I agree with the statement. I've tested it out myself, comparing RAR with 7-zip, both using a 2048K dictionary and highest compression available. WinRAR was able to compress more, and it's close to listenable lossless (FLAC, WavPack, etc) formats (With the proper plugin, ZIPs and RARs can be listened to using foobar2000.--Tatsh 00:53, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree about the encryption. There's no reference given for its strength, and proprietary algorithms are almost always fairly weak by professional standards . Changing to " a proprietary encryption algorithm". Electrolite 22:46, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questionable Content 

message: Is there any external or internal link on article containing RAR algorithm and principles of RAR compression?
Thank you for help.
* it appears that Win.rar GmbH has not released any source code for RAR version 3, with the only description being at this site.  RAR version 2 was publicized but is now obsolete.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anon lynx (talk • contribs) 07:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  RAR algorithm 

message: Removed "Eugene Roshal" as a link. The link  "Eugene Roshal" redirected to this page.
*The biography of the author should go onto another page.  
* I agree.  This article and its discussion page seems to be heavily biased by the corporate sponsors of WinRAR. Stephen Charles Thompson (talk) 21:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biographical data 

message: A user recently undid my attempt to remove the corporate advertisement for WinRAR software and replace it with a forum for listing various applications that support the RAR format.  I fought back and notified the user, reinstated my edit, and removed the advertisement to its own section.  
* discussions about the WinRAR application belong in the separate WinRAR article. Stephen Charles Thompson (talk) 06:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: RAR File Archiver Software

message: Can the fact that compressed files are sometimes larger than the source, a fundamentally unavoidable consequence of information theory, really be regarded as “computational overhead”? -Ahruman 02:10, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overhead 

message: * It looks like the creator of 7-zip has been using this page as publicity. As it happens 7-zip does not come with any explanation of how to use it, and despite a long attempt I could not extract anything except another file which was unreadable.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.23.138.63 (talk • contribs) 04:41, 11 May 2006
* I believe this article has been heavily influenced and therefore biased by WinZIP corporate sponsors.  My attempt to list RAR software other than RARLAB WinRAR was almost immediately undone. Stephen Charles Thompson (talk) 21:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Corporate Advertisement / Improper Usage 

message: :The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 
The result of the debate was no consensus. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 13:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move 

message: Why does this page list "audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin" under the MIME types of RAR? I don't think the RAR archiver has anything to do with Real, I'm removing this for now. -- intgr 14:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  MIME type audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin? 

message: To clarify, output spacing does not matter, if you have N bits decompressed, you simply can not represent all 2^N possible decompressed results with only 2^(N-1) possible compressed ones.  All compression algorithms have the potential to enlarge data, even if it's a single bit. Riotgear 06:02, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "as with all compression algorithms..." 

message: They say that the library is licensed under the GPL but doesn't the GPL prohibit the kind of thou shalt not reverse engineer conditions that the original author placed on the code? I seem to recall that this kind of additional restriction beyond the terms of the GPL isn't allowed.
Maybe the author has since removed that requirement, though it certainly doesn't sound that way.
--80.6.85.54 07:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Depends on version...  And no, it's a "binary glob" GPL workaround to use it.  Like it mentions for 7Zip.71.196.246.113 (talk) 08:31, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can anything based on Roshal's code really be GPL compatible? 

message: Somebody please mention in an encyclopedic style that RAR format has another specific feature. The list of archived files is not kept in one please like Sevenzip or Zip. Instead each packed file begins with a header containing the relative path and filename. To read the filelist a program has to seek through the entire archive. This must be taken into account when archives contain many files or are to be accessed frequently. -- J7N
: Can someone verify this claim?  What versions of the RAR format does this apply to? Stephen Charles Thompson (talk) 07:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It's true and this problem is addressed in WinRAR 5.0 Artem-S-Tashkinov (talk) 11:51, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: List of archived files

message: I've known a lot of people to cal Rar archvies "RARchives". Should this be included on the page?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hawk27 (talk • contribs) 19:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nickname Inclusion 

message: What's with Parchive mention in the beginning of the article? It's just some of the many tools which could have been used with rar archives. One of (maybe) thousands of tools... Why special mention? Recovery record actually made much more for reliability of rar archives, it was quite a novel thing at the time. Of course, external redundancy-adding tools was almost always there, but were very rarely used. Recovery record, on the other hand, as a built-in feature made redundancy really popular, and improved life of floppy swapping by a very large margin :) That's what could be mentioned... Not some 3rd party tool which only appeared in 2001, when Rar was already a mature software... Also, in 2001 Rar was around v2.80-v2.90, so v1 was essentially obsolete. --89.113.78.48 (talk) 13:40, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Parchive 

message: I just removed the following from "External Links":
I did so because I feel this may be a way of breaching copyright and I don't feel it right at all for Wikipedia to encourage breaking the law. Apologies if I'm wrong, but I felt it was important to stop this if I am right, since it's potentially wuite a serious issue.
If anyone has evidence that this is legal and wants to reinstate it, feel free. Thanks Greggers (t • c) 20:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: ....  PFfffttt HAHAHA Sorry, that's funny.  I thought it was the shareware authors that encouraged the use of archivers.  Most of the 'warez d00ds' just found that most people have installed a tool like WinZIP or WinRAR and can thus read RAR archives.  ZIP files have horrible compression and can't be solid, don't have recovery, don't support a lot of newer stuff, and so on.  Saying that only (or even mostly) it's used for pirated files is kind of like saying that HTTP is only popular because of email and Youtube.  It was out long before the existence of even Napster.  Now as far as how many of the installations of WinRAR itself that are pirated...  hehe no one knows!71.196.246.113 (talk) 08:29, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "RAR passwords" Link 

message: I though it would be a good idea to add a link to file compression at the bottom of the page (under further reading).
Jasper Cook (talk) 20:16, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Usually for internal links to Wikipedia articles, you would just do this: Data compression (File compression redirects to Data compression anyway), instead of this: Data compression. Additional article links would also probably go in the See also section instead of "Further reading". In this case, Data compression is already linked on the first line of the article, so I feel it would not be necessary to link it again. --Spoon! (talk) 20:24, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added Link to File Compression 

message: VERSIONS
This section has some rather awkward English sentences:
1.  "In computer science, RAR is a file compression and archiving of the proprietary format."
Better perhaps is:
RAR is a proprietary file compression and archiving format used in computer science.
2. "Eugene Roshal conditional discloses decoding program source code, but the code is still proprietary."
Better perhaps is:
Eugene Roshal conditionally discloses the source code for decoding, but that code remains proprietary.
3.  "RAR format by WinRAR, WinMount and other software to open RAR file extensions are.Rar, MIME type of application/x-rar-compressed."
Maybe this means:
WinRAR, WinMount and other software open RAR format files whose file extensions are  .Rar, and the MIME type of application/x-rar-compressed.
4.  "It is a lossless data compression, RAR file is usually better than ZIP file compression ratio to be high, but the compression speed is slower .Because the RAR file header will occupy a certain space, in a little room for data compression, the compressed file can be greater than the original file."
Better perhaps is: 
It is a lossless data compression.  While often slower, RAR file compression is usually better than Zip file compression due to the higher compression ratio.  Occasionally the compressed file is larger than the original file due to the RAR file header's size.
The rest of the section continues in this awkward manner.  I am not an expert on file compression.  I came here to learn more about it.    Therefore, I am reluctant to correct this section lest I misinterpret the writer's intent or blunder in some other way. However, it does need editing.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.169.62.144 (talk) 18:31, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Awkward if not bewildering English 

message: The last discussion was 2006, when RAR wasn't that important as a file format. Editors brought up it not being very important, not important enough to be the primary topic. However, RAR as a compression tool is a very major player in compression nowadays, and if someone says "RAR", it's very safe to assume that they talk of the file format, not variants of Maori, army units, or nuclear receptors. I propose a move to RAR, with the previous page becoming a DAB, as this is the primary topic. Grognard Extraordinaire Chess (talk) Ping when replying 04:55, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: RAR has always been an important file format on the internet and even more so in the past, but most non-geeks aren't even aware of ZIP or RAR files, so RAR should stay as disambiguation page, just like ZIP.  • Sbmeirow • Talk • 07:21, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: True, that most people do not know what RAR is. However, even less people know what the other topics of RAR could be. For example, a rather obscure anti-racism campaign, the abbreviation for a German rock music festival, 3 army regiments, minor figures in Greek mythology, and multiple topics relating to the Cook Islands. It's misleading to compare RAR to ZIP, as ZIP could be used to refer to ziplines, zippers, and other zipping related things, while RAR does not refer to anything that is as commonly used as the file format. Grognard Extraordinaire Chess (talk) Ping when replying 19:52, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not likely an exhaustive list of everything that stands for RAR, instead only what people have gotten around to adding.  • Sbmeirow • Talk • 20:48, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Even though the DAB isn't an exhaustive list, the file format is still the primary topic. If I Google RAR, 8/10 of the results on the first page are related to the file format, one is related to the company, and another is the Wikipedia DAB page. Going to the 5th page, 42/50 of the results are related to the file format. Also, in this Google Trends search, people looking for the compression utility greatly outclass those looking for "rar" in general. In this Google Trends search, a sampling of topics revealed that none compare against WinRAR. Grognard Extraordinaire Chess (talk) Ping when replying 00:09, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you object to me performing the move now, User:Sbmeirow? Grognard Extraordinaire Chess (talk) Ping when replying 19:15, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I still prefer "RAR (file format)" because its the same article naming layout as "ZIP (file format)", and I'd rather see all file format articles have a uniform naming method than be decided by a popularity contest.  Seriously, why the heck can't we pick a naming method that has ZERO conflicts and makes EVERY file article unique without conflict, huh, oh we can't do that because it would make too much sense, LOL.  Wikipedia has turned into an article naming cluster f**k that care more about the popularity contest than similarity.  Anyway, go ahead and change it, because it's not worth my time to fight this silly mess.  • Sbmeirow • Talk • 23:33, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

text: Give a third opinion, ? Grognard Extraordinaire Chess (talk) Ping when replying 00:24, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  It is a fourth, by now :) and I do not have a strong opinion either way. Making "RAR" a page about the file format, as primary topic, with "RAR (file format)" redirecting there, and placing the disambiguation at "RAR (disambiguation)" is probably the option most in line with current policy. Yet, as I think naming consistency is a good thing and also influenced by a ongoing  discussion about naming format for disambiguation (or navigation) pages, my favourite option would be to keep this page at "RAR (file format)", "RAR" would redirect here, and the disambiguation at "RAR (disambiguation)" - Nabla (talk) 23:24, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree agree with User:Nabla "my favourite option" immediately before this post. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 02:56, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

text:  I prefer the "my favourite option" option too. "if someone says "RAR", it's very safe to assume that they talk of the file format" This isn't entirely correct. RAR is also the name of the command line tool, just like WinRAR is the GUI tool. rar.exe on windows and just rar on other systems. The difference with the UnRAR command line tool is that it also can create RAR archives. --Ondertitel (talk) 22:23, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  Although they are all related to the file format. Grognard Extraordinaire Chess (talk) Ping when replying 12:33, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move to [[RAR]]? 

message: Response to third opinion request:
This one is borderline, but I wouldn't object to moving the article to RAR now, simply because from looking at the disambig page, there doesn't appear to be a subject for any other article that uses these exact initials. Erpert blah, blah, blah... 04:52, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Third opinion

message: * Data recovery protection record - at least FreeARC has this feature (possibly others).
* 256-bit BLAKE2 file hash - kinda worthless for most users, because CRC32 is more than enough.
* Quick open record - 7z works this way by design.
* Duplicate file detection - with large enough dictionary this feature is redundant.
I'm thinking users have to decide for themselves what is unique about RAR. This section looks like a promotional material which is inappropriate for Wikipedia. Artem-S-Tashkinov (talk) 19:24, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: * FreeARC has been dead for ages, it doesn't have a 64bit version, its maximum dictionary is limited.
* So you basically decide what others need, OK. CRC32 is NOT more than enough, it's easy to image a situation when CRC32 stays the same while the archive changes.
* Agree.
* And what if a file doesn't fit into the dictionary? Artem S. Tashkinov (talk) 15:49, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unique features 

message: The "Versions" section at multiple places talks about winrar, instead of rar as a format. Probably someone copy-pasted it form the winrar site without bothering to check it or even placing a reference.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.4.241.107 (talk) 23:02, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Rar's first and foremost implementation is WinRAR, thus your whole comment is redundant. Pure Rar's last version was Rar 2.50 for MS-DOS. Artem-S-Tashkinov (talk) 08:54, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  heh 

message: "RAR files can be created only with commercial software WinRAR (Windows), command-line RAR (Windows, MS-DOS, macOS, Linux, Android,[8] and FreeBSD), and other software that has written permission from Alexander Roshal or shares copyrighted code under license from Alexander Roshal. Only WinRAR for Windows and Rar for Linux are available as native 64-bit applications. The software license agreements forbid reverse engineering."
I believe this is incorrect. The RAR license (https://www.rarlab.com/license.htm) only refers to "the RAR compression algorithm" (see 10.)
The RAR file format specifications allow for archives with uncompressed content. They are available here: https://www.rarlab.com/technote.htm
Creating RAR archives that do not contain any compressed files (or empty RAR archives) is not covered by this license. 195.212.29.186 (talk) 10:52, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Creating RAR files 

message: The edit war we currently have is hilarious though IMO we must use the "i" units to avoid ambiguity once and for all. Too bad the editor who insists on old ambiguous units have already edited other PC related articles as well. Artem S. Tashkinov (talk) 15:51, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Rather than continue the edit war here, I suggest editors comment instead at ANEW. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 20:10, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#WP:COMPUNITS Artem S. Tashkinov (talk) 22:29, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

text: Please see WP:COMPUNITS where it spells out how to best handle situations where the terms might be confusing. As a general rule we don't use the IEC units here. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:07, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Units Editing War

message: Highly noticeably MISSING are many, many CITE/REF sources for the #Versions sub-section of this article; I personally am curious why Linux unrar-free binary (CLI app) only supports up to plain RAR 2.0. Was curious if anyone can find when Version 2.0 was released? Are there plans to CITE/REF each VERSION listed here-in?? It is nearly impossible to find version histories prior to v3! Anyone? -From Peter {a.k.a. Vid2vid (talk | contribs)} 22:49, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Versions, Versioning Sub-Section, needs more cite/refs/sourcing/sources