How are zlib, gzip and zip related?
stackoverflow.com
How are zlib, gzip and zip related?
1–10 of 81 posts
Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?
#2For people who first read this: the sweet part is in the comments :)
Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?
#3What a great historical summary. Compression has moved on now but having grown up marveling at PKZip and maximizing usable space on very early computers, as well as compression in modems (v42bis ftw!), this field has always seemed magical.
These days it generally is better to prefer Zstandard to zlib/gzip for many reasons. And if you need seekable format, consider squashfs as a reasonable choice. These stand on the shoulders of the giants of zlib and zip but do indeed stand much higher in the modern world.
Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?
#4For people who first read this: the sweet part is in the comments :)
What’s even more sad is that the SO community has since consequently destroyed SO as the home for this type of info. This post would now be considered off topic as it’s “not a good format for a Q&A site”. You’d never see it happen today. Truly sad.
Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?
#5Found this hilarious:
> This post is packed with so much history and information that I feel like some citations need be added
> I am the reference
(extracted a part of the conversation)
Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?
#6Found this hilarious: > This post is packed with so much history and information that I feel like some citations need be added > I am the reference (extracted a part of the conversation)
Maybe a spoiler, but the "I" in "I am the reference" is Mark Adler:
Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?
#7For people who first read this: the sweet part is in the comments :)
What’s even more sad is that the SO community has since consequently destroyed SO as the home for this type of info. This post would now be considered off topic as it’s “not a good format for a Q&A site”. You’d never see it happen today. Truly sad.
Thing is, it could only be that way in its early days, when the vanguard of users came to it from word of mouth, from following Joel Spolsky or Coding Horror or their joint podcast. The audience is much bigger now and with the long tail of people, the number willing to put effort into good questions is too low, and on-topicness is a simple quality bar which can improve the signal to noise ratio.
Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?
#8The real question is: how are zlib and libz related?
Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?
#9Found this hilarious: > This post is packed with so much history and information that I feel like some citations need be added > I am the reference (extracted a part of the conversation)
Reminds me of when I was inadvertently arguing here on HN with the inventor of the actor model about what actors are
Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s even more sad is that the SO community has since consequently destroyed SO as the home for this type of info. This post would now be considered off topic as it’s “not a good format for a Q&A site”. You’d never see it happen today. Truly sad.
Thing is, it could only be that way in its early days, when the vanguard of users came to it from word of mouth, from following Joel Spolsky or Coding Horror or their joint podcast. The audience is much bigger now and with the long tail of people, the number willing to put effort into good questions is too low, and on-topicness is a simple quality bar which can improve the signal to noise ratio.
Except, I doubt anybody would argue that a lower signal to noise ratio has improved the site. (Plus, has the actual metric even improved and how is it measured?) And, did anybody ever stop to ask whether S:N should even be the champion metric in the first place, at a product level? With a philosophy of “Google is our homepage”, I honestly don’t understand why S:N even matters since search pretty effectively cuts out noise. I guess it makes a mod’s life easier though. The site is less useful today than it’s ever been. The road to hell…