When Phil Katz designed the Zip file format for PKZIP, he published the Zip specification as "APPNOTE". This led to interoperable implementations by third parties, such as Info-ZIP, WinZip, and 7-Zip. But because the RAR file format is deliberately not publicly specified, there is only one implementation. With this sort of monoculture, implementation errors like
this one are more likely to lead to widespread exploits.
So why do people even use RAR anymore instead of something more modern, like 7-Zip? RAR's technical advantage over Zip is solid archiving, and its advantage over Zip and Tar is a larger window size to make solid archiving actually meaningful. But 7-Zip has both of these features plus public source code under a free software license.
Is it just inertia in the warez and SPC scenes?
I think the answer is simply this: habit. But since zip is built into windows (since when? Vista?), i would've thunk noone is really using it anymore since zip is more accessible, right out of the box. Most .rars i encounter are on really old sites.
And using tar is about as simple from console, and linux users are generally more active in their software choices.
Yes I think so to. It's just that people haven't switched yet. When I noticed all the earlier problems with 7-Zip was gone I switched to it so I don't have to deal with Winrar. It's just a matter of time before more people realize it.
I still use WinRAR as my usual de/compressor program (I registered it many years ago, and it works nicely enough), but will use ZIP format by default for compression since it seems to have the widest support. (...and .tar.gz if it's a linux thing, I guess.) I'd just use 7-Zip in cases I didn't already have WinRAR installed.
The place I would see RAR most often was for large archives that needed to be split into multiple files. With RAR that was a built-in part of the format, at least. Though, it was common for people to split ZIP files with a separate program (e.g. HJSplit) for a while-- but I think that era is more than 10 years gone.
I couldn't say why anyone would end up choosing RAR by default (I certainly would not), but I will say that most people don't notice/understand/care that it's a "proprietary" format, especially since there's like a zillion free utilities that can unpack it. So... the main reason you think it's obsolete is actually irrelevant to most.
TBH I almost never see .RAR files, though. Where are you even noticing this, tepples?
(Also funny to me: a set of NES ROMs torrent I recently found had individual ROMs compressed as 7z, completely trashing any solid archive advantage it maybe could have used with all these variant dumps.)
Main reason I don't use 7zip over RAR is that RAR has much superior file handling and generally way better UI. Size difference between the two is very small and RAR generally provides better performance on my hardware. I still have 7zip installed for the few archives that RAR cannot handle for whatever reason.
I've been using 7-zip for ages, using the .7z format for myself or people I think will know how to handle it and .zip for everyone else.
I rarely see RAR being used these days... Only for stuff that was archived years ago or from people who are just clueless about file formats in general and still use WinRAR out of habit.
rainwarrior wrote:
(Also funny to me: a set of NES ROMs torrent I recently found had individual ROMs compressed as 7z, completely trashing any solid archive advantage it maybe could have used with all these variant dumps.)
While I do appreciate the advantages of using solid archives for ROMs, there's the problem of how to name the archives when the variants have different names. There were times when I was looking for games in ROM collections but couldn't find what I wanted because they used names of versions I wasn't familiar with.
Oooh... I'm using ZIP now thanks to tepples' advice. ^_^;; Really.
rainwarrior wrote:
TBH I almost never see .RAR files, though. Where are you even noticing this, tepples?
snesmusic.org, per my mention of the SPC ripping scene.
What rhymes with poop?
Also here on forums.nesdev.com. I'm sort of disappointed that phpBB has no obvious way to search for attachments, but I dug up these:
RARRARRARRARRARRARRARRARRARAnd here's
the Fedora Project's anti-RAR propaganda, though
a free decompressor for RAR version 3 appears to exist.
tepples wrote:
That actually seems to be the same implementation
as reported by the FSF back in 2011, and AFAIK I haven't heard about any patent restriction. Also in the current version of the mentioned "File Roller", as I'm using it on arch linux, libarchive also handles RAR files. So problem solved?
For a long time, 7-zip file manager was drastically worse than WinRAR. For example, you couldn't extract to a directory that did not yet exist, it wouldn't create it. This issue was since fixed a long time ago.
tepples wrote:
snesmusic.org
What do the administrators of that site have to say about RAR?
SNESAmp's support for RAR archives predates the existence of snesmusic.org.
I believe the reason RAR was chosen is because ZIP archives do not support solid compression, and collections of SPC dumps tend to contain a lot of redundant data.
And there hasn't really been a push to replace the RSN container (solid RAR of SPC files) with 7SN (solid 7z of SPC files).
So are most RAR files on the Internet still RARv3, or are many of them newer versions not compatible with The Unarchiver?
7-Zip is still seem to be compression better than RAR anyways (I have once decompressed a RAR (actually a .cbr) and recompressed it as 7-Zip (.cb7) and it resulted a smaller file; but this is just one test so not very meaningful).
I have never used the 7-Zip GUI but only the command-line tools, and it seem to work OK. (You can open some other formats too, including ISO, ARJ, CAB, Apple disk images, DocFile, etc. (but not Hamster archive). I have sometimes found files in less common formats and I was able to open them with 7-Zip, so it is useful.)
7-Zip supports solid compression and will even group files by extension by default in order to improve compression. However, even with stuff such as .tar.xz you can support solid compression, although you should then to put file in the order you need by yourself.
I don't know what RAR versions are in use, although it may be of the point to add a message for attackment in this forum to specify that you shouldn't upload RAR files that don't have a Free implementation (not as a strict rule, but just as a recommendation).
Zips are kind of akward now. They have a special its just a folder relationship but don't actually fully sub for a folder. Which if you want to just store stuff is fine, but when you need to extract something to execute it, then they become a pain. As you have the Zip folder and a Folder version. With RAR windows sees it as a file.
Also WinRAR has a solid UI, that we all know how to use, it has solid explorer integration and features.
A lot of people in the Retro Scene tend to cling to the past, and love Windows XP and still only use XP
so they also tend to use RAR for the explorer menu and support of XP still.
7zip might be just as good, might even be better, but WinRAR is Good Enough, and there is not really much from a user experience point of view to warrant the energy required to migrate, unless you are targeting an Amiga platform to which LHA is the go to.
Counterpoint for 7z: I recently got a 7z file that my 7zr could not open, claiming "unsupported feature", without mentioning what. I updated to the latest 7zr, still failed.
So clearly 7-zip is not compatible with even itself, apparently using some optional filters that are not implemented in all 7-zip versions. That's pretty bad.
(I asked them to resend in a different format. Got a zip, worked fine.)
I still use RAR myself primarily because I paid for it and I think its GUI is better than 7z for some things.
Unless 7z's GUI has recently been updated, it does not give the options to only compress files which have the archive bit set in a selection, nor does it have the option to clear said bit while compressing. Also, RAR's handling of multipart archives is better - the first file always ends with the .rar extension while 7z ends with .000.
I could ask: why do people still program the nes in 2017?
There can be many reason, like habit, licensing, performance, whatever. My best guess is habit. Usually unless it's broken you don't stop using what you are used to.
Banshaku wrote:
I could ask: why do people still program the nes in 2017?
NES + CRT has measurable advantages over PC + typical PC graphics API + LCD monitor. One is latency. Another is reduced expectations of asset complexity among players compared to a typical PC game. A third is less chance of "but it works on my system!" because of less variability in the environment.
In addition, most of a game can be built and tested with only free software: assembler (such as ca65) + indexed image editor (such as GIMP) + asset converters (such as pilbmp2nes) + a debugging emulator (such as FCEUX in Wine). RAR, by contrast, is not free for compression and not free for decompression past version 3. In addition, the non-free implementation has long been broken, and all other things being equal, breakage in non-free software takes longer to resolve.
tepples wrote:
A third is less chance of "but it works on my system!" because of less variability in the environment.
I think there's about a thousand threads in this forum that testify otherwise.
tepples wrote:
all other things being equal, breakage in non-free software takes longer to resolve.
What??? I think you could say "all other things being equal, at least you can try to fix it yourself" but wow I can think of tons VERY LONG standing bugs in open source software that I use. (And tons of cases of fast turnaround in closed software, esp. ones that have optional beta versions etc.)
Though I guess the key factor that isn't ever "equal" is just the available pool of active and interested developers, but that's the most important factor and completely unfair to rule out. Commercial software has effective ways to draw in developer talent!
I totally agree in this specific case that the RAR would be better off with an open spec (or if it got replaced overnight with something that is), and I love open source software in general, but I don't think it's a solution to
every problem. As a paradigm it comes with a lot of problems of its own.
I use WinRAR because the last time I looked at 7-zip, its UI experience was atrocious. As most have noted.
WinRAR's shell extension in the right-click menu above a file or folder makes compression effortless and foolproof.
Even dumb things like attempting to compress a disk volume will come up with the right results.
It is also quite fast.
I started to intentionally use archive files other than zip because I hate how Windows tried to treat zip files as folders, if no other compression program is associated with zip archives, causing all sorts of support nightmares of people double-clicking on a file inside the "zipper folder".
I ended up unregistering the shell extensions that allow windows to see into zip archives, but so that searches wouldn't look into archives making them much faster.
I paid twenty bucks for the full version AND I'M GONNA GET MY MONEY'S WORTH, DAMMIT!