Could we use something better than zip for the dmd package?

[Mirko Pilger]

> The ftp is not the fastest one and 7z reduces the size by 40%.

*+1*

on desktop i'm mostly a windows guy and since the days of windows 95 my 
first step after a clean system setup has been always to install a 3rd 
party file archiver utility. i remember it was winzip in the beginning, 
shortly after replaced by winrar. i used those archivers until i 
discovered a file manager (and norton commander clone) named total 
commander which supports most common compression formats. instead of the 
windows explorer i use this piece of software for about a decade now.

i haven't known that windows supports the zip format out of the box 
until i read about it here today!

when i take a look at my "downloads/dev/" folder (which contains mostly 
compressed source code) i see a majority of zip archives, followed by 
tar.gz, bz2 and then 7z.

the rar format was once known as the optimum for compressing multimedia 
files and was and is still used a lot for (illegal) file sharing. 
however rar is starting to become replaced by 7z in the latter use case 
and will be the de facto standard for compressing big files (GB) in the 
near future.

i use 7z myself for backups for a couple of years now and if i have the 
choice i will always download 7z first, in absence look for tgz and 
choose zip always last if there's nothing else available.

yes, i might be old fashioned and i'm pretty aware that both ram and 
disk space is cheap but shouldn't we (developers and engineers) also be 
at the forefront to push and introduce new technologies? isn't this even 
our collective responsibility?

choice is good. let's make as much formats as download available as 
possible and let the user decide. the download statistics might be a 
surprise for some people.

</rant>