ZIP Support (so I can finally retire "PowerDersk Pro")

[Filehero]

There's got to be a smooth way to handle ZIP, right? Scripting, ini-tweaks, whatever it takes, I don't care. Someone, please???

I'm afraid I can't help you because I simply preview/view all compressed files in 7z.


Cheers,
Filehero

[admin]

Support for ZIP and RAR is on the road map.

[PeterH]

Support for ZIP and RAR is on the road map.

[Stef123]

Now I am getting r-e-a-l-l-y worried. Searched frantically this forum and other resources and came out with nada, zilch, zip (pun not intended, wish I would come out with ZIP)

Support for ZIP and RAR is on the road map.

Been there. Seen that. Looked like "Maybe Someday" to me.
And that's precisely why it didn't trouble me in the least. There obvsiously had to be another efficient solution with something as basic as ZIP. Native support or not - don't care what's under the hood as long as I feel the power in the driver's seat.

And there's got to be power with so many users - who's gonna set up view settings and sort orders and tabs and then lose it all every time he opens an e-mail attachment and actually needs all the good stuff he customized?

My worst-case scenario: XY not able to preview zip-content - so what? I'll associate a freeware-viewer to .jpg and friends. Tools galore to work on ZIP directly withot extracting first.

But never, not in my wildest nightmares, would it have occured to me that XY can't even get to the point of attaching such a 3rd party-action to ZIP-content. Even Windows itself has finally come around (took them ages though) to treat Zip as what it is - a folder. A folder that you can mail out, a folder that contains subfolders - the warp and woof of file mgmt.

I am totally lost at the moment, I feel like an alien on another planet. How for files' sake does everybody here handle it? HOW? It totally beats me.

[grindax]

.

[admin]

Same here. A non-issue for me personally.

[PeterH]

Same here. A non-issue for me personally.

Don't get me wrong: I love to look at and handle my pictures with XY - just used it today - so it's a pretty good picture handler.

But if I want to organize files out of a zip container ...

Yes - if I want to organize files, even out of a zip, a file manager should help, I think.

But if I remember it correct, you said (after some holiday) you have use for handling pictures. But as just said again, you have no use for handling zips. (No matter if this is file organizing?)

[Stef123]

Let me get this straight: This reason this feature has been parked on the ToDo list for so many years is not because XY already has an equally seamless alternative (as I surmised)? It is a matter of priorities - ZIP ranks low compared to other things, the work-arounds mentioned in this thread are considered sufficient?

I am not questioning your decisions. You sure have good reasons, backed up by the community. But for my intended purposes, both business and private - this pulls the plug for me. Got way too many ZIPs, both compressed and uncompressed, for easy copy and backup, mail attachments, in-out baskets ... the list is endless.

I can't say any of that has ever made me feel like an alien.

Not you, grindax, it's me who feels like an alien. The world where I come from has turned ZIP into a standard folder format. I am not talking a different price range like D-Opus. I am talking every Total- /Free- /Speed- /Podunk- Commander out there in that other universe, including Win itself.

This is not to say XY should follow suit. But my environment is too mainstream for not adhering to accepted (and expected) standards.

I right-click on the archive and choose either 'Extract Here' or 'Extract files...

No objections. But this handling will put me at the butt end of jokes: "Remember the guy who wanted to optimize our workflow - he recommended to first extract each and every zip with an external tool, then go back into XY, copy the files we need, delete those "temp"-folders again …

Don't get me wrong: I love to look at and handle my pictures with XY - just used it today - so it's a pretty good picture handler.

But if I want to organize files out of a zip container ...

Yes - if I want to organize files, even out of a zip, a file manager should help, I think.

My opinion exactly. What else is ZIP all about if not handling files and folders? What would you say if a picture viewer doesn't speak GIF? No problem, plenty of interpreters out there, who minds a little detour?

I am not out to evangelize. I accept Don's decision and move on, chalking it up to experience: Never take anything for granted.

[Borut]

It is really bad if someone's workflow is so dependent on the native support for compressed file formats. There are sure some very special reasons to use compressed files/folders in a daily workflow as if they ware normal file system folders. No help for this situation in the XYplorer world at the moment, I am afraid.

But, just to make it straight, a *.zip or a *.rar is - technically - not a folder. It is a file and there has to exist its "content interpreter" - a WinZip, WinRar, or whatever - to show the compressed content which is inside.

I guess that the people like grindax, Don and myself are viewing compressed formats primarily as a handy encapsulation possibility for a backup or a data transfer. I know of environments with many people dealing with GBs, if not TBs, of *.rar and *.zip files on a daily bases and no one ever using, wishing to use, asking for, or seeing any advantage in the native support of them in any file explorer. (On the contrary, my personal feeling is that this is actually a potentially dangerous blur of the line between the underlying file system and the applications level.)

This is where the attitude "It is a non-issue" - which I actually share - probably comes from.

[PeterH]

But, just to make it straight, a *.zip or a *.rar is - technically - not a folder. It is a file and there has to exist its "content interpreter" - a WinZip, WinRar, or whatever - to show the compressed content which is inside.

But you know: a file is not inside a folder. It's just on HD (or whatever). And the folder structure is nothing but a means to find / access the physical address of the wanted file.
(That's, for example, the reason why a move of a file from one to another folder is just a rename...)

So the term "folder" is nothing but a logical view to some grouping in terms of hierarchy - and may apply to groups of files on HDs as well as to zip files. (Which, by the way, also can contain further folder hierarchies.)

In the end the view of a zip as a folder is nothing but a logical representation, as good or as bad as folders on a HD.
Maybe you could compare this to constructs like symbolic links or junctions, letting you see some folder as if beeing contained in others...

[j_c_hallgren]

Let me get this straight: This reason this feature has been parked on the ToDo list for so many years is not because XY already has an equally seamless alternative (as I surmised)? It is a matter of priorities - ZIP ranks low compared to other things, the work-arounds mentioned in this thread are considered sufficient?

As someone who's been around here for quite a while, and who worked with computers before ZIP files were used, I'd say the reason it's not been done is because with the ever increasing storage capacity for much lower cost, the usage of ZIP and RAR and such has decreased over time and thus becomes less relevant.

am not questioning your decisions. You sure have good reasons, backed up by the community. But for my intended purposes, both business and private - this pulls the plug for me. Got way too many ZIPs, both compressed and uncompressed, for easy copy and backup, mail attachments, in-out baskets ... the list is endless.

I'd wonder why you have so many of them when, for ex, email attachments now allow relatively huge files and as above, the need for them has dimished..matter of fact, I wonder if all the new tablets and such provide handling for compressed files like would have been needed years ago.

It is really bad if someone's workflow is so dependent on the native support for compressed file formats. There are sure some very special reasons to use compressed files/folders in a daily workflow as if they ware normal file system folders. No help for this situation in the XYplorer world at the moment, I am afraid.

Agree! I find them a nuisance to deal with and even with my tiny 30GB HDD, have plenty of room without resorting to it...He must have some issues/reasons that I don't have and that may justify it to him but I don't get it.

But, just to make it straight, a *.zip or a *.rar is - technically - not a folder. It is a file and there has to exist its "content interpreter" - a WinZip, WinRar, or whatever - to show the compressed content which is inside.

Right -- it's a FILE and to me, it's sorta like asking a file manager to be able to rename/delete/add sheets to a Excel workbook because those are items within that file.

I guess that the people like grindax, Don and myself are viewing compressed formats primarily as a handy encapsulation possibility for a backup or a data transfer. I know of environments with many people dealing with GBs, if not TBs, of *.rar and *.zip files on a daily bases and no one ever using, wishing to use, asking for, or seeing any advantage in the native support of them in any file explorer. (On the contrary, my personal feeling is that this is actually a potentially dangerous blur of the line between the underlying file system and the applications level.)

This is where the attitude "It is a non-issue" - which I actually share - probably comes from.

I share the same opinion that IF the ZIP format were a function of the OS itself when originally developed, then maybe but it wasn't...it was a result of PKZIP (AFAIK) program getting popular when all we had were floppy disks and 5MB hard drives and even before that.

[Filehero]

- ZIP ranks low compared to other things, the work-arounds mentioned in this thread are considered sufficient?

Well, to me these aren't workarounds, but a standard way of handling compressed files. Maybe, because I grew up with it.

But even if XY would already support zip/rar natively it wouldn't make my file exploring experience dramatically better.

Here is why:
- compression as a standard way of file handling isn't an option because none of my file-specific applications is able to handle files compressed externally. Especially with those non-inherently compressed formats generating larger files on average (e.g. camera raw images) and where compression is supposed to add a significant benefit this would break every natural workflow into pieces.
- more and more file formats use inbuild compression where external compression on top isn't worth the effort to even think about.
- for all other formats I just don't care - and never did.
- compression at the file system level adds another level of risk. A broken container could mean entire loss of its content.

Hence, I only compress some of my own archives/backups (in parallel to 1:1 copies for my essential stuff), and in these cases I use the 7z format. And if I have to compress mail attachments, I just use the 7z entries from the context menu to zip the selected items.



Cheers,
Filehero

[Stef123]

The discussion here reminds me of the days when Apple users got very defensive whenever you mentioned a right mouse button or wheel. It was received as blasphemy, how dare you say Apple is lagging behind in functionality? Who needs a right button anyway, let alone a wheel? We've been doing great without it, and will continue to do so.

And on and on they went, and we're still good friends anyway, and I don't know how many of them actually use the wheel today, or whether they still drag the scrollbar to prove their point.

I find them a nuisance to deal with ..

So do I, but only inside XY. Elsewhere they're treated as folders, you put their ZIP-subfolders onto your Tabs and proceed as usual, with all your tools at hand.
When I have more time I may come back and share my two cents on philosophies and techtalk about safety and speed of copying ZIP folders compared to thousands of individual files.

But in the meantime I am confronted by facts, not ideologies. Daily computer chores involve browsing backup-folders (zipped), customer packages (zipped and pass-protected), mail attachments. Even right here in this forum I wasn't allowed to upload an ICO-file, had to zip it up first.

As valid as your observations may be, they are beside the point. It's not about native ZIP support, it's about how can I sift through folders faster, more efficient and effortless than with Windows Explorer? None of the solutions offered in this thread are convincing in that respect.

[j_c_hallgren]

But never, not in my wildest nightmares, would it have occured to me that XY can't even get to the point of attaching such a 3rd party-action to ZIP-content. Even Windows itself has finally come around (took them ages though) to treat Zip as what it is - a folder. A folder that you can mail out, a folder that contains subfolders - the warp and woof of file mgmt.

I'm not really trying to defend XY's lack of native ZIP support but the fact remains that a ZIP file is NOT a folder -- it's a specialized format of a compressed file -- and AFAIK, Windows does not have ability to directly access a file within a ZIP when using the open/save dialog and if that can't occur, then Windows agrees it's not truly a folder...

I am totally lost at the moment, I feel like an alien on another planet. How for files' sake does everybody here handle it? HOW? It totally beats me.

As said before -- many of us have abandoned the use of ZIP now that native storage capacities have eliminated the need for it --

BTW, for me, to fully consider a ZIP file as a folder, then the contents should be able to be accessed in all ways, like finding a file within it when doing a search by name and seeing it on tree as folder -but- I'm not aware that WE does either of those...

You may use ZIP's daily now but if it were me, I'd reexamine if that isn't becoming an obsolete way to handle files like many of us have found because I don't see future technology providing for them,

[Filehero]

A ZIP-file is not a folder. Period.