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THE WONDER OF WINZIP

Brian Grainger

brian@grainger1.freeserve.co.uk

The concept of compressing files to save storage space has been with us for a long time. There have been a number of tools for compressing the files and then uncompressing them again. Winzip, being one of them, has been around since Windows 3 began. The purpose of this article is to look back at the file compression phenomenon and to highlight a couple of new uses I have found for Winzip.

In the early days of computing, when all we had for offline storage was the floppy drive, space was a premium. It was this problem that drove the industry for compression routines. If the files could be compressed then larger files could be stored and transferred using a floppy.

When hard drives came in then this problem went away as far as machine storage was concerned, but transferring files was still a problem. This occurred whatever type of machine we were using, be it Amiga, Apple or PC. A number of different compression techniques were devised and different products catered to these different standards.

In the days of the DOS driven PC the zip format became relatively commonplace and PKZIP became the major utility for zipping and unzipping files. I cannot quite remember the history now but I believe the early versions of PKZIP were freeware and at some point it branched into shareware. I do remember that at one stage it was very important to use version 2.04G and nothing later. The later versions had been hacked in some way. It was at this point that Windows came into widespread use.

With the advent of Windows came, not long after, Winzip. In its early incarnations this was basically regarded as the Windows version of PKZIP. Winzip was shareware but it was not time limited. This meant Winzip relied on people being honest in order to get their revenues. Quite a bit of shareware was like this at one time but the really good stuff changed to time limited versions. I guess the most prominent was PaintShop Pro, the de facto shareware image translation and editing utility. Up until version 4 it relied on honesty but, with version 5, it became time limited. To its credit Winzip has remained with the same marketing model, although it does now have nag screens. However, Winzip must be used by many of the big corporations. A zip utility is essential, especially in these days of file transfer via the Internet, and big corporations will not run the risk of having unlicensed software. Consequently, Winzip must have a good revenue stream.

Over the years Winzip has got better. It has encompassed more compression standards, so that it can cope with most things thrown at it, including standards popular on Apple and Amiga. Its use has expanded to cope, not only with compression algorithms, but also coding algorithms such as MIME and Uuencode.

If you have a problem with reading a compressed file or coded file throw it at Winzip. You never know, it might solve the problem for you. This is the approach I took with two problems I had recently.

The first problem concerned Microsoft's mailing programs. I use Outlook Express at home and when a mail is sent in HTML format, or with attachments, it is very easy to see what the contents are and to extract the various bits of the message, if required. At work we use the full blown Outlook. Now you would think the two programs use the same message format. Wrong! As usual Microsoft seek to make you jump through all sorts of hoops to get the same capabilities as Outlook Express. My particular problem was that I was being sent some messages with interesting images in them. I wanted to use these images myself so I sought to save them from the message. However, the message had been sent in HTML format and when you save this from Outlook all you get is some HTML code which refers to an image source as a string of hexadecimal digits. Clearly the image is buried in the message somewhere and Outlook could deal with it, but I couldn't.

One day I had a brainwave. I wondered what would happen if I sent the message to myself at home. I did this and found that saving the message from Outlook Express I could see the separate parts of the message, including the image. However, they were sent MIME encoded. The next problem was how to extract the MIME encoded stuff and then convert it to GIF, JPEG, whatever.

Extracting the MIME is easy because you can see the separate parts and you could cut and paste into a text editor to separate them. This is OK with standard text but with a MIME encoded image you still had to remove the coding to recover the original GIF or JPEG. I tried various image converters without success. Then one day I read that Winzip 8 could deal with MIME. I saved the whole message I received with Outlook Express and then opened it with Winzip 8. Eureka! It showed the separate parts of the message and when extracted they were in the original file format. I could retrieve my GIFs or JPEGs by extracting the appropriate file.

The second problem I had concerned installing software. I like to know, if possible, what installing software is going to do to my system. In the days of DOS it did not matter much except to know which files were added. In versions of Windows prior to Windows 9x it was a little more difficult but essentially OK because you could check what changes were made to the system files, system.ini and win.ini, with any text editor. Since Windows 9x we have had the registry to contend with. Changes to this file are not easily discovered and, even when you know what changes are made, it is sometimes very difficult to comprehend what they mean. In addition, most software now comes compressed in single .exe files which are then uncompressed during the installation process. Consequently, the files which control the process cannot be seen.

Here was another case of compressed, and maybe coded, files that I wanted to extract. After the success of solving the e-mail problem I decided to open one of these compressed installation files with Winzip, just to see what happened. In the case I tried it worked. I could see all the files within and extract them. I could now look at the control files and see if any system files were going to be replaced or amended. Unfortunately, each installation process has its own standard of compression and coding. Winzip will not deal with them all. Nevertheless, I had found a new and unexpected use for Winzip.

I have yet to find any freebee program with the functionality of Winzip. It is truly one of the most vital programs to have on your computer.

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