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FILE COMPRESSION AND
ARCHIVING SOFTWARE

Brian Grainger

brianATgrainger1.freeserve.co.uk

Ever since the early days of PC computing there has been an essential tool that all users must have. That is the file compression/archiving tool. This is a tool that you may not use everyday but, when you need it, is essential. This article compares various tools out there and on the basis of my tests I come up with my 'best of breed' recommendations.

It all started long ago in the days of DOS - before Windows and the Internet. The only portable medium for files was the floppy disk and this could only contain 1.4MB. In order to transfer large files between PCs it was necessary to compress the files to manageable sizes. If there was more than one file then the capability to combine files into an archive library of one file, that was then compressed, was also useful.

Various types of compression formats arose - some proprietary - but the overwhelming winner in the MSDOS world was the ZIP format. I cannot remember what alternative software was around at the time. I do know that I used a product called PKZip that was shareware software. A quick check back in my archive software shows that I went to version 2.04g. I remember stopping there because a version 2.04h that appeared was not actually PKZip but a piece of malware.

When Windows came along PKZip, like many champions within the DOS environment, seemed to lose out to a new product. The ubiquitous file zipper became WinZip. This was also shareware but was also time limited in the trial phase so was not really easy to use in a free (as in no cost) environment. Nevertheless, one must have an unzipper tool. Now the Internet is here much software is available but it has to be unzipped. Sending attachments via e-mail requires files to be zipped up, (to reduce size and sometimes to avoid rejection by anti-virus filters).

When I was looking round to decide on a product to use I thought about the old DOS days and went looking for the latest PKZip product. Yes, they had a product for Windows and there was a free version. The company PKWare produced PKReader that allowed you to unzip compressed libraries. To create compressed ZIP libraries one had to purchase their full product. I have used PKReader until very recently. I had Winzip at work to cope with situations where PKReader was of no use.

As time went on I got more frustrated with the lack of a complete product and I found I had to cope with other archive formats. My foray into the Linux world meant that tar.gz was the ubiquitous archiver/compressor format. Within Linux there were programs to cope but when on the Windows side I was stuck. I also received photos by e-mail in the RAR format. I started looking for a fully functional program that met my preferred criteria. It must do the job. It must be easy to use. It must be FAB, (free, as in no cost; acceptably behaved, as in doesn't mess the Windows set up). Ideally it should be Free, as in freedom, or open source. Where to start looking?

In the past when 'The Daily Telegraph' had a weekly computing section they used to periodically suggest 'best of breed' software tools. One that was mentioned along with Winzip was Tugzip, a free program. I googled for Tugzip and had a look at the site for Tugzip and its forum. It seemed that Tugzip, while adequate, had not been updated for quite some time and the developer seemed to have other priorities. In the forum there were mentions of a product called IZArc. This was proprietary software but came at no cost and allowed you to use and distribute pretty much as you like. I googled for IZarc and found a portable version, IZArc2Go, which did not have to be installed and would not mess with the Windows set up. I gave it a go.

In the meantime, I did some more googling on file archivers in general and came across a link to a comparison of products on Wikipedia. Bearing in mind the usual caveats with Wikipedia, that just because it is written does not mean in it is true, the information looked very useful. I reproduce here an edited copy of the information from Wikipedia. I have only included information about the products already mentioned and all the open source products (LGPL) that Wikipedia flagged.

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of file archivers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up-to-date. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs.

Basic general information about the archivers: license/price

The operating systems the archivers can run on.

1. There is a special 64-bit version for Windows x64 Edition also available.
2. The Unix-like system port is known as p7zip. p7zip also is provided by FreeDOS.

Information about what common archiver features are implemented natively (without third-party add-ons).

1. Extracting/adding file and/or directory names into archive in either UTF-7, UTF-8 or UTF-16/UCS-2 encoding to support single file/directory name which contains characters from different languages. Currently, only supported by 7z (7-Zip) archives.

Information about what archive formats the archivers can read. External links lead to information about support in future versions of the archiver or extensions that provide such functionality.

1. Used to, but no longer does, due to technical and legal issues.
2. Starting from version 11.
3. Requires external program.
4. Decompression of ZIP archives can fail with 7-Zip, depending on which archiver was used for the ZIP.

Information about what archive formats the archivers can write and create. External links lead to information about support in future versions of the archiver or extensions that provide such functionality.

1. Requires rar.exe from WinRAR.
2. Requires external program.

Some archivers support file extraction from .msi and .iso formats as well. These include IZArc, and 7-zip.

PeaZip has full support for LPAQ and some PAQ formats (PAQ8F/JD/L/O), and for its native PEA format.

It would seem from the Wikipedia information that IZArc was the best of the proprietary products. Of the LGPL products, PeaZip and 7-Zip, the latter seemed to be the winner. I also found that 7-Zip was available in a portable version from Portable Apps, (which I have mentioned before). Along with IZArc2Go I installed 7-Zip Portable and PeaZip Portable.

PeaZip is a little off beat when you start. It asks whether you want to create an archive or extract an archive. If you extract an archive you have to select a file. Once the file is selected you have a standard menu interface which allows you to create or open archives. I find the front end a bit superfluous and confusing. It would be better to go straight into the Windows interface. I found the PeaZip interface the least useful of the three. There was no capability to modify the views apart from toggling browse/flat view. The former shows things a folder at a time. The latter, like the Winzip format, shows everything at once with the path of each file identified. PeaZip does the job but did not inspire me like the other two programs. It also does not have an offline help file.

Benefits of PeaZip occur in some unique functionality. The developer must be a Puppy Linux fan because it includes the latest library formats for Puppy Linux! It also has a means of securely deleting files. Why this is in a file archiver program I am not sure but it is there nevertheless.

7-Zip is a big improvement on PeaZip from the interface point of view. Very customisable, it also allows a two pane view like the Windows File Manager of old. Because it has a lot of functionality it can appear quite complex. There is an offline help file to provide guidance. However, I have still not worked out how to create self extracting archives, which it should do for the 7-zip format!

One of the cute features of 7-Zip is that it opens up from where you left off last time. It must keep a record, but not in the registry. There are registry files in the 7-Zip directory so I think it uses these to perform its magic, but it doesn't install them in the registry. I guess it would in the non-portable version.

Despite the better functionality of 7-Zip it had a footprint of 2MB, compared to the nearly 4MB of PeaZip. This can be quite important with portable software.

Finally, came the test of IZArc2Go. Quite simply it blew the other two out of the water. It looked good and it was very easy to use. This had a footprint of just over 7.5MB but nearly 2MB was devoted to various language files of which you could delete all but the one you use. Similarly there was nearly 1MB of skin files, where you could also delete all but one if you were tight for space. You can see that the look of IZArc is very important to the developer.

On opening IZArc you have a blank screen with the normal menus and toolbars. There is an Open button to open an archive and when you do that you may have a pleasant surprise. The default look uses an Explorer Display Style with folder bar on the left and files within the selected folder on the right. It is possible to select Classic Display style which is the same flat file look as WinZip. Pretty much everything is configurable from the Display Style, the toolbar buttons, the columns displayed, as well as the skin and language used. The choice of languages is the best I have seen outside of Google. It doesn't include Klingon but there are, for example, 3 varieties of Spanish along with Catalan.

The help file included explains the basics and then has sections on every menu item. Some advanced topics such as drag and drop and setting up file associations and using the optional command line interface are also covered.

The File and Actions menu includes the basic functionality of opening and extracting existing archives, as well as creating new archives and adding files to them. Self extracting (SFX) archives can be made, not only for ZIP archives but a number of formats including 7-Zip and Jar.

Within the Actions menu you will find some functionality you might not expect. You can virus scan an archive with your chosen scanner. This extracts the files temporarily, scans them and then deletes them. There is the capability to add a comment to a ZIP archive that is displayed when the ZIP archive is extracted.

Sometimes you want to extract one of the files from an archive and run it before deciding whether to extract the full archive. The Check Out Action allows you to do this within IZArc.

If a file archive contains a setup or install program the Install Action of IZArc allows you to install the software directly from the archive.

The Tools menu of IZArc provides yet more functionality. There are tools to:

• Convert a file archive from one format to another
• Convert a CD image from a proprietary format to an .iso format
• UU/XX/Mime encode an archive (useful for e-mail)
• Encrypt and decrypt files with 256 bit encryption
• Repair corrupted archives
• Create and merge volume sets, for when you want to split an archive over several smaller pieces such as e-mails or floppy disks.
• File search within archives and open
• Convert a self extracting archive to the original standard archive format.

I think you can see that IZArc has a wide range of functionality, although I have not been able to open .msi archives as suggested by Wikipedia. Perhaps this is a function of the installed version, rather than the portable version.

As far as I am concerned IZArc2Go is the clear winner. It has great functionality and, although it is closed source software, it does not place any restrictions on usage or distribution provided you do not modify the package at all.

If you need a smaller footprint, are concerned by IZarc being closed source or need a package for Linux or the Amiga then 7-Zip is my suggestion.

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