Discussion:
Questions on which file types and compression formats you prefer for archiving
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G.K.
2023-01-15 02:41:27 UTC
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What is your preferred file type for:

1. documentation ?
2. raw text data ?
3. message archiving ?
4. lists ?
5. collections of the above, archived, indexed, or otherwise ?
6. large data stores ?
7. brainstorms ?
8. outlines ?
9. snippets ?

What are your preferred compression formats and why?
--
G.K.
Marco Moock
2023-01-15 19:22:46 UTC
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Post by G.K.
1. documentation ?
Text files.
Post by G.K.
2. raw text data ?
Text files.
Post by G.K.
3. message archiving ?
mbox
Post by G.K.
4. lists ?
ods
Post by G.K.
5. collections of the above, archived, indexed, or otherwise ?
tar.gz
Post by G.K.
6. large data stores ?
.tar.gz
Post by G.K.
7. brainstorms ?
Text files
Post by G.K.
8. outlines ?
9. snippets ?
text files

Please notice follow-up to alt.folklore.computers!
Blue-Maned_Hawk
2023-01-16 13:02:53 UTC
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Post by G.K.
1. documentation ?
Manpages or PDFs.
Post by G.K.
2. raw text data ?
I can't figure out what this is asking. Isn't the only type .txt?
Post by G.K.
3. message archiving ?
I guess whatever Thunderbird does? I'm not certain what this means.
Post by G.K.
4. lists ?
A simple newline-split list can work well for a lot of things. But if i
need something more complicated, i'd probably use JSON.
Post by G.K.
5. collections of the above, archived, indexed, or otherwise ?
Directories or folders :P.
Post by G.K.
6. large data stores ?
Usually if i need to do that, i'll put it in a compressed tarball.
Post by G.K.
7. brainstorms ? > 8. outlines ?
9. snippets ?
I don't usually keep these digitally. I usually write them down in a
little notebook i carry.
Post by G.K.
What are your preferred compression formats and why?
​For me, the highest priorities are losslessness and the compression
ratio—i've never run into a situation where the slowness of an algorithm
has outweighed these. Some kinds of files have specially‑designed _de
facto_-standard compression schemes (e.g. PNG for images, FLAC for
audio, etc.), but for general stuff i use .xz because i've heard that it
has the highest compression ratio, which my personal experience has
corroborated.

--
⚗ | /blu.mɛin.dÊ°ak/ | shortens to "Hawk" | he/him/his/himself/Mr.
bluemanedhawk.github.io
Apologies if this message got encoded into octoctal. Blame Thunderbird
for not behaving correctly with Unicode and PGP.

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