RAR files. Why?

[BowenM]

This was my solution to odd file types...  not exactly elegant, but it works 🙂

[Hooovahh]

Now where could you have gotten that crazy idea from?  To be fair you could have came up with it on your own independently.  Still this solution isn't cross platform if you care about that kind of thing.

[BowenM]

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@Hooovahh wrote:

Now where could you have gotten that crazy idea from?  To be fair you could have came up with it on your own independently.  Still this solution isn't cross platform if you care about that kind of thing.

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Hah! No, it clearly came from your code.  I don't remember, but I think I stole mine out of someone else's project here - but it is clear that its your source (if you make the string label visible on my snippet it has the same text).  I didn't mean to take credit for your idea... 🙂

It was actually the ideal solution to dealing odd zip types here.  Our IT has a (in my opinion stupid) strict policy on NO OPEN SOURCE PROGRAMS and will regularly scan for them.  I've used your code in 5-10 different projects now

[Hooovahh]

Yeah to be honest a better solution would have been to embedded the DLL in the VI, extract it and then perform Call Library Node in a similar fashion from the temp folder.  But I didn't feel like messing with DLL type calls and looking up the interface type, when I knew the command line calls to make it work.  I've also used this technique on a few SysInternal functions that I haven't found the full Windows API calls for yet.  

Oh and I've actually used this same technique in my LabVIEW Tray Launcher, where I have the ability to abort all VIs in all versions of LabVIEW on the system.  It is able to do this because the Abort All VIs for version 2011 is in the VI as a binary string constant, which is then saved as a temp, and ran in each version using VI server calls.  I did this because several other ways caused the VI to be resaved in a new version of LabVIEW, like when making an EXE for version 2015.  Then it would only abort VIs in version 2015 and newer.

[thoult]

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@altenbach wrote:

There is a Wikipedia page comparing compression programs and wizip is definitely the oldest, I.e. the first GUI to the original PKZIP. Nowadays zip support is built into the OS and available disk space and Internet speeds makes compression almost irrelevant. Downloading is often faster than unzipping. 😮

For a while I was hosting my programs on Google sites with a 20MB file size limit, and at one point they grew slightly larger. I could get the size below the limit by using some fancy 7zip options, but some resulting zip files failed to open using the OS tools.
For full compatibility, I stick to the OS built-in stuff.

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Jeez, that's probably the first time I've thought about PKZIP in 15 or so years!

Most of my reasons for ever using RARs in the past have been covered here - multiple volume spanning was a godsend in the days of relatively small medium capacities. WinRAR had a great tool for splitting based on medium - 74 min CD, 80 min CD, double sided 3.5" disks, HD disks... etc.

Anywho...

I have no problem with open source and/or free software in my corporate environment on a personal level - I use Inkscape regularly, GIMP fairly often, Octave, GIT and TortoiseGIT, TortoiseHg...

I have no problems with the electronic/system engineers here using SketchUp (alas, now licensed) for concept mechanical designs. Hell, I don't even mind some laying out cable drawings in AutoCAD.

However, the minute anything gets serious and must be done properly - production parts, prototypes or process tooling, that's when the serious paid stuff comes in. PCBs must be designed in either Altium or Zuken; mechanics must be in NX. Product firmware and software must be stored in TFS, whether VHDL, C#, embedded C or whatever. Everything must interface to Teamcenter and our ERP system. Otherwise you end up struggling to convert from one package to another with propietary file formats, or even worse, relatively open file formats that get 'interpreted' differently between packages. Yes, I would rather we'd standardised on some other packages in some places, but when you're a company trying to corral several thousand designers across multiple disciplines it's about the only way to stop things grinding to a halt!

On the plus side, maybe I should start laying out proof-of-concept boards in DesignSpark and send them to my principal electronics engineer, who insists that he's able to do the mechanical stuff in SketchUp 🙂

[Yamaeda]

I preferred ARJ to PKZIP. Winzip ofcourse became a favorite when it arrived until they wanted to get payed, which drove me to WinRAR.

Then 7Zip came into my life and I like it. It's small and efficient.

/Y

[Hornless.Rhino]

Be glad they don't use PAQ8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAQ

[Yamaeda]

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@Hornless.Rhino wrote:

Be glad they don't use PAQ8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAQ

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Hah, it'd be fun if they used something like MPQ!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPQ

/Y

[crossrulz]

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@PaulG. wrote:

Or any other non-zip compression utility for that matter ... Once in a great while somebody makes a (expletive here) rar file I have to deal with. I don't care if it's 1 psec faster than zip compressing a 1G image file. I can go 6 months without ever seeing one. It's so rarely used, again I ask: why?

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I just ran into an issue where somebody compressed as a RAR and then saved it as a zip.  Luckily 7zip could handle that...

[Yamaeda]

Oh yes, the unfond memories of people double packing to "save space" ...

/Y