If you are catering to non-technical users, I would hope they wouldn't have to deal with zip files. Compression could be treated more like metadata, rather tha

If you are catering to non-technical users, I would hope they wouldn't have to deal with zip files. Compression could be treated more like metadata, rather than a type of file (i.e. the filesystem transparently compresses them based on usage patterns or preferences). But in general, I think there are two types of files: files needed by a user and files needed by programs. A good solution would make it so that the non-technical user doesn't need to know that the latter kind exists.