3 ms·

I know that at least .docx is a zip of xml also. As far as I know all of the .*x microsoft office formats are

LeoPanthera 8y ago
Apple Numbers/Pages/Keynote documents are also zip files. They're not XML inside, but there is always a PDF preview in there.
- derefr 8y ago
  More technically, those documents (and other Apple-spawned formats such as TextEdit's .rtfd) are "document bundles"—a directory hierarchy with a file extension or xattr that makes Launch Services treat it as a file. (The most well-known document bundles being macOS applications.) The storage frameworks used for accessing the contents of document bundles treat zip archives as transparent, so a document bundle is still a document bundle if you zip its contents and then give it the name of the original directory. And the reverse is also true: take, for example, an .epub (which is a zipped hierarchy of HTML files) and unzip its contents into a new directory. Name that directory "foo.epub". iBooks will happily open this "file." And it stores the .epubs you've imported into your iCloud Library this way on disk!
subculture 8y ago
Came to say something similar. There was a discussion a couple of weeks back on Metafilter about using this technique to modify comments within Word files. Handy knowledge to have: https://ask.metafilter.com/320606/Removing-timestamps-from-comments-in-Word-2016 https://ask.metafilter.com/320606/Removing-timestamps-from-c...
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  At my previous job we were working on a project that had a "propertiary" format that was just an XML file with a different file extension. At some point they asked to GZIP that XML before saving, though. So one day, I'm sitting at customer's office, working on something different, when they come and tell me they have this problem when the application is fed this particular file. I say to one of their devs, show me the file in text editor. They open it, and seeing garbage, say "it's no use". I immediately recognized the ZIP header, so I tell them, unzip it and open the output. Lo and behold, an XML content that let me debug their problem without running the application. Their technical people were impressed by my "wizardy". (Probably one of the reasons why they later asked my colleague to "encrypt" the file by running some binary transformation on the zipped XML before saving it.)
murftown 8y ago
Ableton Live .als files are also gzipped .xml files.

Apple Numbers/Pages/Keynote documents are also zip files. They're not XML inside, but there is always a PDF preview in there.

derefr 8y ago
More technically, those documents (and other Apple-spawned formats such as TextEdit's .rtfd) are "document bundles"—a directory hierarchy with a file extension or xattr that makes Launch Services treat it as a file. (The most well-known document bundles being macOS applications.) The storage frameworks used for accessing the contents of document bundles treat zip archives as transparent, so a document bundle is still a document bundle if you zip its contents and then give it the name of the original directory. And the reverse is also true: take, for example, an .epub (which is a zipped hierarchy of HTML files) and unzip its contents into a new directory. Name that directory "foo.epub". iBooks will happily open this "file." And it stores the .epubs you've imported into your iCloud Library this way on disk!

subculture 8y ago

Came to say something similar. There was a discussion a couple of weeks back on Metafilter about using this technique to modify comments within Word files. Handy knowledge to have: https://ask.metafilter.com/320606/Removing-timestamps-from-comments-in-Word-2016 https://ask.metafilter.com/320606/Removing-timestamps-from-c...

TeMPOraL 8y ago
At my previous job we were working on a project that had a "propertiary" format that was just an XML file with a different file extension. At some point they asked to GZIP that XML before saving, though. So one day, I'm sitting at customer's office, working on something different, when they come and tell me they have this problem when the application is fed this particular file. I say to one of their devs, show me the file in text editor. They open it, and seeing garbage, say "it's no use". I immediately recognized the ZIP header, so I tell them, unzip it and open the output. Lo and behold, an XML content that let me debug their problem without running the application. Their technical people were impressed by my "wizardy". (Probably one of the reasons why they later asked my colleague to "encrypt" the file by running some binary transformation on the zipped XML before saving it.)

murftown 8y ago

Ableton Live .als files are also gzipped .xml files.