It'd be better if they didn't require knowing the paths a priori. One of the fundamental strengths of ZIP is that the file list is at the end of the archive rat

It'd be better if they didn't require knowing the paths a priori. One of the fundamental strengths of ZIP is that the file list is at the end of the archive rather than the beginning, letting you dynamically discover and send contents in a streaming fashion. Forcing the list of files to be known a priori works against that.