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> That, seriously, 99% of the population will never, ever, accomplish in their entire lifetime. Yes, they do. All the Microsoft Office formats (DOCX, XLSX, etc

> That, seriously, 99% of the population will never, ever, accomplish in their entire lifetime. Yes, they do. All the Microsoft Office formats (DOCX, XLSX, etc.), all the OpenOffice formats, all the iWork formats, ePub, Safari extensions, Chrome extensions, JAR files, and countless other general public-facing formats are exactly that: loose collections of files that contain an index file (or multiple index files) and are combined using zip. People by and large don't seem to have a problem dealing with them: transfers, edits, and other operations are seamless to regular users. > What if PDF only used linked resources, no one would even know what PDF was by now if that were the case. Many PDFs do, in fact, rely on this capability.[1] It's generally transparent to the user. > You could of course do all that with single encapsulated file as well... No, you couldn't. You'd have to transfer the entire file to determine what's changed. That's the the definition and principle benefit of encapsulation: one file gets transferred at once instead of many in piecemeal. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format#Content http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format#Conten...

tjoff 13y ago
"Yes, they do. All the Microsoft Office formats (DOCX, XLSX, etc.), all the OpenOffice formats, all the iWork formats, ePub, Safari extensions, Chrome extensions, JAR files, and countless other general public-facing formats are exactly that: loose collections of files that contain an index file (or multiple index files) and are combined using zip. " In other words, a single encapsulating file... Which was my point? The exact implementation is hardly relevant is it? "No, you couldn't." Of course you can. Just include hashes of the different resources within the file and only the parts of the file that contain changes needs to be downloaded. Or implement something more general along the lines of the rsync algorithm. Taking html as an example you could also do everything transparently on the server if you wanted to. Or do everything transparently on the client instead if you wanted to keep a snapshot of each visit as a single file. But no, I'm not arguing that we should encapsulate all web pages. But on the client side, if the user chose to save a webpage, the result should in most cases be a single encapsulating file. "Many PDFs do, in fact, rely on this capability.[1] It's generally transparent to the user." The keyword was only used linked resources. I think my point was, and is, rather obvious. PDF would never be where it is today if it weren't for its ability to encapsulate resources. EDIT: My point isn't that all files should be encapsulating all the linked content. There must be a point to it. Web pages on a server, hardly beneficial... Image files? Absolutely.

tjoff 13y ago

"Yes, they do. All the Microsoft Office formats (DOCX, XLSX, etc.), all the OpenOffice formats, all the iWork formats, ePub, Safari extensions, Chrome extensions, JAR files, and countless other general public-facing formats are exactly that: loose collections of files that contain an index file (or multiple index files) and are combined using zip. " In other words, a single encapsulating file... Which was my point? The exact implementation is hardly relevant is it? "No, you couldn't." Of course you can. Just include hashes of the different resources within the file and only the parts of the file that contain changes needs to be downloaded. Or implement something more general along the lines of the rsync algorithm. Taking html as an example you could also do everything transparently on the server if you wanted to. Or do everything transparently on the client instead if you wanted to keep a snapshot of each visit as a single file. But no, I'm not arguing that we should encapsulate all web pages. But on the client side, if the user chose to save a webpage, the result should in most cases be a single encapsulating file. "Many PDFs do, in fact, rely on this capability.[1] It's generally transparent to the user." The keyword was only used linked resources. I think my point was, and is, rather obvious. PDF would never be where it is today if it weren't for its ability to encapsulate resources. EDIT: My point isn't that all files should be encapsulating all the linked content. There must be a point to it. Web pages on a server, hardly beneficial... Image files? Absolutely.