I've tried 2 and got the same results for both I would try more, but as I said, the savings made are so tiny there's little point, I'm sticking with the most convenient until somebody beats RAR by as much as RAR beats ZIP

I have started using your 7z zip line, and I'm impressed In 4mb I saved ~400k, which is decent

Something that was suggested to me... is 7z should use different algorithms depending on what it is compressing, so it automatically chooses the best options instead of you testing out 5 lines to see which is best for packing what..

Is that a possibility, and would it be included?

@ Garf

Any chances for P4 optimized version of 7-zip?

Note: Garf already made such version but for currently old version of 7-zip.

Hmm... I asked the author about the possibility of customizing the SFX window, but he directed me to the NSIS installer, which I can't for the life of me figure out

I figred, if 7z had a configurable sfx option (where I can specify the extraction window's title / text / default path) then that's all I need to switch from RAR, because I can still distribute things to people...

However, on a little test..

uncompressed:
14 folders = 38.8mb
14 rar sfx's = 13.0mb
14 7z sfx's = 13.3mb

Grrr...

Although, 7z's stripped down sfx of Quake II is 6mb smaller than rar's is.. Things like this are still holding me back

Any additional switches used for 7-zip?

I use this line by default for 7z

It has, AFAIK. It's in manual (cmdline version -> switches -> -sfx ... sfx modules for installers).

You'll need to 'copy /b' sfx module (upx'd setup module 7zs.sfx is about 55k), config text file (with window name, start prompt, deflt path) and archive itself as .exe.

Yeah a couple of other people directed me to that... but you can only merge a .7z, the config.txt and the 7zS.sfx (sfx module for installers).. It extracts to a temporary directory and then runs the installer... meaning you've got to figure out how to use NSIS or whatever, adding another 40kb to your archive.

Afaik the config.txt system doesn't work with the 7z equivalent of a sfx-rar archive..

www.winuha.com WinUHA Home

Version 3.08 beta 2003-08-19
--------------------------------------
- Compress dialog:
- Supporting fast compressing mode (-mx=1 switch)
- Multi-threading option for Multi-Processor systems
or Pentium 4 with Hyper-Threading
- Encypt file names option
- New context menu items:
- Extract here
- Extract to <Folder>
- Compress and email
- Internal reconstruction, registry using was reduced.
- New localization: Esperanto

It can be downloaded from sourceforge:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...?group_id=14481

http://www.klaimsoft.com/winuha/

* WinUHA 2.0 RC1 (2005.02.27)

+Translation Engine
+SFX Support (only for 0.6)
+UHARC 0.6 and 0.4 Support
+Temp Extraction
+Archive Folders Tree
+Extraction Paths History
+New (Self Made) Graphical Objects: Ratio InfoBar, Folders Panel
+Cascade Shell Context Menu
+Custom Command Line
+Many Other Changes and Options
!Shell Menu too large sometimes
!wrong visualization of some characters
!Unable to open Archive if it as "%" in filename
!Windows 9x Shell Icons Bug Fixed
!Other bug fixes

How does that UHA compare to 7z?

Wow, didn't know UHA was at version 0.6 already. I thought development stopped at 0.4.

I've a question. The main advantage of zip was that it can be used on many platforms. In terms of compression there are other superior formats like RAR, ACE etc.

Now, I understand that 7-zip offers a better compression than RAR, but do these 'new' zip formats still have the advantage that pretty much everbody can just unzip them? I doubt it since 7-zip for instance comes as a exe...

I'd be also interested how it comepares to 7-zip

Im pretty sure there is a command line version of 7-Zip you know. But anyway, with a GUI, anyone can extract 7-Zip now even if they dont have 7-Zip itself since WinRar supports it. The people who dont have WinRar or another program that supports as many formats are few and far between these days..

edit: Yea, i was right the CLI is available on the 7-Zip homepage.