

ZIP and RAR support now available in the Google Docs Viewer - packetlss
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/07/zip-and-rar-support-now-available-in.html

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nathanb
The article doesn't really describe how they came to choose those two formats.
What about gzip, bzip2, tar, 7z, etc.?

(I tried uploading a tgz file and it doesn't appear to work).

The comment at the end ("We're always adding more file types to the Google
Docs Viewer") suggests that these types may be considered at some point, but
seems like once the infrastructure is there you get most other compression
formats for free (assuming they're calling a server-side process to do the
extraction rather than either reading the header themselves in javascript or
rolling their own uncompression in their backend language without calling
out).

~~~
FaceKicker
> The article doesn't really describe how they came to choose those two
> formats.

I'd guess it's because they're the most common file compression formats? The
formats you mentioned are pretty obscure to most mainstream users.

~~~
aristidb
.tar.gz is not that uncommon, I would say. And once you have .tar.gz, support
for .tar.bz2 is trivial to add.

~~~
yuhong
>.tar.gz is not that uncommon, I would say.

On Unix, as tar has been built-in to Unix for decades.

~~~
cema
And therefore OSX.

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shaggyfrog
Doesn't mention if it handles nested zips, and if it can visualize files with
jar/war extensions (which are just zip files).

~~~
akat
from the linked post - "ZIP and RAR archives that are embedded inside other
archives also work. For example, if you have a RAR file inside a ZIP file
(like in our example above) you can just click on that file to access the
embedded archive. "

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kbd
7-zip gets no love.

