Re: Questions on which file types and compression formats you prefer for archiving

On 1/14/23 21:41, G.K. wrote:
> What is your preferred file type for:
> 
> 1. documentation ?

Manpages or PDFs.

> 2. raw text data ?

I can't figure out what this is asking.  Isn't the only type .txt?

> 3. message archiving ?

I guess whatever Thunderbird does?  I'm not certain what this means.

> 4. lists ?

A simple newline-split list can work well for a lot of things.  But if i 
need something more complicated, i'd probably use JSON.

> 5. collections of the above, archived, indexed, or otherwise ?

Directories or folders :P.

> 6. large data stores ?

Usually if i need to do that, i'll put it in a compressed tarball.

> 7. brainstorms ? > 8. outlines ?
> 9. snippets ?

I don't usually keep these digitally.  I usually write them down in a 
little notebook i carry.

> 
> What are your preferred compression formats and why?
> 

​For me, the highest priorities are losslessness and the compression 
ratio—i've never run into a situation where the slowness of an algorithm 
has outweighed these.  Some kinds of files have specially‑designed _de 
facto_-standard compression schemes (e.g. PNG for images, FLAC for 
audio, etc.), but for general stuff i use .xz because i've heard that it 
has the highest compression ratio, which my personal experience has 
corroborated.

-- 
⚗︎ | /blu.mɛin.dʰak/ | shortens to "Hawk" | he/him/his/himself/Mr.
bluemanedhawk.github.io
Apologies if this message got encoded into octoctal.  Blame Thunderbird 
for not behaving correctly with Unicode and PGP.