PKWare Extends ZIP standard

Your web site says:

    Info-ZIP's purpose is to provide free, portable, high-quality
    versions of the Zip and UnZip compressor-archiver utilities that are
    compatible with the DOS-based PKZIP by PKWARE, Inc. 

But will the Info-ZIP team consider supporting the changes PKWare is making in the 
ZIP file format and features (e.g. 64-bit support, new encryption methods, etc.)? see 
below.

If not, will Info-ZIP software be updated (if not already) to gracefully decline to work 
on ZIP archives in the new format?

Thanks for your patience. :-)

http://pkware.com/news_events/press_releases/2003/060203-appnote.html

    Earlier this year, PKWARE introduced robust strong-encryption
    capabilities utilizing the RC2, RC4, DES, 3DES and AES encryption
    algorithms, including support for both password and
    certificate-based (public key) encryption. 
...[snip]...

    The specification, published as Application Note 5.2, also details
    the internal flags required to support BZIP2 compression, the record
    layouts for the MVS and AS400 operating systems, and defines a new
    storage location reserved for pending Unicode file name support. The
    specification also includes new mappings for compatible third-party
    extensions to the ZIP format, including the specific file attribute
    storage used by the ZipIt program. 

More information about PKWARE's ZIP File Format Specification can be found at 
http://www.pkzip.com/products/enterprise/white_papers/appnote.html

-- 
John Potelle