[TC 11.50b1 x64] internal 7zip for iso files

[tdklaus]

bug or just a question?

I previously used the Total7zip plugin and also had it assigned to open/view ISO and IMG optical disk images.
Does the internal 7zip provide the same function? Not out of the box, it seems.

[lelik007]

Not out of the box, it seems.

Yes, it's because as I can tell by the size 7za.dll is used - It only supports 7-zip format, for all the formats 7-zip can work with 7z.dll is used.

[ghisler(Author)]

I'm only supporting the 7zip so far. If you need other file types, use Total7zip. It should still work fine with 11.50.

[tdklaus]

thanks for the explanation and, indeed, the plugin still works fine.
putting internal read/unpack support for all the other formats 7zip supports on the wishlist for the future

[ghisler(Author)]

Did you find any supported types which
1. aren't already handled by Total Commander itself, like ZIP or RAR
and
2. are interesting for a wider audience, like ISO?

Moderator message

Moved to suggestions

[Gral]

All kind of disk images - IMG (FAT, NTFS, MBR, GPT) and virtual disks - VHD, VHDX. Also WIM (SWM, ESD).

[petermad]

I have set my Total7zip plugin up to handle:
jar
xpi
wim
flv
iso
zip
tar
gzip
bzip2
arj
rar
cab

[MaxX]

2. are interesting for a wider audience, like ISO?

Yes, yes, yes. It is very interesing to get full support of any 7z.dll compatible reading formats.
Disk images, Windows wim/esd files, archives...
Just full feaures the dll can do.
Here's screenshot of 7zip gui of file types selection to open: https://0x0.st/XIab.png
As you see, if you use main 7z.dll, you can forget about lot's of another unpacker dlls in TC's folder. In another hand, that makes you to dependent on it. But we can say the same for all those dlls too. So still no problem here should be.
But now... I see really a lot of sense to use normal 7z.dll for all purposes we can instead of other dlls, especially for zstd. Just because 7zip can read zstd on XP, but original binaries from developer can't do that.
Need further discussion of that...

[lelik007]

2ghisler(Author)
Christian I'd like to support Maxx - it's a good idea to go with 7z.dll (not with 7za.dll) from the very beginning. More users will come for more formats especially after 11.50 release, I'm sure (not every user is a beta tester). Maybe there's a special topic should be created to collect their queries?

2MaxX

especially for zstd

It not this obvious. For ZSTD TC uses the official Yann Collet's (and Facebook team) code based on libzstd.dll
While 7-zip uses Igor's compatible implementation based on the format.
https://sourceforge.net/p/sevenzip/discussion/45797/thread/de1d20a156/

7-Zip doesn't use original Zstandard (ZSTD) code from
https://github.com/facebook/zstd
7-Zip's code does similar things, but it's another implementation of ZSTD decoder. So 7-Zip can have another bugs in code and another performance.

We beta tested his implementation best we could then Igor himself found some bugs and fixed it. Igor's method is stable but relatively new. There's no "ZSTD in 7z" support yet because Igor wanted his implementation absolutely stable, this is why I wrote this:
https://sourceforge.net/p/sevenzip/discussion/45797/thread/f162d68dcd/#971c

I mean it's not a bad idea after all for this reason but there are maybe some bugs we're not aware of:

Just because 7zip can read zstd on XP, but original binaries from developer can't do that.

[MaxX]

2lelik007
Ah, well, may be yes, may be no. Any of these zstd DLLs won't work on W98 at all - 7zip, tczstd, etc...
So we also have to consider this for compatibility reasons.

[lelik007]

2MaxX
I've never heard of W98 compatible implementation of ZSTD, I don't have any experience of supporting or modernizing the old systems it's just one pal of mine has 2-3 XP SP3 PCs in his park that's why I know zstd.exe 32 bit doesn't work there. 7-zip does.

[MaxX]

2lelik007
AFAIK, such zstd binaries do not exist at all. And never will.
The last 7zip version for W98 is really old 9.20 (almost 15 years old release) and does not know anything about zstd (did it exist then?).

[lelik007]

2MaxX

did it exist then?

It didn't because one of the core methods: ANS that ZSTD uses back then was only in the head of its creator - professor Jarosław (Jarek) Duda.
This is a relatively new method and for example Winrar and 7-zip don't use it in their own algos yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_numeral_systems
And TBH the devs of ZStandard don't really care how it works on any Windows because their primary care is how it works inside their infrastructure that is Linux based.