PNGPortable Network Graphics (PNG, officially pronounced pɪŋ , colloquially pronounced ˌpiːɛnˈdʒiː ) is a raster-graphics file that supports lossless data compression. PNG was developed as an improved, non-patented replacement for Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)—unofficially, the initials PNG stood for the recursive acronym "PNG's not GIF". PNG supports palette-based images (with palettes of 24-bit RGB or 32-bit RGBA colors), grayscale images (with or without an alpha channel for transparency), and full-color non-palette-based RGB or RGBA images.
Lossless compressionLossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statistical redundancy. By contrast, lossy compression permits reconstruction only of an approximation of the original data, though usually with greatly improved compression rates (and therefore reduced media sizes).
File formatA file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a . It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats are designed for very particular types of data: PNG files, for example, store bitmapped using lossless data compression. Other file formats, however, are designed for storage of several different types of data: the Ogg format can act as a container for different types of multimedia including any combination of audio and video, with or without text (such as subtitles), and metadata.
ZIP (file format)ZIP is an that supports lossless data compression. A ZIP file may contain one or more files or directories that may have been compressed. The ZIP file format permits a number of compression algorithms, though DEFLATE is the most common. This format was originally created in 1989 and was first implemented in PKWARE, Inc.'s PKZIP utility, as a replacement for the previous compression format by Thom Henderson. The ZIP format was then quickly supported by many software utilities other than PKZIP.
DeflateIn computing, Deflate (stylized as DEFLATE) is a lossless data compression that uses a combination of LZ77 and Huffman coding. It was designed by Phil Katz, for version 2 of his PKZIP archiving tool. Deflate was later specified in RFC 1951 (1996). Katz also designed the original algorithm used to construct Deflate streams. This algorithm was patented as , and assigned to PKWARE, Inc. As stated in the RFC document, an algorithm producing Deflate files was widely thought to be implementable in a manner not covered by patents.
7-Zip7-Zip is a free and open-source , a utility used to place groups of files within compressed containers known as "archives". It is developed by Igor Pavlov and was first released in 1999. 7-Zip has its own archive format called 7z, but can read and write several others. The program can be used from a Windows graphical user interface that also features shell integration, from a Windows command-line interface as the command 7za or 7za.exe, and from POSIX systems as p7zip. Most of the 7-Zip source code is under the LGPL-2.
Zlibzlib ('zi:lIb or "zeta-lib", 'zi:t@,lIb) is a software library used for data compression as well as a data format. zlib was written by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler and is an abstraction of the DEFLATE compression algorithm used in their gzip file compression program. zlib is also a crucial component of many software platforms, including Linux, macOS, and iOS. It has also been used in gaming consoles such as the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Wii U, Wii, Xbox One and Xbox 360. The first public version of Zlib, 0.
Filename extensionA filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the of a (for example, .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically delimited from the rest of the filename with a full stop (period), but in some systems it is separated with spaces. Other extension formats include dashes and/or underscores on early versions of Linux and some versions of IBM AIX.
Comparison of file archiversThe following tables compare general and technical information for a number of s. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. They are neither all-inclusive nor are some entries necessarily up to date. Unless otherwise specified in the footnotes section, comparisons are based on the stable versions—without add-ons, extensions or external programs. Note: Archivers with names cell background highlighted in purple are no longer in development. Basic general information about the archivers.
OpenBSDOpenBSD is a security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. According to the website, the OpenBSD project emphasizes "portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security and integrated cryptography." The OpenBSD project maintains portable versions of many subsystems as packages for other operating systems.