Talk:Sending your work to others

It would be nice to know why Audacity uses a file+directory approach rather than, say, archiving all of this into a single file with tar or zip and then naming that file "*.audacity". Other programs do something comparable: ODF word processors make zip archives with directories and files within. Perhaps it would eliminate people accidentally forgetting to send something if everything one needed were wrapped up into one file. Perhaps it is believed that too much storage space would be needed on opening such a project (the .audacity file and the unpacked archive)? Perhaps too much time needed to unpack the archive? Maybe modern systems come with enough storage space and speed to make these concerns moot? I don't know what the thinking was/is, but a page like this would be better to explain this kind of thing. Jbn

Gale: I've added your vote for an option to make a zip of the .aup file and _data folder. I think the developers would take the line that zip utilities are ubiquitous so though convenient to zip a project inside Audacity, it's really just bloat (and your vote is only the second explicit one to have zip functionality).

Note that a zip (.aup and _data folder) of a standard project that depended on imported WAV or AIFF files on the sender's computer would still fail on the recipient's computer, unless those files had been copied in. The new File > "Save Compressed Copy of Project" in the Beta version which uses a single slightly lossy .ogg file per track does mean there is no danger of missing audio. It is though still a dual .aup file and _data folder which has to be zipped.

7-Zip?
Why recommend 7-Zip for zipping on Windows? Isn’t that utility meant more for creating (incompatible) 7z archives than creating ZIP archives? Why not WinZip or gzip? —Frungi 07:40, 12 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Gale: WinZip is very expensive and Gzip appears to be a command-line tool (and doesn't support Windows 7 if its documentation is to be believed). 7Zip of course supports zip.