Dragon Dungeon Little Nitpick. :)

[Scribble]

Hey Wizards... If you're listening, can you do me a favor?

When it comes time to put the magazine together in one large PDF available for download... Could you just put the PDF up on the site and not put it in a zip file?

I know it's just a little thing based on my own laziness... I don't like unzipping it then pulling it out (ok that sounds dirty...) in order to look at it.

Please? Pretty please?

 

[wgreen]

I agree, but only because PDFs don't compress much, so there's very little point in zipping them anyway.

-Will

 

[GreatLemur]

I agree, but only because PDFs don't compress much, so there's very little point in zipping them anyway.

Exactly. PDFs use loads of compression (often zip comression, even) in the first place, so there's really no point in zipping them. Worse, I seem to recall that a lot of the zip files hosted on wizards.com are actually larger than the PDFs they contain.

 

[blargney the second]

I agree. It's an unnecessary and avoidable step.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

100% agreement. This would be very nice.

 

[Jhaelen]

I disagree. Zipping them doesn't change the file size noticeably and because of the checksum check you know immediately if the download was fine or not. _Everything_ that is available for download should be zipped.

 

[mhensley]

_Everything_ that is available for download should be zipped.

Wrong. It's much easier to open a pdf in your browser than it is to download it, unzip it, and then open it in acrobat.

 

[Lackhand]

screw that, it makes more sense for them, too: I imagine they'll want to do some sort of watermarking to trap those who'd otherwise be saying "Arhar, me mateys" a lot...
... and it's a lot easier to do that to a pdf and just stream that across, than it is to do it to a pdf, zip it, and stream that across.

Seriously.

 

[blargney the second]

I disagree. Zipping them doesn't change the file size noticeably and because of the checksum check you know immediately if the download was fine or not. _Everything_ that is available for download should be zipped.

I disagree with your disagreement.

Mostly. I totally agree that zipping is useful IFF there are multiple files being bundled together.
-blarg

 

[Yalius]

Oh, aside from the corporate firewalls that block .pdfs? Or the difficulty in getting a browser to properly display the .pdf if you happen to have both Acrobat installed, instead of Acrobat Reader? Or the download managers that sometimes choke over .pdfs? I'd rather have them zipped, myself.