Could you allow attachments of documents and spreadsheets?

[a1call]

Originally Posted by paulunderwood

What about viruses and macros?

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

We just added support for .doc files.

If we can find suitable (16×16) icons for the others we will add those.

Some macro viruses are annoying but not harmful; others can be very destructive. Also, Word macro viruses can spread across platforms; for example, the macro virus can infect files on the Windows platform as well as on the Macintosh platform.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...3-26f115d7290a


Sound like an unnecessary liability to me.
A disclaimer at the minimum seems like a must.

ETA FTR, I am not likely to knowingly download any documents posted by random users anytime soon even utilising sandboxes and antivirus. If they can't protect banks and credit agencies, my defenses don't stand much of a chance either.

[Xyzzy]

Originally Posted by kriesel

Could the zip file formats' max size be doubled?

The forum currently uses half of its allocated storage. Moving beyond that requires a total system change. We haven't done the change because we don't know what will break and also because we are lazy.

So we are letting things ride as they are while hoping that the day to change over never arrives. Keeping file attachments "small" helps.

[masser]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

The forum currently uses half of its allocated storage. Moving beyond that requires a total system change. We haven't done the change because we don't know what will break and also because we are lazy.

So we are letting things ride as they are while hoping that the day to change over never arrives. Keeping file attachments "small" helps.

Would it be possible to reduce the forum's current usage by removing old attachments of little-to-no worth?

Can you see a list of the largest files in storage?

[M344587487]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

The forum currently uses half of its allocated storage. Moving beyond that requires a total system change. We haven't done the change because we don't know what will break and also because we are lazy.

So we are letting things ride as they are while hoping that the day to change over never arrives. Keeping file attachments "small" helps.

How hard would it be to re-compress all zip into .tar.xz (or LZMA/2 .7z if you must)? Zip is archaic, it doesn't matter that it can support more modern algorithms if DEFLATE is still mostly what's used for compatibility. I'm all for annoying windows users that can't be bothered to install a proper archiver (if I was the compression czar I'd rule with a well-compressed iron fist).

While we're talking formats, JpegXL (.jxl) should become the new standard image format for lossless and lossy images (by merit, standardisation and common sense, so I give it a 50% chance). It can losslessly recompress lossy jpegs with a significant size saving, and is far better than png at compressing lossless images. I encourage compression nerds to try it out even though it's going to be many years before it's commonplace in the wild.

[Xyzzy]

The forum has 20GB allocated to it and it is using ~10GB.

Every year disk space costs less.

We figure by the time we get close to using it up, they might roll the system into a new instance with a bigger drive.

Or we'll face the system jump, which could be entirely painless.

All of the easy disk space optimizations have been done.

The forum mersenne.org download mirror uses 3.7GB so as we close in on the limit we can buy some breathing room by deleting that.

Deleting old attachments is possible but we prefer not to do it. (Just like old posts!)

We can see the biggest attachments. (We are guilty of having most of the large ones!)

In short: The forum is doing okay, but we see no need to introduce larger attachments. However, we will consider it and if you have something big to post just send it to us and we'll attach it manually. Maybe it will turn out that 8MB zip files are needed.

[drkirkby]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

We have added .odp, .ods, .odt, .ppt and .xls to the list.

We think we have the mime types input correctly.

Please check to see if they work.

In order to check if they work, here are 3 LibreOffice attachments. The checksums are in the filenames. Looking at LibreOffice, it has a "Math" tool, which saves files with the extension .odf, which is probably worth supporting, given the nature of the forum. An icon is here
https://github.com/LibreOffice/core/.../apps/math.svg

There's also a drawing tool, which saves in .odg format too.

EDIT. I downloaded the 3 files, and they opened fine in LibreOffice - there was no need to select the application, as the application was suggested. They opened in "read-only" mode. I also saved the files and compared their md5 checksums, to those of the files I uploaded. The checksums agree.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

We have added .odp, .ods, .odt, .ppt and .xls to the list.

We think we have the mime types input correctly.

Please check to see if they work.

With all due respect, I think this is a bad idea.

Let someone else carry the can for hosting malware-infected files.

Spreadsheets can be exported as TSV or CSV files. PDF works well for most everything else.

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

We can see the biggest attachments. (We are guilty of having most of the large ones!)

In short: The forum is doing okay, but we see no need to introduce larger attachments. However, we will consider it and if you have something big to post just send it to us and we'll attach it manually. Maybe it will turn out that 8MB zip files are needed.

Initial reason I asked about larger attachments is #8 of https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpo...0&postcount=26. I have exhausted most but not quite all possibilities, but have not yet achieved compilation small enough that will fit in a 4MB compressed archive. Then got distracted by other things.
See also https://mersenneforum.org/showpost.p...2&postcount=24, in which the trailing "soon" should now be read as "some month or year". https://mersenneforum.org/showpost.p...7&postcount=30 says the compiled and compressed were running around 8MB.

My custom program for log analysis, error alerting, results gathering, and other features yet to be added for multiple instances of multiple common GPU applications is >3.4MB compressed, and growing.

Re: largest total accumulated size of attachments: Whoo-hoo, made the top 5 without even trying!
If/when total space gets tight, I'd gladly advise on which Gpuowl Windows builds could be dropped first.

Originally Posted by xilman

Let someone else carry the can for hosting malware-infected files.
Spreadsheets can be exported as TSV or CSV files. PDF works well for most everything else.

I'm not fond of making malware spread easier either. But note that spreadsheets with graphs or font formatting don't export fully in TSV or CSV. I use PDF for them. Storage efficiency is sometimes poor in PDF. As an example, a 55 KB .odt produces a 267 KB pdf, nearly 5x as large.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by xilman

With all due respect, I think this is a bad idea.

Security vs. Convenience is an ongoing balance. No one is ever happy. And most are not nearly paranoid "enough".

Originally Posted by xilman

Spreadsheets can be exported as TSV or CSV files.

Doesn't easily retain equations for cells. This can both be a good thing (no attack vectors) and bad (no "rich content").

Originally Posted by xilman

PDF works well for most everything else.

PDFs can contain code that can in some cases be considered an attack vector.

Are we there yet?

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Doesn't easily retain equations for cells. This can both be a good thing (no attack vectors) and bad (no "rich content").

"This is cell A1","25","100"
"The total is","=SUM(B1:C1)"

The user can choose to go to cell B2 and hit enter. Boom, we have a formula. Complex formulas can mess with that (but then again placing your literal values in cells and referencing them can fix many of those problems). Fixed width or using an alternate separator can help.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Doesn't easily retain equations for cells. This can both be a good thing (no attack vectors) and bad (no "rich content").

Works for me.

I created three columns of ten rows. Col A has numbers 1..10 and Col B 4..40 by 4. Col C is the sum of Col A and Col B.

Saves just fine in CSV format and reads back in with precisely the expected behaviour.

Here is the spreadsheet in question:

1,4,"=SUM(A1:B1)"
2,8,"=SUM(A2:B2)"
3,12,"=SUM(A3:B3)"
4,16,"=SUM(A4:B4)"
5,20,"=SUM(A5:B5)"
6,24,"=SUM(A6:B6)"
7,28,"=SUM(A7:B7)"
8,32,"=SUM(A8:B8)"
9,36,"=SUM(A9:B9)"
10,40,"=SUM(A10:B10)"

Please give it a try by cutting and pasting everything within the QUOTE tags as test.csv and loading that file into the spreadsheet program of your choice. Alternatively, open the attachment. Each should give the same result.