Why does Firefox lz4 bookmarks and sessions?

[fsckDsk]

The lz4 compression layer for bookmarks and session is additional purpose-less garbage nobody asked for.

It adds additional bulk when trying to recover sessions.

Now, why does it need lz4? Why can Firefox not just store it in plain text to make life easier when recovering the session?

I need help comprehending the purpose of lz4.

[Grumpus]

Maybe this link will help - Export Bookmarks

[therube]

lz4 is faster, they might say.
lz4 is smaller, they might say.

And that said, i don't think they can come up with a rational reason .

[jscher2000]

It adds additional bulk when trying to recover sessions.

"Bulk"?? Compression radically reduces file sizes, so I don't know what you mean.

[morat]

They might say that lz4 files are an implementation detail of how Firefox stores data. It should be considered a black box.

Similar comment on omni.ja with brotli compression
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.c ... 352595#c31

[RobertJ]

The lz4 compression layer for bookmarks and session is additional purpose-less garbage nobody asked for.

It adds additional bulk when trying to recover sessions.

As usual, you have strong opinions but don't know what you are talking about.

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[therube]

"Bulk"??

He's not speaking of size, but speaking in terms of a human being being able to manipulate ones data.

And in that respect, he is very correct.

What works for computer, what a computer can easily manipulate; json & lz4, makes things just that much more difficult for a person to deal with.

Starting with lz4.
To begin with, you need to be able to decompress it.
And as Mozilla uses old methods (before more standardized methods were finalized) to deal with lz4, it makes things even more difficult.
And once you've gotten past that barrier, then json itself isn't very user friendly...


Black boxes, yes.
I mentioned that here, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674824#c2.

[RobertJ]

He's not speaking of size, but speaking in terms of a human being being able to manipulate ones data.

In that case he should build his own browser.

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[jscher2000]

"Bulk"??

He's not speaking of size, but speaking in terms of a human being being able to manipulate ones data.

Yes, I found it quite difficult to sort out exactly how to read out the JSON. But what I learned is open sourced here:

https://github.com/jscher2000/scrounger

and live for use here:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html

[Benjamin Markson]

The naughty part are the mozlz4 files which are an unnecessary, non-standard, hack of lz4 - beyond some messing about with the header it is the same as a regular lz4 compressed file. Security by obscurity won't stop the bad guys but it will inconvenience everybody else.

MozLz4a compression/decompression utility

...additional bulk indeed.

To quickly view and navigate a json file I would suggest this: Online SON Viewer

Ben.

[RobertJ]

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The OP was not looking for support; just wanted to rant.

Locking

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