Why does Firefox compress bookmarks&sessions using lz4?| pt2

[fsckDsk]

Please excuse me for resuming the discussion, but the previous thread was closed without me having a chance to reply.

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

Yes, I was looking for support.
See:

I need help comprehending the purpose of lz4.

And my “rants” are relevant critics.

I needed help decyphering these lz4 files.

Previous thread with original posts: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=3041324.

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

Faster? No, nothing is faster than plain text.
Smaller? Maybe a few dozens of kilobytes. Certainly less than a fraction of 1 digital photo.

Compression radically reduces file sizes,

Compressed: 10KB.
Uncompressed: 100KB.
Relatively a large compression (10×), but 90KB in absolute numbers is really no big deal. For comparison: One second of 1080p video footage can be 2000 KB.

lz4 files are an implementation detail of how Firefox stores data.

But is it really necessary?
Maybe for web cache, but should it not be kept optional for bookmarks and sessionstore that amass only a few KB's of disk space?

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

I am talking about lz4.
Please clarify to me, what I allegedly do not know.

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.

Thanks, mate.
That's precisely what I meant.

I wanted to recover a dead session, but then I hit the walls of lz4 when trying to open it using a plain text editor.

In that case he should build his own browser.

Do you mean recreating a browser from scratch due to one feature?

Maybe this link will help - Export Bookmarks

Can it read lz4 files of orphaned browsing sessions?

[the-edmeister]

This isn't forum isn't part of Mozilla, it is an independent user to user forum. No one here can tell you "why" Mozilla does what it does.

User convenience for reading the internal data files isn't important to Mozilla for most of the internal files; user opinion about how user data isn't important to the developers, either.

Bookmark Backup Reader/Decompressor for Firefox
Drag and drop one .jsonlz4 (or .json) bookmark backup file onto the empty text box.
https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/bookbackreader.html

And for history .jsonlz4 or .json files
Session History Scrounger for Firefox
https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html

The 2nd one was posted here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... #p14807686

[therube]

(I wasn't justifying its usage, only stating likely [Mozilla] responses, if they were to respond [which they would never do].
And yes, they likely do have "telemetry", & even tests, that shows that lz4 is faster - perhaps even faster then reading "text" - as counter-intuitive as it might seem.
[Actually, there are tests that may very well legitimize usage. But in this use case, whatever "gains" there may be, compared to a user being able to relatively easily manipulate their data, well... Technology for technologies sake. Lets build a box - because we can.
Somewhere I read some interesting stuff on it. Maybe it was here, LZ4?]

And to note, Mozilla .jar files, like omni.jar, yet another not quite "standard" .jar [.zip] that Mozilla uses. If anything one might think they'd use, oh, they can't can they. lz4 is file, & zip is archive, compression. [Well zip could be file too.])

[Grumpus]

Speed isn't always the issue with using any kind of compression it could be relative to stability, cross platform, data loss or diminishing use globally of other methods.
With open source there always has to be someone who does the work, design and implementation. If a method is no longer supported it may cause issues with further advances or changes in systems and softwares.
The link lists a method(s) to bypass the json form of bookmarks if LZ4 is your real issue.

[therube]

reddit: How to Restore a Browsing Session from Backup

[RobertJ]

This isn't forum isn't part of Mozilla, it is an independent user to user forum. No one here can tell you "why" Mozilla does what it does.

User convenience for reading the internal data files isn't important to Mozilla for most of the internal files; user opinion about how user data isn't important to the developers, either.

Again this is a support forum not a place to explain the design decisions of Mozilla. And as before I'm locking this thread.

.