I would like to add something to Chris' comments:

  The advantage of the PCM and mesh2 formats over a zipped mesh format is
that the formers can be directly read from the file itself.
  In order to read a mesh inside a zip file you would have to first
decompress the zip file. This is even worse than just having the uncompressed
version: You don't only have the uncompressed version of the mesh, but you
also have the zipped version, thus requiring more disk space.
  With the PCM/mesh2 format you don't need any extra disk space since you
can directly read the file into povray (with a macro in the first case
and directly in the second case).

  The advantage of mesh2 over PCM is that reading a mesh2 is a lot faster
(it's even faster than reading a mesh).
  The advantage of the PCM format is that you get extra functionality
(such as those mentioned by Chris).

-- 
char*i="b[7FK@`3NB6>B:b3O6>:B:b3O6><`3:;8:6f733:>::b?7B>:>^B>C73;S1";
main(_,c,m){for(m=32;c=*i++-49;c&m?puts(""):m)for(_=(
c/4)&7;putchar(m),_--?m:(_=(1<<(c&3))-1,(m^=3)&3););}    /*- Warp -*/

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