krusader/doc/en/archives.docbook

<sect1 id="archives">
  <title>Archive Handling</title>
  <indexterm>
    <primary>Archives</primary>
  </indexterm>
  <sect2 id="browsing-archives">
    <title>Browsing Archives</title>
    <para>The &vfs-lnk; allows you to browse archives as
    if it was a directory. Currently &krusader; supports
    the following archives types: ace, arj, bzip2, deb, gzip, iso,
    lha, rar, rpm, tar, zip and 7-zip and supports the following
    passworded archives: arj, ace, rar and zip. Passwords can be
    stored in &kwallet;. Please note that the archive
    support first needs to be properly 
    <link linkend="konfig-archives">configured</link> in
    Konfigurator. To open the archive, use &Enter;,
    (double-)click or the 
    <keycap>Right Arrow</keycap>. &krusader; supports
    also 
    <emphasis role="bold">hidden archives</emphasis>, these are
    renamed archives with a *wrong* extension, &eg;
    &openoffice; uses zip archives with the following
    extensions: odt, sxw and odw. &Enter; will open the
    &openoffice; document and the 
    <keycap>Right Arrow</keycap> will open the archive. Another
    example is J2EE, where the rar extension means a zip archive.
    Since &krusader; auto-detects the supported archive
    types, it will open with 
    <keycap>Right Arrow</keycap> even if it has another mime type.
    Please note that browsing archives has a few limitations: 
    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>Not all functions are supported by all archive types.
        (&ie;: you can not delete files in ace or rar
        archives)</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>The permissions you have inside the archive are the
        same as the permissions you have for the archive.</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>The command line (if visible) will not follow you
        inside the archive but will point to the archive
        directory.</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>Before any action is performed on files/directories
        inside the archive, they must be extracted. The archive
        will be repacked when you leave it or when
        &krusader; detects that extracted files have
        changed.</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>Packing and un-packing are "blocking operations" that
        display a progress dialog. However, this might change in
        the future since we are planning to create more background
        operations.</para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist></para>
  </sect2>
  <sect2 id="unpacking-archives">
    <title>Unpack Files</title>
    <para>There are 2 ways to extract files from archives:</para>
    <para>If you want to unpack a whole archive(s), browse to the
    archive location, select the archive(s) and select 
    <emphasis role="bold">
      <menuchoice>
        <guimenu>File</guimenu>
        <guimenuitem>Unpack</guimenuitem>
      </menuchoice>
    </emphasis>or 
    <keycombo action="simul">&Alt;
    <keycap>U</keycap></keycombo>. &krusader; will ask
    you where to put the extracted files. The default location is
    the inactive panel directory. If you don't cancel the
    operation, &krusader; will try to unpack all the
    selected files in the inactive panel.</para>
    <para>If you only want to extract a part of the archive, then 
    <link linkend="browsing-archives">browse</link> the archive and
    copy the files you want to extract to their new location just
    as you would copy "normal" files. Note that unpacking from a
    browsed archive takes more time (file by file unpack) compared
    to unpacking a whole archive with the first method.</para>
  </sect2>
  <sect2 id="pack-archive">
    <title>Packing Files</title>
    <para>If you want to create a new archive, begin by selecting
    the elements you want to pack in the active panel and select 
    <emphasis role="bold">
      <menuchoice>
        <guimenu>File</guimenu>
        <guimenuitem>Pack</guimenuitem>
      </menuchoice>
    </emphasis> or 
    <keycombo action="simul">&Alt;
    <keycap>P</keycap></keycombo>. A dialog will pop-up prompting
    you to select the archive name and location. Select the packer
    from one of the 
    <link linkend="konfig-archives">supported file name
    extensions</link>.</para>
    <para>To add files to an existing archive(s), open the archive
    in one panel and the files to be copied in the other panel,
    then simply copy the files into the archive in exactly the same
    way you copy files into a "normal" directory.</para>
  </sect2>
  <sect2 id="test-archive">
    <title>Testing Archives</title>
    <para>Krusader will not handle corrupted archives since it may
    result in data loss. If you receive an error message when
    opening an archive, or if you suspect that there is something
    wrong with the archive, you should test it before use. To test
    an archive, browse (navigate) to the archive location and
    select the archive. Next select 
    <emphasis role="bold">
      <menuchoice>
        <guimenu>File</guimenu>
        <guimenuitem>Test Archive</guimenuitem>
      </menuchoice>
    </emphasis> or 
    <keycombo action="simul">&Alt;
    <keycap>E</keycap></keycombo>. &krusader; will test
    the archive file and inform you whether the archive passed or
    failed the file integrity test.</para>
  </sect2>
</sect1>