# The &ark; Handbook

&Matt.Johnston; &Matt.Johnston.mail;
2000
Matt Johnston
2004
Henrique Pinto
&FDLNotice;
2004-06-19
2.3.1

&ark; is an archive manager for &kde;.

KDE
gzip
gunzip
tar
archive
zip
compression
lha
kdeutils
ark

## Introduction

&ark; is a program for managing various archive formats within the &kde; environment. Archives can be viewed, extracted, created and modified from within &ark;. The program can handle various formats such as `tar`, `gzip`, `bzip2`, `zip`, `rar` and `lha` (if appropriate command-line programs are installed). &ark; can work closely with &konqueror; in the &kde; environment to handle archives, if you install the &konqueror; Integration plugin available in the kdeaddons package.

## Using &ark;

### Opening Archives

To open an archive in &ark;, choose Open from the File menu. You can also open archive files by dragging and dropping from &konqueror;. Archive files should be associated with &ark;, so you can also right click a file in &konqueror; and select &ark; to open it.

### Working with Files

Once an archive has been opened, you can perform various operations on the files inside the archive. By right clicking on a file within the archive, or selecting a file and using the Action menu, you can choose what you want to do:

- View will open the file in the integrated viewer, or in the default viewer program in case the integrated viewer cannot view the file, or you have disabled it in the Configuration Window.

- Open With... allows you to open the file in a program you choose.

- Edit With... will open the file a program you choose. The difference between this and Open With... is that any changes you make will be saved to the file in the archive.

- Delete will remove the currently selected file(s) from the archive.

### Extracting Archives

Once an archive has been opened in &ark;, it can be extracted. To extract files from an archive, you can either select Extract... from the Action menu or right click on the file. The Extract dialog allows you to select where you will extract files to. You can also select which files to extract:

- Current extracts the most recently selected file. If multiple files are selected, only the most recently selected one will be extracted.

- All extracts the entire contents of the archive.

- Selected Files extracts all the files which have been selected.

- Pattern allows you to specify which files will be extracted, corresponding to certain patterns, &eg; `*.txt` or `*.jpg`. Note that you can only use one pattern at a time.

You can specify the folder to extract files to in the Extract to: text box. If you want to change the default folder, in the main program window, choose Folders on the Settings menu. Under the Advanced tab, you can choose some specific options depending on the archive format.

### Creating Archives and Adding Files

To create a new archive in &ark;, choose New from the File menu.

You can then type the name of the archive, with the appropriate extension (`tar.gz`, `zip`, `bz2` &etc;). To add files to the archive, choose Add File... from the Action menu. If you want to add an entire folder to an archive, choose Add Folder... from the Action menu.

An alternative way to add files to the archive is to drag a file from &konqueror; or the desktop into the main &ark; window, and it will be added to the current archive.

## Configuring &ark;

### General Settings

Use integrated viewer

  Use the integrated viewer to view files, if possible.

Enable Konqueror integration

  Enable the plugin for extracting or adding files to archives through Konqueror context menus.

  This option only works if the Konqueror integration plugin from kdeaddons is installed on your system.

### File Addition Settings

Many of these options are only configurable for specific archive formats. Other formats may behave either way and are not configurable.

Replace old files only with newer files

  If you add filenames that already exist in an archive, only replace them if the added files are newer than the ones already present in the archive.

Keep entries generic (Lha)

  Affects only Lha archives

Force MS-DOS short filenames (Zip)

  Force names to the DOS 8.3 format.

  Affects only zip files

Translate LF to DOS CRLF (Zip)

  Convert the line endings in text files to DOS format from UNIX format.

  Affects only zip files

Store symlinks as links (Zip, Rar)

  Save links inside the archive, instead of following them and including the files being linked to.

  Affects zip and rar archives.

Recursively add subfolders (Zip, Rar)

  If you add a folder to an archive, also add any subfolders inside. Affects zip and rar archives

### Extraction Settings

Many of these options are only configurable for specific archive formats. Other formats may behave either way and are not configurable.

Overwrite files (Zip, Tar, Zoo, Rar)

  Overwrite any files that have matching names on disk with the one from the archive.

Preserve permissions (Tar)

  Save the user, group, and permission settings on files. Use with care, as this may result in files being extracted that do not belong to any valid user on your computer.

Ignore folder names (Zip)

  Extract all the files into the extraction folder, ignoring any folder structure in the archive.

Convert filenames to lowercase (Zip, Rar)
Convert filenames to uppercase (Rar)

  Extract all files with all lowercase (or uppercase) names.

### Folders

Folders

  This shows the Folders dialog box, so you can choose the default folders. You can configure a Common folder that will be used for all options, use the last used folder, or a custom folder.

## Command Reference

### The File Menu

&Ctrl;N File New

  Creates a new archive

&Ctrl;O File Open

  Opens an archive

File Open Recent

  Shows a list of recent archives to choose from

File New Window

  Opens a new &ark; window

File Reload

  Loads the current archive again from disk. This will refresh &ark;'s view if another program has made changes to the archive.

File Save As

  Allows you to save the current archive under a new file name

File Close

  Closes the current archive

&Ctrl; Q File Quit

  Closes &ark;

### The Edit Menu

Edit Select...

  Lets you select files according to their filename. For example, you could use `*.txt` to select all text files. Note that you can't use more than one filter at a time.

&Ctrl; A Edit Select All

  Selects all the files in the archive

Edit Deselect All

  Unselects all the files in the archive

Edit Invert Selection

  Reverses which files are selected. Selected files become unselected, and unselected files are selected.

Edit View Shell Output

  Displays the Shell Output box, which shows you the output of the most recent command(s) run by &ark;. This is sometimes useful if you are having problems and want to troubleshoot.

### The Action Menu

Action Add File...

  Shows the Select Files to Add dialog box, where you can select files. Hold down &Ctrl; and click to select multiple files. To go up a folder, right click the folder box, and you can choose Up (this will probably be improved soon). The Advanced tab has options which are specific to the type or archive you are working with.

Action Add Folder...

  Shows the Add Folder... dialog box, where you can choose a folder to add. Just choose a folder and choose Open.

Action Delete

  Removes the currently selected files from the archive.

Action Extract

  Shows the Extract dialog box, which allows you to select where you will extract files to. You can also select which files to extract:

  - Current extracts the most recently selected file. If multiple files are selected, only the most recently selected one will be extracted.

  - All extracts the entire contents of the archive.

  - Selected Files extracts all the files which have been selected.

  - Pattern allows you to specify which files will be extracted, corresponding to certain patterns, &eg; `*.txt` or `*.jpg` Note that you can only use one pattern at a time.

  You can specify the folder to extract files to in the Extract to: text box. If you want to change the default folder, in the main program window, choose Folders on the Settings menu. Under the Advanced tab, you can choose some specific options depending on the archive format.

Action View

  Opens the currently selected file in the associated viewer program.

Action Open With...

  Opens the currently selected file in a program you choose. The Open With... dialog box lets you choose which program to use.

Action Edit With...

  Opens the currently selected file in a program you choose. Any changes you make in the editor program will be reflected in the archive, as it will be updated.

### The Settings Menu

Settings Show/Hide Toolbar

  Toggles whether the toolbar is displayed.

Settings Show/Hide Statusbar

  Toggles whether the status bar is displayed.

Settings Show/Hide Search Bar

  Toggles whether the search bar is displayed.

Settings Configure Shortcuts...

  Displays the Configure Shortcuts dialog box. This lets you choose shortcut keys for various menu items. To change a shortcut, select an action from the list, and then choose which keystroke to use. Clicking on the bottom right hand Key button lets you choose which specific key to use. Just press the new key.

Settings Configure Toolbars...

  Displays a &kde; standard dialog where you can configure the toolbar icons.

Settings Configure Ark...

  This opens the &ark; configuration dialog. The dialog contains four modules (General, Addition, Extraction and Folders). Configuring &ark; is covered in the section Configuration

### The Help Menu

&help.menu.documentation;

## Credits and License

&ark; is Copyright © 1997-2004, The Various &ark; Developers

### Authors:

- Helio Chissini de Castro helio@conectiva.com.br

- Georg Robbers Georg.Robbers@urz.uni-hd.de

- Henrique Pinto henrique.pinto@kdemail.net

- Roberto Selbach Teixeira maragato@kde.org

- Robert Palmbos palm9744@kettering.edu

- Francois-Xavier Duranceau duranceau@kde.org

- Corel Corporation (author: Emily Ezust) emilye@corel.com

Documentation Copyright © 2000 Matt Johnston mattj@flashmail.com

Documentation updated for &kde; 3.3 by Henrique Pinto henrique.pinto@kdemail.net.

&underFDL; &underGPL;

## Installation

### How to obtain &ark;

&install.intro.documentation;

### Requirements

In order to successfully use &ark;, you need &kde; 3.3. GNU `Tar` v1.12 and a recent `gzip` are also needed if you want &ark; to handle tar archives. To handle other file formats, you need the appropriate command line programs, such as `zip`, `unzip`, `ar`, `rar` and `lha`.

### Compilation and Installation

&install.compile.documentation;

&documentation.index;