FreeArc

[Bulat Ziganshin]

I found two quite bad bugs in FreeArc.

Extracting 88,842 files, 4,079,482,576 bytes. Processed   8.3%arc.exe: E:\Test9\Data\(hidden long path)\hurt: mkdir: already exists (File exists)
  8.4%

please report me if it wasn't fixed in the latest alpha

[JangoFatXL]

how about making arc as default, wait it already is :P ... no change needed

[bollo]

Thanks Bulat Ziganshin for your compressor...I mean its just really awesome the compress even further with your program than with others, but with the difference of the speed....it's really fast with a good ratio!
But your compressor its just lacking one great feature that made the other formats popular as they are now...this feature is the "multi-volumes" or multiple parts.

As I saw in your GoogleCode page, you'll be probably putting this enhancement-feature in the 0.80, quite far away from the upcoming 0.70...and even further from today.
Also I saw that this feature request is from 2009 and it's a must in this days when you need to upload something in parts to some sites, even mail.

You probably are aware that this feature made popular the RAR format, displacing the ZIP format in the past.....and it was because WAREZ groups compress the RELEASES with them, I'm citing not approving.....also it's used by some developers for avoiding that the antivirus to prevent the download of an EXE file from their pages thinking it's a virus file.

I don't know which will be your goals Bulat, and probably will not , but in my humble opinion I guess that you should be thinking in expanding and popularizing your compressor because IT has a lot of POTENTIAL and can clearly become the preferred compressor by everyone.....this can also make the bug-hunting more efficient...

I hope you can put this feature in this upcoming 0.70 release, and then polish it through updates.

[ccuappz]

Thanks for you great archiver.
I hope it reaches final release very soon.

Here's my question please:
Is there any option to create a separate recovery file for an already created ARC archive? Something like what QuickPar does to files?

It's a great enhancement especially if freearc can create multi-volume archives too.
thanks in advance and keep up the great work

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Is there any option to create a separate recovery file for an already created ARC archive? Something like what QuickPar does to files?

no. but RR info can be quickly added to archive

[Shelwien]

...and then you can use xdelta to export it to a separate file

[m^2]

Got the following error:

D:\install\games>arc x Ja2.arc
FreeArc 0.666 extracting archive: Ja2.arc
Extracting 730 files, 909,868,480 bytes. Processed   0.7%arc: read: invalid argu
ment (Bad file descriptor)

arc: interrupted
arc: warning: too many hs_exit()s

Yesterday the file extracted just fine on my brother's machine, so I think it's OK.
ADDED: The archive is OK, the error is not reproducible. But I got other problems too.

I retried and got:

D:\install\games>arc x Ja2.arc
FreeArc 0.666 extracting archive: Ja2.arc
Extracting 730 files, 909,868,480 bytes. Processed   0.0%
  Overwrite Ja2\IMP.html?
  (Y)es / (N)o / (A)lways / (S)kip all / (U)pdate all / (Q)uit? a
  0.7%
ERROR: write error (disk full?) in compression algorithm tempfile

The message is correct, I didn't have enough temp space. So I have a suggestion, you could check for temp space before decompression and
1. At least give a warning
2. Better, allow user to change a temporary directory, offering to use the decompression target one.

D:\install\games>arc x Ja2.arc
FreeArc 0.666 extracting archive: Ja2.arc
Extracting 730 files, 909,868,480 bytes. Processed   0.0%
  Overwrite Ja2\IMP.html?
  (Y)es / (N)o / (A)lways / (S)kip all / (U)pdate all / (Q)uit? s
  0.0%arc: ArcExtract.hs:(109,43)-(113,15): Non-exhaustive patterns in lambda

  0.0%arc: thread blocked indefinitely

This is reproducible, I can send you the archive if you want.

[Bulat Ziganshin]

the last one was fixed in 0.67. for a tempdir, i don't know exactly how much space will be used, and it may be filled up just after the check. so something may be done, but it's not simple and obvious

[Bulat Ziganshin]

new alpha version:

• i18n: translated all remaining strings; improved tooltip 1227
• support for UNC in arcname (arc a \\pc\share\a.arc)
• Add dialog: tabs for constructing compression and encryption methods were offloaded to subdialogs
• Add dialog: when "Compress into separate archives" is enabled, "Output archive" box is replaced with "Output dir" box
• GUI dialogs: checkboxes are automatically toggled on when associated options are modified
• Checking for new versions: alpha versions detect newer alphas and offer to open Download-Alpha.aspx
• --queue option and "Queue operations across multiple FreeArc copies" checkbox in Add/Extract/Settings dialogs
• Console version: 7z.dll+FreeArcCodes.dll was included in the package
• fixed: create logfile's directory if it doesn't exist; register warning and continue operation if logfile cannot be opened
• my 7z.dll: removed msvcr100.dll dependency
• Unarc.dll: also pass an exact total origsize/compsize on "l" command
• API: removed MultiCompress()/... since their functionality now is part of Compress()/... - i.e. you can compress with methods like "rep+exe+lzma"

dear translators, it's the good time to start updating your translations

[eljose]

Hi, to all, here are the spanish translated file.

Thanks for your great program.

[Bulat Ziganshin]

great! thank you

[JangoFatXL]

updated german lang-file

[Bulat Ziganshin]

thank you. unlike me, you don't made this stupid bug with "dvd: xxxmb". now i've fixed it in rus/spanish files too

[JangoFatXL]

I made the same misstake, but the result was strange, so I fixed it

[Bulat Ziganshin]

look at http://freearc.org/ru/ScreenshotsNew.aspx (hover mouse over the text column)

[Black_Fox]

The design of the gallery is very nice! I'm not completely sure about that Undercover setup screenshot, though, I guess it's not official setup

[m^2]

The design of the gallery is very nice! I'm not completely sure about that Undercover setup screenshot, though, I guess it's not official setup

Mhm. This might be somewhat controversial. I think it would be better to put Linux in there.

[Bulat Ziganshin]

this picture was on the site for a year or two: http://freearc.org/Screenshots.aspx

i've added also http://freearc.org/ScreenshotsNew.aspx but it's a bit unfinished yet

btw, i accept ideas what screenshots should be shown there. just now i plan to make pretty the same shots as on the http://www.softpedia.com/progScreens...ot-126780.html page - i.e. almost all menus and almost all tabs of add/extract/settings dialogs - this tells a lot about program functionality. but may be there are some better ideas?

[TeLeMan]

Chinese Simplified translation

[Bulat Ziganshin]

thanks, added

[Black_Fox]

Czech translation updated. I think & hope I did the DVD/Skydrive/E-mail attachment translation right

I added some new (Czech) tooltips, English proposals follow:

1485 Open .tar.gz-like archives in single step=.tar.gz, .tar.bz2 and similar archives have to be decompressed in two steps, before compressed data inside can be accessed. This can set FreeArc to automatically do both decompression steps.
1500 Run instead of open as archive:=All specified file suffixes will be automatically executed instead of opened as an archive
1508 Queue operations across multiple FreeArc copies=If FreeArc runs in multiple copies, all their operations will be placed into a queue, from which they will be sequentially executed.


Regarding the Undercover screenshot, it can indeed be rather screenshot of Linux. And more importantly, it should be in English

[Bulat Ziganshin]

thanks, especially for tooltips. you have done right - the correct translation is without sizes on the right side (left side doesn't matter):

0501 DVD: 4474mb=DVD
0502 FAT: 2047mb=FAT
0503 CD: 700mb=CD
0504 RapidShare: 200mb=RapidShare
0505 SkyDrive: 50mb=SkyDrive
0506 Mail attachment: 5mb=E-mailová příloha

How about "All specified file suffixes will be automatically executed or opened with default software instead of opened as an archive in FreeArc"?

[Bulat Ziganshin]

now old alpha versions are available at http://freearc.org/download/testing/ that provides much faster downloads

[Black_Fox]

How about "All specified file suffixes will be automatically executed or opened with default software instead of opened as an archive in FreeArc"?

Yes, that explains the setting even better, fully agree.

[Bulat Ziganshin]

so, with one more minor edit now we have in arc.english.txt:

1485 Open .tar.gz-like archives in single step=.tar.gz, .tar.bz2 and similar archives have to be decompressed in two steps, before compressed data inside can be accessed. This can set FreeArc to automatically do both decompression steps.
1500 Run instead of open as archive:=Specified files will be automatically executed or opened with default software instead of opened as an archive in FreeArc
1508 Queue operations across multiple FreeArc copies=If FreeArc runs in multiple copies, all their operations will be placed into a queue, from which they will be sequentially executed.

i'm not 100% satisified with the last one, though. in russian, i've made much larger tooltip, although i'm not satisified with it too:

1508 Queue operations across multiple FreeArc copies=Even if you will run multiple copies of FreeArc, only one of them at a time will perform any operation (packing, unpacking, archive restoration, etc.), the rest will wait their turn. Through this they will not interfere with each other and each operation can fully utilize the resources on your computer.

and that's how it's descrived in winrar help:

Wait if other WinRAR copies are active
Wait if other WinRAR copies are creating, modifying or unpacking an archive and start the operation only when other WinRAR tasks are complete. If you are going to perform several archiving or decompressing tasks, such queued execution can help to reduce amount of disk seeks and improve overall performance.

[frede_sch]

Does FreeArc have Portuguese and Portuguese-Brazilian translations? If not I will do it.

[Bulat Ziganshin]

there is arc.portuguese_brazil.txt made by lunaris. we should ask him first whether he will keep workink on it

arc.portuguese_standard.txt is autogenerated from 7-zip language file, so you can get it into your hands. Are you using FreeArc himself?

[zody]

Thanks Bulat for the new version =)
Especially for those usability-feature like easier network usage

Regarding the screen shots on freearc.org:

FA offers many different themes; well, maybe we should present some different ones..
I could make a bunch off screen shots with every theme - and we start a poll in the forum etc..


something for arc.ini:

I think it would be useful to change srep preset to the one which fits best with future-lz and has less disk usage
Maybe the x64 lzma entry could be changed too


And what about the usage of dispack as exe preset? So -m4 or -mex8 would use dispack...since delta+dispack showed impressive results - but only if it is stable enough


Greetings =)

[Bulat Ziganshin]

i've improved Compression Method page:



tootips are:

--- Disabled filter/group
1509 rep=Finds repetitions on distances up to 1gb, improving compression ratio on multi-gigabyte datasets up to 10-30%
1510 exe=Improves compression of x86 executables up to 10%
1511 delta=Transforms binary data tables, improving compression ratio on executables up to 2-4%, on databases/mailbases - up to 10%
1512 dict=Replaces highly-repeatable words with short codes, improving compression ratio on texts
1513 lzp=Collapses repetitions, improving compression ratio on texts and especially logfiles
1514 $text=Advanced compression for plain text files
1515 $wav=Advanced compression for uncompressed audio wave files
1516 $bmp=Advanced compression for uncompressed bitmap graphic files
1517 $compressed=Quick-and-dirty compression for already compressed files, improving overall speed/compression ratio

Looking forward for your ideas on improving these tooltips

I propose to leave names of filters/groups w/o translation. This way, experienced FreeArc users can quickly find things they need, and others can learn more by reading tooltips

What else should i add to this page? I think about:

• checkbox "Decipher compression method", replacing f.e. -m4 in "Compression profile" string with -mrep.../$obj=.....
• -lc/-ld
• checkboxes for enabling srep, precomp (with subcheckboxes for -t-j and -slow) and dispack
• anything else?

[frede_sch]

there is arc.portuguese_brazil.txt made by lunaris. we should ask him first whether he will keep workink on it

arc.portuguese_standard.txt is autogenerated from 7-zip language file, so you can get it into your hands. Are you using FreeArc himself?

I've downloaded the source code and saw it. Look's completely translated.

Another question: have you thought about create a cross plataform GUI to FreeArc?