Ark

Ark is an application to manage archives of files

Ark allows you to

• Create a compressed archive
• View the contents of an archive file
• Extract the contents of an archive to a directory of your choice.

It can handle many formats, including tar, gzip, bzip2, zip and rar.

Creating an Archive

• Files can be added to form the archive using the Action menu
• Alternatively files can be dragged from a Konqueror or Dolphin window into the main Ark window
• Also on the Action menu is "Add Folder" which can pull a whole directory into the archive
• Files can be added to a saved archive at any time.

Extracting Files

This is the use that most people will meet first.

• With a single file highlighted you will be asked whether you want to extract that one file or all files.
• The archive remains complete and the file you selected is placed in the directory of your choice.

The way that extracting works has changed in recent versions, so may feel strange to someone recently working with KDE3. If you use the Extract button on the toolbar you will be presented with a list of recently used extraction destinations. However, if you want to extract to a different destination, there seems no way that you can add to that path. Instead, there are two ways that you can control the Extraction.

• When viewing the archive within Ark, use Ctrl-E instead of the menu button. This gives you a navigable tree where you can select your destination.
• When viewing the archive in Dolphin, right click on it and you will get three options:

• Extract here, Autodetect Subfolder
• Extract to....
• Extract here.

• The second option works the same as Ctrl-E within Ark.
• The third option does exactly what it say - if no folder is defined within the archive, all the extracted files will end up in the current directory. If the archive does contain a folder, then a folder will be created under the current folder, and all files extracted into that folder.
• The first option is similar to the third one, but if a folder is named within the archive you are likely to end up with an unwanted extra directory layer. If, for instance, your archive is called Patterns.zip and it contains a folder called Patterns, which in turn holds all the designs, you would end up with a structure like ~/Patterns/Patterns/design1 etc.

Working with Files

• Very often an archive will contain a README or some other instruction file. It is often useful to be able to preview that file before starting work with the archive. An option to preview any file in the archive is present in both the KDE3 and KDE SC 4 versions of Ark.
• It may be that one file in an archive becomes irrelevant. The file can be deleted within the archive.
• In the KDE3 version it is possible to 'Open with' any suitable application
• It is also possible, in the KDE3 version, to 'Edit with' an application.

(These two features are not available in the KDE SC 4 version yet)

External links

• Project homepage