beta release of Archive Viewer version 2.

This is a beta release of Archive Viewer version 2.

The Archive Viewer is a very simple GUI tool for viewing and extracting

archive files of various types.  It cannot create archives, nor is this

ever planned as a feature.  (This program is not intended to compete with

WarpZip, ZipControl, et al.)

The Archive Viewer can handle the following types of archive file:

 * ZIP archives (*.zip)

 * Unix-style tape archives (*.tar), including those which have been compressed

   with 'compress' (*.tar.Z, *.tz), 'gzip' (*.tar.gz, *.tgz) or 'bzip2' (*.tar.bz2)

 * RAR archives (*.rar)

 * ARJ archives (*.arj)

NEW FEATURES (V2.0)

Version 2 boasts a number of new features.  First of all, the entire program has

been rewritten from scratch.  Version 1 was one of my first REXX programming

efforts, and I've learned a lot since then.

Most significantly, the program is now multi-threaded.  Listing and extracting

archive contents are both now done in separate threads.  This should prevent

the Workplace Shell from going unresponsive when opening a very large archive.

(I do NOT guarantee that your system won't slow to a crawl; it still might,

since reading archive files can be quite CPU intensive.  But at least it won't

block your input queue while doing so.)

The file extraction dialog is much improved.  You can now select a directory

from a list, and browse through your drives.

Encrypted RAR and ARJ files are now supported.

REQUIREMENTS

Software

 * eComStation 1.1 or higher, or OS/2 Warp (any version) with VROBJ.DLL

 * The following programs available somewhere in your PATH:

    + InfoZip UNZIP.EXE : required for ZIP support                      !

    + GNU TAR.EXE       : required for TAR, TAR.GZ and TAR.BZ2 support  !

    + GNU GZIP.EXE      : required for TAR.GZ support                   !

    + GNU BZIP2.EXE     : required for TAR.BZ2 support

    + GNU COMPRESS.EXE  : required for TAR.Z support

    + ARJ.EXE           : required for ARJ support

    + UNRAR.EXE or

      RAR32.EXE         : required for RAR support

    ! already included with eCS 1.1 and higher

   All of these should be available on Hobbes.

   If some of these programs are not present, you will still be able to use

   the Archive Viewer, but not for the corresponding type of archive file.

Hardware

 * A Pentium processor or higher is recommended.

 * 16 MB or more of RAM is strongly recommended.

INSTALLING ARCHIVE VIEWER

To install the Archive Viewer, copy ARCVIEW.EXE onto your PATH and ARCVIEW.HLP

onto your HELP path.  To replace earlier versions of the Archive Viewer which

are included with eComStation, replace the existing \ECS\BIN\ARCVIEW.EXE and

\ECS\HELP\ARCVIEW.HLP on your system drive.

If you don't already have a program object for ARCVIEW.EXE, you may want to

create one, and associate it with *ZIP, *TAR.*, and *.TGZ file filters; also

*.RAR and *.ARJ if you have the correct programs installed (see above).

GENERAL LIMITATIONS

 * Files with the same name that already exist in the destination path will be

   overwritten automatically.

 * The Archive Viewer _only_ supports 'gzip' and 'bzip2' compression when it's

   been used to compress TAR archives.  Single non-archive files which have been

   compressed with either program are not supported.

   (Neither GZIP nor BZIP2 support a table of contents; they're simple

   compression programs, not archivers per se.)

 * The programs used to handle archives (unzip.exe, tar.exe, etc.) and their

   parameters are hard-coded.  There is no way for the user to add support for

   new archive types (sorry!).

 * Some versions of bzip2.exe are incompatible with ArcView because they do

   not properly support piping.  Specifically, versions which are statically

   linked with the EMX libraries appear to exhibit this problem.  Versions

   which are dynamically linked against EMX should be fine, as are those

   compiled with VisualAge.

TODO

This is a beta release, not a final product.  The following limitations still

exist:

 * No internationalization support.  Only English is available at present.

   Proper message-file support will be implemented for GA release.

 * EXE files are presently assumed to be self-extracting ZIP archives.

   More intelligent file-type detection may be implemented in the future.

Planned future features:

 * An option to open the target directory in the WPS when extraction is

   complete.

 * Support for .Z, .GZ and .BZIP2 files without TAR.

I'm looking tentatively at adding support for additional archive types, such

as WPI, LZH/LHA, PACK, and JAR.  But I make no promises and give no timetables.

LICENSE

See ARCVIEW.HLP for license terms.  Basically, you're asked not to distribute

this beta version to other people, at least not without permission.  I don't

want to end up fielding support requests for incomplete software from the whole

world.

The final released product will be freely distributable under liberal license

terms.  It may even be open source, who knows?  :)

Alex Taylor, January 2005