Multi-format archive plugin

• Introduction
• Installation & Requirements
• Screenshots
• History

Directory Opus has built-in support for Zip files, including features such as AES encryption, >2GB archives, Unicode names, NTFS timestamps, self-extracting archives.

This plugin, which is bundled with Directory Opus 10, adds support for various other archive/compression formats, listed below.

With the exception of modifying RAR archives, no additional tools are required to work with these formats within Opus.

Read/write support:

• 7z
• BZip2
• GZip
• RAR (Read/write if WinRAR available; Read-only otherwise.)
• TAR (TAR.GZ and similar compressed TAR files are treated as a single unit, showing what's inside the TAR and not the TAR itself. Modifying the content automatically recompresses the outer archive.)
• ZipX (Support for the proprietary ZipX format is incomplete and some file types cannot be extracted due to their compression methods. This does not affect Opus's built-in support for standard Zip files.)
• Comic Book Archives (cbz, cbr, cb7, with special thumbnails for the archives themselves.)

Read-only support:

• ARJ
• CAB
• CPIO (Linux package format.)
• DEB (Linux package format.)
• DMG (OS X disk image.)
• HFS (OS X disk image.)
• ISO / UDF (CD/DVD disc image.)
• LZH
• LZMA
• RPM (Linux package format.)
• WIM (Windows Imaging Format disk image.)
• XAR
• Z (Compress)

The plugin uses parts of Igor Pavlov's 7-Zip licensed under the GNU LGPL and available, with source, from www.7-zip.org.

You do not need to install 7-Zip to use the plugin. Only 7z.dll is required and it is automatically installed alongside the plugin.

The plugin is packaged as part of Directory Opus itself but you may sometimes find a newer version here between Opus updates.

• Directory Opus 10:

  You should already have the latest version of the plugin if you have the latest version of Opus 10 installed. (Newer versions of the plugin may be posted here between Opus releases.)

• Directory Opus 6, 8 & 9:

  There is no version of the plugin for older versions of Directory Opus. Opus 10 brought with it extensive improvements to the VFS plugin architecture which the plugin depends on.

Use Preferences to configure default archive parameters and which archive types are offered via context menus.

WinRAR is used for modifying RAR archive. Normally it is found automatically, if available. There is special support for portable installs.

The plugin fully integrates into the Opus user-interface.

Viewing a file within a .TAR.BZ2 archive. Note that the archive is opened as a single unit, not a TAR file inside a BZ2 file.

Viewing image thumbnails and metadata within a 7z archive.

Adding files to a RAR archive. While WinRAR is used for this, the Opus look & feel is largely maintained.

Special thumbnails for Comic Book Archive formats (cbz, cbr, cb7).

(Some of these changes were to Opus itself, rather than the actual plugin, but are listed here as they are specific to the plugin or the archive types that it handles.)

Version 1.1.0.1 (14th May 2012):

• Updated to handle command-line syntax change in WinRAR 4.20 beta 1.
• Nested archives now work, as well as nested archives work in Opus at all, within archives handled by the plugin. If you double-click a nested archive it will be extracted to temp, and you'll then open the temp archive. Any changes to it will still be thrown away, the same as archives nested within zip files. (This is about things like zip files inside rar files. This is unrelated to *.tar.* nested archives which the plugin has always explicitly supported, treating them as a single unit and allowing updates.)
• cbr and cb7 extensions are no longer excluded from the Archives filetype group. (You can still remove them manually if you wish, e.g. so that double-clicking those formats opens them in a dedicated Comic Book viewer.) If you're upgrading from 10.0.5.0, the extensions will still be excluded and the quickest way to add them is via Preferences / Zip & Other Archives / Archive and VFS Plugins: Turn off the cbr and cb7 types, click Apply, then turn them back on and click Apply again.
• Fixed problem with Comic-Book Thumbnails not working in libraries.
• Comes with Directory Opus 10.0.5.1.

Version 1.1.0.0 (13th April 2012):

• When deleting files from encrypted RAR archives, the plugin no longer trigers an extra, unncessary password prompt.
• Improved handling of archive formats with multiple extensions. For example, if you select "moo.tar.gz" and push F2 to rename it, only the "moo" part will be selected by default, not the "moo.tar" part.
• Comic Book Archive formats (cbz, cbr, cb7) now appear separately in the list of archive plugins, so you can enable or disable them individually.
• Comic Book Archive formats now get special thumbnail rendering in Opus.
• Comes with Directory Opus 10.0.4.3.

Version 1.1.0.0 (2nd April 2012):

• The plugin now handles batch-extraction by itself. This should improve how it handles certain situations and error conditions.

Version 1.0.0.2 (23rd November 2011):

• Drags from archives handled by the plugin now exclude Move operations for read-only archives (instead of leaving them available and showing an error message if they are attempted).
• Comes with Directory Opus 10.0.2.1.

Version 1.0.0.1 (30th April 2011):

• Initial public release.
• Comes with Directory Opus 10.0.0.0.