Tools - Settings - Archiver plugins - Tab WCX




The tab "WCX" embeds archiver plugins. Archivers combine one file or more files into a single archive file. They may employ lossless data compression in their archive formats to reduce the size of the archive. The process of making an archive file is called archiving or packing. Archivers also offer the possibility to reconstruct the original files from the archive, termed unarchiving, unpacking or extracting.

FreeCommander installs by default its own archiver plugin "fcZip".


Calling the archiver plugins

The archiver plugins are used for pack, unpack, and open operations. Packing is activated from  the menu item "File Pack" or the hotkey "Alt+F5", and unpacking from "File Unpack" or the hotkey "Alt+F6". In either case, the listed filters are analyzed sequentially from the top down. The highlighted file is packed or unpacked by the archiver plugin assigned to the first matching filter. Only checked rows are taken into account when matching a filter.


The open operation is started with the "ENTER" key or double click. The open operation will apply only to files whose extension is listed here. The open operation can also be started with Ctrl+PgDn, but in that case the file extension must not be in the list of extensions listed here for a plugin. For example, many EXE files are packed files. Normally you do not want to have ".exe" in the extension list for any plugin. If you try to open an EXE file with Ctrl+PgDn, each active plugin will be checked to see if it can open the file.


The following settings are offered to configure "fcZip" and to embed more archiver plugins:

List of archiver plugins

The following buttons are available for editing the list of extensions and plugin files:

  • :        add new archiver plugin
  • :        delete the highlighted plugin
  • :        move the highlighted plugin up
  • :        move the highlighted plugin down

Title

Any string may be used for the title of the highlighted archiver plugin. 

File extensions

One or more file extensions may be entered (delimited by "." e.g. "zip.jar.war") for defining what files the highlighted archiver plugin will apply to.

Plugin file

The plugin file is specified here.

Self extracting (SFX) stub

A self-extracting archive (also called an SFX archive) is an executable archive file. It can be unpacked without a separate (un-)archiving program.

In addition to the archived files, SFX archives contain a small program ("stub") which provides the required unpacking code. Therefore SFX archives are slightly larger than "passive" archives.

The stub for the highlighted archive plugin may be entered here.

Supported options (607)

If the row containing "fcZip" is focused, the functions supported by "fczip" are listed by activating the "Supported options (607)" button.