So. I kind of like BOMArchiverHelper.app, the default OS X unzipping utility. However, it has quite a number of limitations. Most other unarchivers on OS X have interfaces that I don't like, or just don't work very well. Also, thanks to Windows' idiotic idea of using the current system encoding for filenames, I have tons of archives from Japan with Shift_JIS filenames, which none of the unarchivers on OS X I've tried will handle properly.

And so I, because I obviously don't have enough to do already, get the idea that I need to write a better unarchiver. Features I think it needs include:

• Handle as many formats as possible. Not just Zip and Tar-Gzip, but RAR, 7-Zip, LhA, StuffIt, and anything else you can think of.
• Handle non-UTF8 filenames, perferrably automatically.
• Have a simple and straightforward interface like BOMArchiveHelper.app.
• Not leave .tar files lying around when unpacking .tar.gz files and the like.
• As a side benefit, produce some code that can be re-used to add archive support to Xee (so this whole project doesn't just steal time I could be working on Xee instead).

For actual information on the current state of this project, read on!

>>67

No, not really. I think compression and uncompression are such different tasks that you are better off using different programs for each. A lot of decompression programs on Windows, at least, are kind of unintuitive and bloated because they combine compression and decompression in the same interface, and I want to avoid that.

Also, I think that using plain .zip is usually the best idea anyway, and OS X's built-in archiver is good enough for that.

>>70

Hmmm. I am not sure the app is told what program launched it. But I'll think about that feature.

It is; using sysctl, you can determine your process's parent process. Unfortunately, this will always be WindowServer, except in rare circumstances (launched from Xcode, executable run directly in Terminal). And even if the parent process was the application that launched the file, that would not help if another file was launched while The Unarchiver was working on the first one (in which case the existing Unarchiver process would be used, rather than a new one created).

Just wanted to chime in and say 'thank you!' for this wonderful little app: fast, beautiful, fast, perfectly integrated, fast (did I say it's fast? :-)

Oh, and I'd like to add my vote of preference for the "black UI": as Adam Betts said, it's more and more used and its wonderful "not in your face" look is perfect for The Unarchiver (Apple is also using it in the upcoming Web Inspector in Safari, and it couldn't look more elegant: http://webkit.org/blog/?p=41 )

>>73

If there was an easy way to add it, I would do it. I wonder how Safari implements it. I guess I'll have to dig into the source.

Ok, I did, and it turns out they build the whole thing with HTML. I definitely won't be doing THAT.

However, if anybody wants to implement the black GUI (without doing it in a WebView), I'd be happy to add it, especially if it's optional.

It won’t decode Sitx files, that is Stuffit deluxe files that require a password to unstuff.

Thanks, I love this alternative to Stuffit expander.
Any chance of a preference to delete compressed file by default on expansion? That would be a huge improvement for me. Better still with reverse behaviour when Option-double-clicking.

Using version 1.0 on Intel Mac Mini.

When I try to extract the VirtueDektops 0.53r220 zip, it gives me a checksum error on a PNG file. The link to the ZIP is:

http://virtuedesktops.info/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/VirtueDesktops_0.53r220.zip

And yeah, the filename encoding dropdown is all messed up on my system too. I'm happy with Unarchiver the way it is, especially the smart create-folder-only-as-necessary feature.

SITX is not supported because it is completely propietary, undocumented and un-reverse-engineered, to my knowledge. If this ever changes, support might be added. I know I'd like to get rid of the last reason to keep StuffIt on my system. But as it is, adding support is beyond my capabilities.

Version 1.1 released:

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/TheUnarchiver1.1.zip
http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/TheUnarchiver1.1_src.zip

• Added the automatic deletion and opening options requested.
• Added the option to always extract to a user-specified folder.
• Fixed the opening-behind-other-windows bug.
• Fixed a number of the extraction bugs reported (although not quite all, either because I lacked a test case or because it involved files being too broken).

Incidentially, I'd welcome some outside help with this project. I have a lot of other things to work on, and don't have much time to work on this. There are a number of things that would be great to have, starting with sitx support, and stuff like better support for encryption of zips and rars, better 7-zip support, more formats, and so on.

PLEASE add version resources to your code!

In the Finder, version 1.0 looks IDENTICAL to version 1.1. I need to be able to know which version of the program file I am looking at.

Thanks,

eo

>>76

“sitx” doesn't mean that the file is encrypted; it means that it is in StuffIt X format, which is Allume's replacement for the older StuffIt 5.5 format (and its predecessors).

>>82

It uses the standard Info.plist version field.

>>84

Right, but that's not visible from the Finder. The suggestion (which I made and Eric O'Brien made) is to put the version into the Finder Get Info string so that the versions of two Unarchiver app bundles can be compared from the Finder.

One thing i realy miss is "Extract where" -> "Ask" like Stuff-it, it this is included in next version i'll delete stuff-it as fast as i can :)

Where is the preference file? The pref pane has gone all unresponsive and I can't alter what Unarchiver should handle. I reinstalled but my selection stayed so somewhere there is a file. Thanks. Oh, by the way, great job. Stuff-it always seemed like it was on the verge of crashing. Funny thing, I was testing relative speeds between your app and stuff-it and stuff-it just crashed on the archive. Ha Ha. I knew it sucked but it hadn't really crashed in a while. My decision was made.

>>87

The associations aren't stored in a preferences file, but the previous ones are, and there's a bug where those get corrupted, so that might be your problem. It should be at ~/Library/Preferences/cx.c3.xee.plist.

>>88

Just drag it where you want it, usually the Applications folder. This is how you normally install program on OS X.

I've been looking at this as a replacement for Stuffit Expander at work (Freeverse Software).

But all of our .sit files produce an empty folder. Is it because we use an older .sit file (compatible with OS 9) for our games?

Thanks !WAHa.06x36.
All selectable now.

>>90

Send me some test files.

same problem as in 90; does not work with my .sit archives. Try for example Nikon Scan 4.0, downloadable from http://www.macupdate.com/download.php/13759/NS4.sit

>>93

That file extracts fine on my macine.

1. What hardware are you running on?
2. Do you get any errors on the console? (Open /Applications/Utilities/Console.app)

I have a bug setting preferences :
In "Archive Formats" I clicked "Select all" then I changed my mind and clicked "Deselect all". "Deselect All" only deselect the first file format (zip). I also can't manually deselect the others.
Mac OS 10.4.7 PPC French language selected

>>95

Yes, others are having this issue, but I can't reproduce it. I really need to know what hardware this is happening on, and if it's producing any errors on the console.

>>96

See >>87,89.

Like some others I am having a problem with SIT files and I found the following in my System.Log file which seem to relate to trying to extract a SIT file:

Sep 22 23:00:08 simon-wolfs-computer kernel[0]: HFS: /rsrc paths are deprecated (..namedfork/rsrc)

However, BetterZip also produces empty folders so I am now wondering if this is a problem in the OS rather than with your application. I am running 10.4.7 on an 2 GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook with 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM.

>>99

Ooh! That finally explains what is going on! Many thanks!

I am not entirely sure how to fix that, but now that I know what's going on, I should finally be able to do something about it.

>>100

Could you do one more thing? Extract an archive to get an empty folder, and then open up the Terminal, cd into that directory, and run ls -la there?

I get this:

simon-wolfs-computer:~/Desktop/DevCon2006 Simon$ ls -la
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 Simon Simon 68 Jun 1 11:40 .
drwx------ 14 Simon Simon 476 Sep 23 00:51 ..

I have also had a situation where extracting a SIT file results in a directory being created but it being invisible to Finder. The logs have the same error message for this. Creating a new directory to force a refresh didn't help.

>>102

Does the extraction progress window show up at all? Does it show any of the names of files it is supposed to extract?

An extraction window flashes up very, very briefly so I cannot see what it is reporting.

Minor problem I'm having with 1.1:
The icons for some files are not showing up. For example, .zip (which is associated to Unarchiver) shows up as the unknown document icon (blank page) instead of the nice brown package icon. Works fine for others (RAR, for example).

Any thoughts?

Thanks for this app, it's soooo much nicer than StuffIt.

I should add that I have the same problem as Nick with my SIT files.

>>105-106

Is this for files downloaded with Camino/Firefox, or some other browser?

I'm using Safari. I will try to find a .zip from somewhere other than Safari.

I'm using OnniWeb 5.5.

Seems to be happening on all zip's regardless of where they came from. Tried rebooting, did nothing. .sit icons work fine though.

May have found a fix...

Find a file of the type that is not getting the correct icon (Simon, in your case a .sit).
Get Info on that file, and go to the Opens With... section.
Change it from The Unarchiver to anything else that can open it.
Hit the Change All... button. The icon should change to the new apps icon.
Now go back to the drop down list and change it back to The Unarchiver, and hit Change All... again.

Worked for me.

Thanks Nick. When I changed it to another application the icon stayed blank but then changing it back to The unarchiver sorted it out.

I am tempted to blame Apple's kind of broken UTI handling for that one.

>>93
>>94

hi again, no info on the console.
the hardware is an iMac intel core duo 1.83 ghz with 1.5 Gb ram; os x 10.4.7

hope this helps...

I have a funny feeling that this is a 10.4.7 issue too since it is not just The Unarchiver that seems to be affected. Roll on 10.4.8!

No errors on the console? That makes it more mysterious again.

The last thing you want is a mysterious bug. Sigh.

Hi

Found a bug in the SIT extraction process of unarchiver.
Look at the driver for the Roland RD700SX Stagepiano http://www.rolandmusik.de/ftp/pub/downloads/tecfiles/P_bis_U/OSX_Treiber/RD700sx_drv_OSXi.sit
You will find a difference if you extract it with Stuffit Expander or The Unarchiver.
Hope you can fix it :)

To help with the empty folders.

Try "Create New Folder" INSIDE the empty folder, or move (and move back later) a small file to the empty folder. Doing this should update the folder and suddenly make all the folder contents visible.

Note: apparently there is a way to fix this (not tested by moi) in the preferences in StuffIt Expander. I heard that unchecking the "Set Execute Permissions by Default" will solve this little bug. Give it a try and see if it works.

Hiko, I'd already tried this solution but it doesn't work for me. In fact the extract process doesn't actually appear to work so I simply end up with an empty folder.

Anyway, it may help others I guess.

I think you should offer a solution kinda like Filecutter has.

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/9479/bild1in0.png

Where you can choose an "Upload to..." option and possibly some other options too.

That would IMO be a BIG ADDITION to this excellent app!

Thank you so far :)

I really like The Unarchiver because it is simple and fits in with the rest of OS X. It would be really nice if the developer would keep it that way instead of piling options upon options (an extraction tool should be very simple) or adding UI that won't fit with the rest of the system (unfortunately, Apple has a habit of doing just that...)

Instead, it would be really nice if the developer could focus on supporting more features from each format. It is probably quite easy to add better support for the 7z format since portable source code is already available from the p7zip project. Personally, I don't support proprietary formats like sitx and haven't seen any software distributed in that format. I think the developer should focus on formats that are more cross-platform and open instead of a closed format like sitx.

>>121

Hmm, I've actually never seen a Mac app do that. It might not a be bad idea if I can figure out how to do it, and find some time to do it.

>>122

The 7-zip code is, unfortunately, quite horrible. When I started out, I was considering using it, because it can extract a lot of formats, but I found it very badly designed, full of Windows-isms, and completely undocumented and uncommented. Well, I am guilty of that last part myself, so I can't really blame the author for that, but it did mean the code was unusable.

Right now I am using the 7z-C code from 7-zip, which is a separate implementation in plain C instead of Windows C++, which is much easier to use, but not as capable.

I agree with >>122, the app should stay simple and not add extra features like the items in >>121.

My two requests:

Concatenate 001, 002, 003 (et cetera) files back into a single archive.

Process PAR/PAR2 files for file recovery.

Also, a request for further down the road: A dock icon, perhaps invoked when you have an archive or collection of files (e.g., a RAR set) that is over a certain size. As it stands now, it's a bit annoying to have to keep re-finding the extraction dialog buried under tons of windows (since it doesn't show in the dock or cmd+tab).

Even with these few things, The Unarchiver is amazingly sweet. Thanks so much!

>>124

There is no way to switch the dock icon behaviour that I know of. Either an app has one all the time, or never.

Multi-part archives are already supported, but this is only triggered for certain naming schemes, such as ".r01/.r02" and "part01.rar/part02.rar" for RAR. If you have files with another naming scheme, give me some example files and it should probably be easy to add support.

PAR/PAR2 has been requested, but I don't know much about it, so it would take some time to implement it. Unfortunately I don't have much time at the moment between all my projects, so I'd really appreciate it someone wanted to help out with this.

(For anyone interested in helping out with this: libxad reads data through a custom callback handler, that implements open/read/seek/close functionality. Multi-part archives are handled transparently through this, for instance. A PAR/PAR2 handler could be written that works like the multi-archive handler but additionally fills in any missing pieces by itself.)

122 & 124

If you dont want the option to extract to a certain folder the simply dont install the finder plugin, if you are not used to e.g. WinRar on windows which has the Extract to.. option.
If you have you are pretty dependent on that, eg. when unararing huge archives > 1gb you want to extract to another physical drive to get a huge speed increase, and that is unfortuneatly not very easy with thuis application atm. You can set a drive as the drive to always unpack to, but when the archive is on that drive it unpacks to the same drive and you loose the aformentioned speed increase.

So !WAHa.06x36 i think you should really look into offering a "Filecutter-like-interface" for using an Extract to... option. If I recall correctly it was just a simple plugin file that you copyed into /Library/Contextual Menu Items/ or something.

That would be kinda the optimal solution cause the people that easily want the option can just copy the file and those who obviously dont just simply ignore that option.

Thanks alot once again for this neat app!

I have checked "delete file after unzip" in the preferences (something to the deletion of the file after being unzipped), but the thing is if it's a 2-part file, it throws the first file into the trash (part 1) and not part 2. Just something you could fix. Great app. Great work :D

>>127

Yes, I know, it'll be fixed in the next version.

Would it be at all possible to add an ETA/estimated finish time to the window?

>>129 Like those are ever accurate anyway.

Right, since it would likely be inaccurate, and is very seldom longer than a minute or two anyway, it seems like it would just be a distraction.

!WAHa:

Have you considered adding support to view the contents of compressed files? I don't think much would be needed, nothing like Finder navigation, but maybe the option to see the contents (maybe if a modifier key is pressed) and extract only one file?

>>132

No. I used to run Windows, where every unarchiver worked like this, and I was always impressed with the minimalist functionalism of Apple's standard unarchiver in comparison to that usability mess. The cases where it would be useful to have this are so few in comparison to the common case that it doesn't really justify the code bloat, and the work for me.

However, if someone wanted to make an unarchiver app like this, I should point out that the libxad engine from The Unarchiver is built as a separate framework, and is very easy to use from any program.

!WAHa.06x36:

I'm with you in the UI, keep it non-existent. The way you've implemented it is superb. Fix that arc hive deletion bug and maybe implement Par2, and it's utterly perfect.

Keep up the good work.

>>93
>>94
>>115

Hello again, I've tried again to use unarchiver on my other computer, a G4 macmini, working on the same sit files (Nikon software) that I couldnt un-sit on my iMac intel and guess what ?... it works !!! It seems that (at least for me) unarchiver works ok for sit files if you use a powerpc, it doesnt on an intel machine.

Hope it helps.

>>139

I suspected as much. I am hoping to get an Intel Mac soon, though, and then I'll be able to test it myself, hopefully.

Archive:
http://dub.washington.edu/projects/denim/download/mac/download_alone.shtml

doesn't extract properly in Unarchiver, but does in Stuffit 9. It's hqx.

(unarchiver is great anyway :)

It extracts fine here. Are you using an Intel machine?

First of all, thank you very much for this app.

Having to use stuffit was one of the major blemishes on my wonderful mac user experience and I'm sure many feel the same.

Don't know if this is Intel chip-related but when I unarchive Japanese files with Japanese encoding, even if I set the confidence level to 100%, it still asks me for confirmation whereas on my PPC iBook it never does and I have it set at 80% as recommended.

>>143

Ah, you probably misunderstood that option. Setting it higher means it will ask more often, because it sets the level of confidence the program needs before proceeding without asking.

However, if there are any files where it asks one one machine but not the other when the confidence level is set the same on both, then that's a bug, and I'd appreciate it if you sent me the file to test.

As Stuffit 11 now lost the contextual menu feature I used most of the day, I wonder if TU can be made to list archive contents in a contextual menu.

Even nicer would be to extract just a selected file from the archive.

Thanks, TU looks very promising.

The latest patch for Sim City 4, in sitx format, doesn't extract at all with The Unarchiver (1.1)...

Nice program otherwise.

SITX is not supported.

Extracting 7z files sets modified of all extracted files to "now", extracting with 7zx works.

>>148

The 7zC code used by The Unarchiver does not provide the date. I've asked the author to fix it, but I don't think he has, yet.

My comment (127) I talked about the autodelete when there has been an extraction of a format. Is it possible for you to get this working in pathfinder? It doesn't delete at all in pathfinder. Can't wait for the next version!

>>150

That sounds more like a Pathfinder bug. Maybe you should try reporting it to them?

Thanks for this great software. With Xee and The Unarchiver you gave us 2 of the most wanted and needed software on mac. I can't understand why nobody did it before, because it's so obvious that this is the way cool apps should works : simple and fast ! :+)
Just for help : I can't extract the archive of WebGrabber you can find here :
http://www.epicware.com/webgrabber.html
It's a normal tar.gz file, and BomArchiveHelper extracted it without problem (as Stuffit).
hth

>>153

Confirmed, I'll add it to the list.

Thanks for this great app! More and more great pieces of software come out for the Mac these days. Very cool. Some of the last things I miss are a good Archiver that does RAR and a good mp3 tagger like mp3tag for windows.

sounds like a nice app, but since it's for 10.4 only, i can't try it. are there significant reasons keeping you from compiling a 10.3.x version?

>>157

Mostly that I don't have a 10.3 machine to test on.

The Unarchiver 1.1 crashes when opening this file:

http://www.pixelglow.com/downloads/graphviz-1.13-v16.zip

I also posted the crash log on pastebin:

http://pastebin.com/811153

>>123

The original 7-zip makes use of many win32 features, but I was talking about p7zip, which is supposed to be very portable.

>>160

p7zip is just exactly the same source code, but with a win32 compatibility layer compiled in alongside. It's a real mess, and compiling it into a separate application is nearly impossible.

The only really portable 7z code is the 7z-C code, which I am using, but which is less capable, as mentioned.

I'm curious about those random files that Unarchiver is unable to decompress properly. Are those because of obscure bugs in the decompression engine that only get triggered by certain files or are they because of bad compressors?

>>162

So far I've encountered one bad compressor, a couple of obscure bugs, and then there are a couple of still outstanding mysteries like the SIT files on Intel. That's PROBABLY another obscure bug, but I don't know yet.

once you get that SIT problem for Intel users sorted, and perhaps the contextual menu, I will gladly donate to you, and i'm sure others will too :)

great app. it's a favourite of mine, along with quicksilver.

The lack of a contextual menu like way to "Extract to..." is the only thing keeping me from donating som of my coins

Good news and bad news: Good news is I finally got an Intel Mac, and I am working my way through a number of Intel-only bugs (and others) now.

Bad news is, I managed to mess up my home directory drive in the move to the new machine, and I lost a whole lot of files. The Unarchiver isn't affected, since I could just download the 1.1 source again and start over with the few bug fixes I'd done so far, but I lost a lot of work on Xee, so that will be even more delayed.

This ZIP file that have a tracking application is not extracted correctly so it does not work when extracted with your aplication.

http://www.peerlessproductions.com/tuts/pages/Icarus.html

Hope this data help you in some way.

Can you reproduce the bug I reported?

>>159

BOMArchiveHelper also have trouble opening this archive.