RAR - What's new in the latest version Version 2.90 1. Added extraction only support of BZIP2, JAR (Java ARchive) and ACE 2.0 formats. 2. Now it is possible to use full file paths such as d:\path\name in the exclude lists and -x switch when archiving. Earlier versions understood only relative file paths here. 3. New option "Append archive name to path" in the "Settings/Compression" dialog. It is used only if the default folder for extracted files is specified and it controls if the archive name is appended to the default folder name when constructing the destination path. 4. New 'E' parameter for -ag switch denotes a day of year. For example: rar a -agEEE backup. 5. To provide a reasonable tradeoff between compression and reliability, RAR resets solid statistics between volumes only if sufficient data (about 4 MB) had been processed since the last reset. You may use two new switches to change this default behaviour. Switch -sv forces RAR to always reset statistics, regardless of volume size, when -sv- disables such reset at all times. Switch -sv- supersedes -sd, though the latter is also recognized by RAR for compatibility purposes. 6. The choice "Never" is added to the file overwrite request displayed by console mode RAR. Style of console RAR requests is somewhat altered. 7. "Extract Here" item is added to archives context menu. You may use it to unpack archive contents to the current folder. 8. If you selected several archives in Explorer and then right clicked them, the context menu will include both archiving and extraction commands, so you may unpack all the archives at once. The old group unpacking method, through dragging a group by the right mouse button to the destination folder, is also supported. 9. File selection is not cleared when a user cancels the archiving in WinRAR, so it is possible to repeat archiving without selecting files again. 10. File lists (@listfile parameters of the command line) may now contain comments preceeded by // characters. For example: c:\work\doc\*.txt //backup text documents c:\work\image\*.bmp //backup pictures 11. Disks disabled in the system policy are not displayed in the toolbar and "Change drive" menu. 12. Bugs corrected: a) switches -y -inul did not disable some messages in GUI WinRAR; b) sometimes WinRAR could display "Cannot create temporary file" error when opening a lot of archived files for a short time; c) now RAR skips archived names like 'prn', which belong to devices reported by Windows 2000 as pipe. Names of character devices are skipped by both this and previous WinRAR versions. Version 2.80 1. We express our gratitude to Francesco Indrio for designing all new WinRAR graphics. 2. Added support of Unicode in file names. It may help to avoid many problems related with national and some special characters in archived file names. The complete support of Unicode is available only for Windows NT and Windows 2000 users, but this feature still provides some benefits for Win9x/WinME users. 3. Dialogs "Info", "SFX", "Comment", "Lock" and "Protect" are combined to a single dialog, so you may change several archive parameters at once. 4. "Advanced SFX options" button added to SFX dialog allows to set additional parameters of SFX module such as extraction path, title, window text others. 5. Toolbar: a) toolbar buttons are reordered; b) "Add" button is now available also inside of archives; c) "Extract" and "Lock" are not present on the toolbar by default, but you may use "Extract To" and "Info/Options/Lock archive" instead. On the other hand it is possible to enable these buttons using a new "Select buttons..." command in "Settings/General" dialog; d) "Extract To" command now has the same Alt-E keyboard shortcut both inside and outside of archives. Shortcut of the "Extract" command is changed to "Alt-W". 6. Changes in the "Archive name and parameters" dialog: a) "General/Lock archive" option - lock a created or modified archive; b) "Advanced/Pause after each volume" option - always ask confirmation before creating next volume regardless of disk type; c) "Advanced/Recovery record" - specify the size of the recovery record as a percentage of the total archive size; d) "SFX options" - set parameters of the created SFX archive; e) "Files to add" and "Files to exclude" had been moved from "Advanced" to the new "Files" sheet; f) "Files/File paths" - select a method of storing file paths; g) "Put each file to separate archive" - put each selected file in the current folder and all files in selected subfolders to separate archives, each archive contains only one file. 7. "History" menu is removed. The names of a few recently opened archives are added to the end of "Files" menu. 8. The new "Import/Export" submenu in "Settings" menu includes two commands allowing to export WinRAR settings to Settings.reg file and import them later. It may be useful if you wish to restore WinRAR settings after re-installing Windows or if is needed to move them to another computer. Settings.reg file is created in the same folder as WinRAR.exe. 9. "Settings/General" dialog: a) "High priority" option is removed as it usually deteriorated overall system performance without any real increase of WinRAR performance. But "Low priority" option is present and it can be useful if you wish to give more processor time to other tasks. b) New "Keep archives history" option allows to disable storing the names of recently opened archives, for example, for security reasons. c) "Always on top" option places WinRAR window above all other programs. You may wish to set it if you frequently use WinRAR as a drag and drop target. d) Use "Toobar/Select buttons..." to customize WinRAR buttons. 10. "Settings/Compression" dialog: a) "Volume options" are removed. Now WinRAR always creates independent volumes, because they minimize data losses in case of archive damage. Compression profiles introduced in the previous version provide better flexibility than the removed "Always put recovery record" option. You may specify all required settings in a separate profile intended for volumes. b) "Default folder for extracted files" is moved to this dialog. Its behaviour is changed a bit, now it is used both in "Extract To" and "Extract" commands as the base part of the destination path. The complete path is constructed by appending an archive name to the default folder. "Settings/Extraction" dialog is removed. 11. New options in the "Settings/File list" dialog: a) "Show archives first" - display archive names above all other files in the file list window; b) "Merge volumes contents" - when you open the first volume, read and display contents of all volumes available in the same folder as the first volume. Both options are enabled by default. 12. "Settings/Viewer" dialog: a) "Reuse existing window" option tells WinRAR to keep only one internal viewer window. 13. Changes in the GUI SFX module script language: a) New "License" command displays a license text before extracting files; b) New "Presetup" command runs the specified program before extracting files; c) New "ExtSign" command informs SFX that additional data in free format may be present at the end of archive; d) script may include more than one Setup command; e) New optional syntax of "Text" command. "Text" and "License" commands now support some HTML tags; f) "Silent" command may have an optional parameter. 14. SFX module displays the total processed progress bar while unpacking files. 15. Archive information dialog: a) the authenticity information is displayed in a separate window, which can be scrolled to view very long AV strings; b) this dialog now contains the size of maximum continuous damaged area, which still can be repaired using the recovery record contained in the archive. This number is for the best case, a real value can be smaller depending on the type of damage. 16. Command 's-' allows to remove SFX module from SFX archive. 17. Switch '-ag' supports two new format parameters: a) 'W' - a number of the current week in a year; b) 'A' - a number of the current day in a week. Weeks start with Monday. 18. New switch '-k' - lock archive. 19. New switch '-vp' - pause after each volume. 20. You may specify the recovery record size as a percentage of the total archive size in 'rr' command and '-rr' switch. For example, -rr3% 21. New -ep2 switch - store full file paths when archiving. 22. You may break the archiving operation directly from the "Diagnostic messages" dialog using "Break operation" button. 23. Switches -inul and -y can be used in WinRAR command line to disable error messages. 24. Switch -sv is removed, now RAR and WinRAR by default create independent volumes. You may override it using the new -sd switch, but note that it reduces your chances to restore a part of data in case of archive damage. 25. In case of write error WinRAR asks for "Retry/Abort" confirmation instead of immediate aborting as before, so a user has a possibility to free some space on the destination disk. 26. The following keyboard shortcuts are now supported by WinRAR: a) F2 - rename a file under the cursor. It is supported only outside archives; b) F4 - open the address list. 27. RCVT archive converter is removed from WinRAR distributive. It is available in "RAR extras" section of www.rarsoft.com. 28. Note to users willing to translate WinRAR to their native language: please look at rarlng.rar archive in "RAR extras" section of www.rarsoft.com. Now it is possible to localize WinRAR very easily simply by editing plain text files.