Using ark

Opening Archives
To open an archive in , choose Open from the File menu. You can also open archive files by dragging and dropping from . Archive files should be associated with , so you can also right click a file in and select Ark to open it.

Working with Files
Once an archive has been opened, you can perform various operations on the files inside the archive. By right clicking on a file within the archive, or selecting a file and using the Action menu, you can choose what you want to do:
View will open the file in the default viewer program.
Open With... allows you to open the file in a program you choose.
Edit With... will open the file a program you choose. The difference between this and Open With... is that any changes you make will be saved to the file in the archive.
Delete will remove the currently selected file(s) from the archive.

Extracting Archives
Once an archive has been opened in , it can be extracted. To extract files from an archive, you can either select Extract... from the Action or by right clicking on any file. The Extract dialog allows you to select where you will extract files to. You can also select which files to extract:
Current extracts the most recently selected file. If multiple files are selected, only the most recently selected one will be extracted.
All extracts the entire contents of the archive.
Selected Files extracts all the files which have been selected.
Pattern allows you to specify which files will be extracted, corresponding to certain patterns, ⪚ *.txt or *.jpg. Note that you can only use one pattern at a time.
You can specify the directory to extract files to in the Extract to: textbox. If you want to change the default directory, in the main program window, choose Directories on the Settings menu. Under the Advanced tab, you can choose some specific options depending on the archive format.

Creating Archives and Adding Files
To create a new archive in , choose New from the File menu.
You can then type the name of the archive, with the appropriate extension (tar.gz, zip, bz2 ). To add files to the archive, choose Add File... from the Action menu. If you want to add an entire directory to an archive, choose Add Directory... from the Action menu.
An alternative way to add files to the archive is to drag a file from or the desktop into the main window, and it will be added to the current archive.