Chip 2005 June/CHIP 2005-06.iso/program/basic_kit/WinRAR/wrar342.exe/WhatsNew.txt

Text File | 2004-12-26 | 10.9 KB | 266 lines

                RAR - What's new in the latest version


   Version 3.42

   1. Fixed a buffer overflow bug in WinRAR GUI "Delete" command,
      which could cause a crash when deleting a file in corrupt
      archive.


   Version 3.41

   1. Bugs corrected in this version:

      a) when adding new files to already existing RAR solid archive,
         RAR 3.40 compression ratio was lower than in RAR 3.30;

      b) WinRAR "Repair" command could crash when repairing
         a corrupt ZIP archive.

   2. If archived Unicode name is invalid, RAR 'l' and 'v' commands
      display ASCII file name instead of corrupt Unicode.


   Version 3.40

   1. "Fastest" (-m1) RAR compression method has been modified
      to provide much higher compression speed and lower ratio.
      It may be useful for tasks requiring the high speed like
      regular backups.

      You may increase "Fastest" speed even more selecting 64KB
      compression dictionary instead of default 4MB.

   2. WinRAR is able to decompress archives created by Unix 'compress'
      tool (.Z files). Like GZIP and BZIP2 archives, WinRAR opens
      tar.Z and .taz files in one step, so users do not need to
      unpack .tar manually.

   3. WinRAR is able to decompress archives created by 7-Zip
      (.7z files). "Find" command is not supported for this
      archive type.

   4. New "Security" dialog in WinRAR settings:

      a) "File types to exclude from extracting" option to prevent
         extracting of potentially dangerous files like .exe, .scr
         and .pif;

      b) "Propose to select virus scanner" option modifies behavior
         of "Scan archive for viruses" command. You may turn it off
         if you wish to skip the virus scanner selection dialog.

   5. New command line switch -ep3 allows to save and restore
      full file paths including the drive letter.

      WinRAR shell equivalent of -ep3 switch are options
      "Store full paths including drive letter" in "Files/File paths"
      page of archiving dialog and "Extract absolute paths"
      in "Advanced/File paths" page of extracting dialog.

   6. You may select and compress disks directly in "My Computer"
      view in WinRAR shell. Just choose "My Computer" in WinRAR
      address bar, select disks to compress and press "Add".
      If you selected more than one item, WinRAR will automatically
      set "Store full paths including drive letter" archiving mode.

   7. If you selected several disks in Windows Explorer "My Computer"
      view and started archiving from context menu, WinRAR will
      automatically set "Store full paths including drive letter" mode
      when compressing them.

   8. New command line switch -oc to restore NTFS "Compressed" attribute
      when extracting files. RAR always saves "Compressed" attribute
      when creating an archive, but does not restore it unless -oc switch
      has been specified.

      WinRAR shell equivalent of -oc switch is "Set attribute Compressed"
      option in "Advanced" part of extracting dialog.

   9. Starting from this version RAR volumes contain the volume number
      field.

      If archive was created by WinRAR 3.40 or newer, you may view
      the volume number in the top line of "Info" dialog and
      in the address bar.

      In the command line mode the volume number is displayed
      by 'L' and 'V' commands in the line with the total volume
      information.

      This feature may be useful if original volume names are lost
      and you need to rename volumes to correct names.

  10. Commands 'L' and 'V' display NTFS "Compressed" attribute
      in archive listing.

  11. Switch -ag may include an optional text enclosed in '{' and '}'
      characters. This text is inserted into archive name.
      For example: -agHH{hours}MM{minutes}

      Same feature is supported in "Generate archive name by mask"
      field of WinRAR archiving dialog.

  12. If switch -ac is specified, RAR will not reset "Archive"
      attribute of those files, which size or modification time
      was changed after starting the archiving operation.

      So files modified after placing them to archive and before
      clearing "Archive" attribute, will be included to next incremental
      backup. The same is true for WinRAR "Clear attribute "Archive"
      after compressing" GUI option.

  13. If you use "Add to favorites" command inside of archive
      subfolder, WinRAR will save the subfolder and restore it
      when accessing to this favorite item. Previous versions
      were able to restore only the root archive folder.

  14. When editing archived files, WinRAR proposes to update them
      immediately after detecting that file was changed. Previous
      versions waited until an external editor terminates before
      updating a changed file.

  15. If you drop an archive to WinRAR address bar or toolbar,
      WinRAR will display its contents even if other archive
      is opened now. Previous versions proposed to add a dropped
      archive to browsing one.

      You may still drop an archive to WinRAR file list if you
      need to add it to browsing archive.

  16. Corrected processing of corrupt LZH archives to exclude
      a possible crash when reading corrupt LZH file headers.

  17. RAR and WinRAR display the operation progress while
      repairing an archive containing the recovery record.


   Version 3.30

   1. New "Scan archive for viruses" command unpacks an archive to
      temporary folder and checks its contents with antivirus software
      installed on a user's computer.

   2. New "Generate report" command creates a report containing
      the list of usual or archived files. You may optionally include
      a file size, date and CRC to report, choose the sort order,
      save report to file, send it to printer or copy to clipboard.

   3. New "Benchmark and hardware test" command allows to compare
      performance of RAR compression algorithm on different computers
      and detect possible errors caused by hardware failures.

   4. New "Print file" command is able to print both archived
      and usual files.

   5. New "Tools" menu contains "Wizard", "Show information",
      "Convert archives", "Find files", "Repair", "Convert to SFX"
      commands previously available in "Commands" menu and new
      "Scan archive for viruses", "Generate report", "Benchmark
      and hardware test" commands.

   6. WinRAR supports decompression of ZIP archives created using
      "Enhanced deflate" method.

   7. WinRAR pre-allocates disk space for files unpacked
      from ZIP archives. It helps to reduce disk fragmentation,
      especially on NTFS disks. Previous versions did it only
      for RAR archives.

   8. Now it is possible to decompress TAR, GZIP and ISO9660
      archives of any size. Previous versions could not handle
      files of these formats, if they exceeded 2 GB.

   9. Status bar displays the current operation progress,
      when reading contents of large tar.gz and tar.bz2 archives.

  10. "Next volume" dialog allows to modify not only a name,
      but also a size of next volume, so you may create volumes
      of different size. This dialog is displayed if you create
      volumes on removable disks or set "Pause after each volume"
      option in "Advanced" part of archiving dialog.

  11. Several -v<size> switches can be specified in the command
      line mode to set different sizes for different volumes.
      For example, 'rar a -v100k -v200k -v300k arcname' command
      sets 100 KB size for first volume, 200KB for second
      and 300KB for all following volumes.

  12. More WinRAR commands support Unicode in archive names.
      If your Windows is NT based (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, 2003),
      you may modify archives with non-English names regardless
      of Regional Settings.

  13. Small and some of large icons have been updated by
      Francesco Indrio.

  14. "Diagnostic message" window can be resized. It preserves
      new dimensions and restores them when activated the next time.

  15. "Mode..." button in the archiving progress window allows to
      change the compression method and "Turn PC off when done"
      option on the fly.

  16. WinRAR supports -cfg- switch in the command line mode.
      It forces WinRAR to ignore options saved in the default
      compression profile and RAR environment variable.

  17. WinRAR opens .qpr and .qpk files (QNX packages) in one step,
      like it already does for .tar.gz archives.

  18. Extraction command proposes to browse for missing CAB file
      in multivolume CAB sequence instead of "Cannot open" error.

  19. "Rename" command displays a window with information about
      processing files.

  20. "Convert" command checks the lowest allowed ratio before
      starting the archive test, so if resulting archive is too large,
      WinRAR does not waste time to test it.

  21. "Files to exclude" field in the archiving dialog has "Append"
      button now, so you may browse for excluded files instead of
      entering their names manually.

  22. WinRAR understands quotes inside of parameters in the command
      line mode. For example, "-pmy password" and -p"my password"
      will set the same password. Eariler WinRAR understood only
      the first syntax ("-pmy password") and only the console RAR
      handled both.

  23. Data analyzing module is tuned to detect executable and audio
      data more accurately. Erroneous selecting of executable
      and audio algorithms could reduce the compression ratio
      in some situations.

  24. WinRAR understands the command line switch -hp without
      a parameter and requests to enter a password when processing it.

  25. WinRAR preserves NTFS streams of updated archives, if archive
      and temporary files are resided on NTFS partition. For example,
      if you entered some comments in "Summary" section of archive
      properties, they will not be lost when updating an archive
      using WinRAR. Do not confuse NTFS streams of archive itself
      and streams of archived files, latter can be preserved
      by previous versions as well.

  26. It is possible to prohibit change of archiving password
      with "WinRAR\Policy\Password" Registry value. This feature
      may help to avoid encrypting of important data in multi-user
      environment. Read "Configuration settings/Registry variables"
      help topic for details.

  27. "Select toolbar buttons" dialog allows to specify separators
      after any toolbar button.

  28. New console RAR -si[name] switch to compress data from stdin
      (standard input).

  29. Console RAR 'vt' and 'lt' commands display symlink target names,
      when listing RAR/Unix archives contained symbolic links.
      These commands also display NTFS stream names, when listing
      WinRAR archives contained streams.