How to Zip, Unzip, extract Rar files, open Tar format | FAQ

PeaZip introduces two concepts to improve the way archiving-related jobs are handled, bridging the gap between GUI and command line based software: archive layouts and exporting jobs to command line.

Each job launched by PeaZip run in a separate PeaLauncher instance. If a job ends in error, or test and list jobs, the job's window is kept open to let the user inspect and the job log it generated, and the command behind the job.
PeaZip can also be set to always keep open the job's window to always let the user inspect the job log in Options > Settings > General (1) tab
In the same tab tab it is possible to set how those applications are presented to the users (binarie user interface) chosing between 3 alternative modes:

Hints

Is PeaZip faster/slower than... does it compress better than... ?
Being PeaZip a frontend, each time an archive is queried interprocess communication is involved: if the program / the input path / the output path is on a slow network or slow unit this may bring a slowdown.
But most of the time is usually spent on archiving/extracting operations; in this case PeaZip is as fast as the invoked application (7z, which is command line 7-Zip executable, Paq, Pea, UPX etc...), which performance is mainly bound to the algorithm and the compression level involved, being the underlying executables good and efficient implementations.
PeaZip features extremely fast operations, as tar/untar, split/merge files, create archives with "store" compression level, quite fast operations (i.e. Deflate based algorithms, like in gzip compression), slow/quite slow operations (when bzip2, LZMA, PPMd, unrar, unace are involved), up to very slow operations when PAQ at highest compression levels are used.
A wide range of performances and compression levels can be attained using PeaZip, the point is in chosing the right balance between the two things.

Where does compressed and extracted files go?
By default PeaZip prompts to zip / unzip in the same path of the input object, but in archiving and extraction interfaces the Output group allows to set the output path.
The button on the right of the output address bar opens a standard output selection dialog, while on the left the button shows a dropdown menu allowing to select an output path from various pre-sets: system's paths (inlcuding: current item's path, the last used path, desktop, documents etc...), paths of bookmarked elements, and recently visited paths (paths visited in the current session, and paths of previously created or extracted archives). From this menu It is also possible to set a default custom output path.
UPX is the only exception from that mechanism since it always compress the input executable file in place.
In Options > Settings first tab it is available the option "Open output path when job completes".
Otherwise iin the same tab is available the PeaLauncher options dropdown menu: select "Always keep open to inspect job report" to be able, alongside other features, to click "Open output path" button after the job is completed - otherwise by default the job's window will auto close if no error is reported.

Change application's language and settings
From Options  > Localization you can select the application's language, PeaZip will display language files in peazip_folder\res\lang\ path.
You can download additional localizations from "PeaZip resources" group on SourceForge, and manually copy them in peazipfolder\res\lang\ path. New translations are made available for users as soon as they are provided, and then will be packaged with future releases of the program for ease of use.

Hint: the reset button allows to restore default settings; it does not reset bookmarks and custom editors which have separare reset.
Setting files can be reached clicking on the link on the bottom left of the Settings panel, which represents the configuration's path.
Deleting configuration files forces PeaZip to rebuild configuration based on hardcoded defaults; conversely, you can save backup copies of the configuration files to keep desired settings.

Saved compression settings
PeaZip remembers last used compression levels and compression algorithm for each format; custom options (where applicable), like passes, dictionary size etc are remembered only for the current session or until the compression format is changed.
All those settings can be reset to default using the reset button on "Options" panel.

How to stop and undo jobs
You can use "Stop" button in the graphic wrapper to stop the underlying job's process; partial outcome of the job will not be automatically deleted and will remain available for inspection, as well the job log.

How to manage archive files?

How to add/remove files to existing archives
To delete a file inside an archive press Cancel or use Delete > Delete from archive function. A confirmation dialog will be prompted allowing to cancel the operation if desired.
To update or add files to an existing archive, with the archive opened with PeaZip, files/folders can be dragged to the archive to be added: the application will show archive update interface and the operation can be confirmed pressing "Ok" button.
It could also be used the Add button or menu entry to go to archive update interface; no file/folder will be jet listed to be added in this case.
The list of objects (in the bottom area of the window) can be modified dragging files/folders on it, or rightclicking and using its context menu functions (add files, add folder, remove selected objects etc); the archive will be not updated until the operation is confirmed with "Ok".
Hint: some archives cannot be updated (neither adding nor removing files) because of solid mode used or because the archive type is supported only for extraction.
Hint: at current level of development files/folders are added to the archive's root level; this limitation can be avoided adding a path to the archive, since the folder nesting will be replicated in the archive.

PeaZip supports more than 150 file extensions, only most common ones are associated by the installer to the application, but all supported file types can be opened from PeaZip's file browser.
Some file types are minor variations of most common archive formats (i.e. APK, JAR, PAK and many more are basically ZIP archives) and generally can be opened, even when not explicitly supported by PeaZip, modifying the file extension.
Anyway, in those cases, additional standards may be mandatory implemented by the format (i.e. resource's naming conventions, checksums etc), so if you modify a file opened in that way be sure to know the specific file format standard.
An exaustive file extension library can be found at File-Extensions.org

ZIP is a popular archiving format, mainstream on Windows systems; ZIP file format specifications are mantained by PKWare which originally developed the format.
Newer archive formats like 7Z, RAR and ACE have gained popularity and introduced several improvements (some of them then brought into ZIP format) like better compression ratio, recovery records, strong encryption etc, but ZIP format retained much of its popularity gained in several years of widespread use.
ZIP compression is quite fast and it's based on Deflate algorithm (like in GZip format); alternatively Deflate64 or BZip2 based compression is possible, and supported by PeaZip.
Recently WinZip (probably the most popular zip file utility on Windows platform) introduced some new compression algorithms and a new encryption scheme, Advanced Encryption (AE), AES based; AE-encrypted archives and classic ZipCrypto-encrypted archives are supported by PeaZip, that is also capable to read PKWare's AES encrypted zip archives..
ZIP is the default archive format for PeaZip .
7Z is a modern, open source archive format, featuring AES encryption, native volume spanning, practically unlimited storage capacity and high compression ratio.
Supported compression algorithms (LZMA/LZMA2  , PPMd  , BZip2) can take benefit of parallel computing on modern multicore CPUs.
The 7z archive format was introduced by 7-Zip  on Windows platform and ported by p7zip  on Unix platforms.
PeaZip uses the components from those two programs (which are released under LGPL license as PeaZip) to offer the same GUI frontend to create, browse, test and extract 7z and ZIP archives under Linux and Windows as well.
PeaZip for Linux is desktop-neutral so it can be used either under Gnome or KDE desktop environment, or also other desktop managers. System integration mechanisms relies on FreeDesktop standards and requires a compliant environment, such Gnome and KDE, but basic archiving operations are not affected.
PeaZip can

To extract one or more files supported through 7Z frontend (7Z, RAR, TAR, ZIP and more) you can:

To enter password in PeaZip click in the locker icon in the status bar (in the file/archive browser) or the locker icon below output address field in extraction or archiving interfaces, or click Tools > Enter password / keyfile in main menu, or press F9.
"Keyfile" is optional, leave it blank if you don't want to rely on two factor authentication - use of keyfile increases security over password only encryption since also having access to the keyfile will be required to perform the extraction.

ARC (or WRC) is a new, open source archiving format developed by Bulat Ziganshin.
The format features strong but speed/memory efficient compression, comparable to or better than RAR an 7Z formats for most filetypes.
ARC format supports also:

Interestingly, ARC command line syntax is close to WinRAR one, allowing easy porting of scripts from one program to the other.
PeaZip offers a GUI frontend to create, browse, test, repair and extract ARC/WRC archives under Windows and Linux (on Gnome, KDE or other desktop environments).
ARC/WRC files can be currently be browsed only in flat mode (shows all objects in archive), but in any other aspect they can be handled as ZIP/7Z files (see previous point).
Please note that ARC (or ARK) is also the extension of an archive format developed by SEA company.
It was of mainstream diffusion before the introduction of ZIP; it has no connection with FreeARC's ARC format. PeaZip does not support those ARC/ARK files.

PAQ, LPAQ and ZPAQ are families of experimental compressors developed by Matt Mahomey and contributors.
PAQ compression has high computational requirements (memory, CPU time) if compared to mainstream compressors, but reaches the highest compression ratio presently possible.
Most of top ranking compression algorithms belongs from PAQ family or are derived works like ones featured in KGB Archiver, WinUDA, WinRK and Emilcont.
LPAQ is a "lite" version of PAQ, meant to be faster but providing lower compression levels; it is a compression only utility, so LPAQ-compressed files will feature a double extension, i.e. filename.ext.lpaq.
In PeaZip if multiple files are sent to be compressed by LPAQ they will be automatically added to a TAR archive before, resulting in the doule extension TAR.LPAQ.
ZPAQ is the latest evolution of the PAQ family, featuring backward compatibility, while PAQ and LPAQ doesn't, so archives created with a PAQ/LPAQ version need to be extracted with the same version.
PeaZip offers a GUI frontend to create, browse and extract many PAQ (PAQ8F, JD, L and O) and LPAQ (LPAQ1 and LPAQ5) archive types, under Windows and Linux (on Gnome, KDE or other desktop environments).

QUAD and BALZ are very efficient ROLZ-based compressor developed by Ilia Muraviev (QUAD and BALZ project pages), featuring high compression ratio and high extraction speed, due to the observation most types of end users are expected to rutinely unpack data and rarely compress files.
QUAD and BALZ are single file compressors, so compressed files will feature a double extension, i.e. filename.ext.quad.
In PeaZip, if multiple files are sent to be compressed by QUAD or BALZ they will be automatically added to a TAR archive before, resulting in the doule extension TAR.QUAD or TAR.BALZ respectively.
PeaZip offers a GUI frontend to create, browse and extract QUAD and BALZ compressed files, under Windows and Linux (on Gnome, KDE or other desktop environments).

ACE is a proprietary archive format introduced on Windows platform by WinACE and ported to Linux as command line utility (extraction only) by the same Author of WinACE.
Due to the commercial nature of the format no free software is available for creating ACE archives, but UNACE for extraction of ACE archives was made available as royalty free (for use and distribution) closed source software.
PeaZip features UNACE for Windows and Linux as external plugin on Add-ons page in order to keep the base PeaZip package free of closed source software (only software released under OSI approved licenses are included in the base package) and provide end users the ability of unpacking Ace archives..
UNACE plugin for PeaZip is available either as installable package or as compressed package to be installed by hand (recommended for PeaZip portable), and it's free of charge.

Troubleshooting

Why the application seem not responding / is slow on startup?

Why the progress bar has stopped, or reached the max, and the job is still running?
The graphic progress bar try to guess the job progress, but if you need a real time report of the job's progress the native console mode is more detailed and accurate.
In Options > Settings first tab, in "Backend binaries interface" dropdown menu, you can set PeaZip to display both the GUI and the console window if you want to have both a graphical interface to control the job and a detailed, real time report on ongoing activities in the console window.

Does PeaZip supports UTF-8 filenames?

On Windows systems, filenames containing extended characters outside current system's codepage cannot still be passed from the system to PeaZip due to limitations of the IDE used for developing PeaZip, see online help for more information..

Does PeaZip supports drag and drop?

Drag and drop is supported on Windows systems. You can drag and drop objects from the system to the application's icon and in the application's forms (main, archive layout creation, archive browser).
From 2.1 version, in Windows, PeaZip can drag and drop objects from the program's forms to the system (either to copy from a folder, or to unpack fron an archive), through a custom drag&drop function. It will not show standard Windows drag and drop icons and can drop items to (file)Explorer windows or desktop.
The advantage of this custom function is that it doesn't need to copy files to system's temporary path on drag&drop operations, speeding up a lot the operation if big files are involved (especially noticeable if files are not in the same volume of system's temp directory) and don't risking to lowen the security of the operation if the system's temp folder has security policies different from the ones of the intended output destination.
PeaZip is yet not integrated with Windows drag and drop's context menu handler (but it is integrated with rightclick's context menu for zipping, unzipping and advanced operations).

You can reconfigure the application's system integration running the configuration tool in Options > System integration (which automatically requires administration rights if needed), or selecting "Custom installation / Configuration" in the installer to access to more options.

PeaZip on Linux

PeaZip is a standalone, almost self contained zip / unzip application: you can unpack peazip_portable package (.tar.gz) in any path and just click on peazip binary; see FreeDesktop_integration folder in program's path to know how to integrate PeaZip with the desktop environment (Gnome, KDE...).

However, installable packages for generic Linux or specific distributions are available as well; on download pages you can find most up to date package right for your system (RPM, DEB, TGZ); installable packages automatically integrate PeaZip with the desktop environment.
Distribution-specific packages of PeaZip were also built from Linux communities, and are linked on PeaZip for Linux download page too.
On 64 bit systems, if desired, any 32 bit backend applications can be replaced with respective 64 bit counterpart (if available from the respective Authors), but please remember that any 32 bit executable will need ia32-libs to be installed in order to to run on a 64 bit system.
PeaZip is a cross platform and cross widgetset application, meaning it can be compiled for different systems and widgetsets.
Precompiled binaries Linux packages are built for GTK2 and Qt, which offers modern look and feel and very functional system dialogs.
PeaZip Portable for Linux can be used as alternative to native packages on BSD systems, due to binary compatibility provided by BSD systems to Linux executables.
PeaZip Portable for BSD contains natively compiled (i386, GTK2) peazip, pea, pealauncher, and p7zip executables, providing most of the program's funtions are performed by native binaries, for other backends, Linux binaries are used.
Many other operating systems and widgetsets are supported by Lazarus, the IDE used for PeaZip's development, including GTK1, WindCE, fpGUI and Carbon. If you want to compile PeaZip from sources see notes for developers.

How do I make my system aware of PeaZip functionalities?
PeaZip installable packages authomatically create application's icon, list PeaZip in available applications and create some KDE ServiceMenu entries to reach most used program's functions (archive, open, extract here, extract to new folder).
FreeDesktop_integration folder (featured both in installable and in standalone versions) contains .desktop files and simple instructions to add PeaZip to start menus and context menus of desktop environments following the FreeDesktop standards (like Gnome and KDE), and Nautilus scripts folder which can be manually copied to user's Nautilus script's folder to add PeaZip's functionalities to Gnome's context menu.

What if I cannot run PeaZip due to unresolved dependencies.
If the system report missing libraries the first time you are running PeaZip binary, you can generally find missing libraries on your installation media or, better, if an Internet connection is available, you can search them online using your installation or update manager, or even in a web based .rpm or .deb repository; generally missing libraries are standard, well known and widely available gtk/gkd components (the most common is libgdk_pixbuf library).

What are hardware/software prerequisites?
PeaZip should run on x86-compatible CPU due to some performance critical sections written in ASM; CPU and, mainly, RAM requisites are bound top the chosen algorithm and compression level, ranging to few KB for simpler algorithms (like when storing files without compression in tar/gz/zip formats) to above than a GB for most powerful and complex algorithms at highest compression level, like LZMA, PPMd and PAQ). Needless to say, it is the choice of the compression algorithm the most important factor in determination of job's speed, even if usually the most advanced algorithms are also the ones which scales better in performances in multicore enviroments.
As for software prerequisites, all needed software invoked by the frontend is included in PeaZip packages (being available under suitable licenses, as open source or royalty free) so no custom package is needed to be installed to make PeaZip work (with the possible exception of some standard gtk/gdk related libraries needed to run PeaZip, PeaLauncher and Pea binaries, which may miss in some system, but are well known, trustable and widely available).
If you don't want non open source software in your system, like unrar.so (which brings specific license restrictions about reverse engineering) or unace binary (closed source, royalty free), you simply need to delete them from /res/ path in program's folder.

Porting

OSX
Lazarus IDE support for Carbon widgetset is alpha (a solution could be using alternative libraries, as Qt, but I would prefer the native, default widgetset), and moreover I can raraley have full access to OSX systems; however the Lazarus support for OSX is quickly progressing, and my interest in porting PeaZip to OSX platform remains very high.
I hope to be able to deploy PeaZip for OSX in future, and any help and feedback from users of Lazarus IDE on OSX will be welcome.