Viewing a File in an Archive

The simplest way to view a file in the archive is to double-click on the file in File Roller main window. Alternatively, you can select the file and click View button in the toolbar. File Roller will automatically determine the appropriate viewer or application for this file type (using information shown in File Types and Programs section of GNOME Control Center) and launch it. If File Roller can not determine the appropriate viewer or application, it will prompt you to select one.

Viewers and Applications: The difference between viewers and applications is that viewers show file contents inside a File Roller window and thus do not require launching a separate application. Viewers are usually much faster to start but have very limited functionality

For advanced users, we note that these viewers are not a part of File Roller. Instead, they are provided by other GNOME applications and use special technology (bonobo) which allows them to work inside File Roller window. Thus, the number of viewers available to File Roller depends on bonobo-enabled applications installed on your system.

WARNING

Please note that File Roller only allows you to view a file but not change it. If you open a file with an application and make any changes to it, these changes will not be saved in the archive, even if you clicked Save button in the application. (The reason is that File Roller creates a temporary copy of the file and then passes this copy to the application. This temporary copy is deleted after you close the application, and the changes are lost.)

If you want to edit a file in the archive and have your changes saved in the archive, you should extract the file to a temporary location, edit it, and then add this file back to the archive, overwriting the original.

You can also view a file using the viewer or application you specify rather than the default one. To open a file using an internal viewer, choose Actions->View file or right-click on the filename and choose View file. File Roller will open the file using the most appropriate viewer for files of this type; if it can't find a viewer, it will try to show the file using text viewer.

To open a file using an external application, choose Actions->Open file with... or right-click on the filename and choose Open file with.... This will open a dialog that shows all applications that can open files of this type. You can select one of them by clicking on it and then clicking OK. You can also manually enter the command to launch the application of your choice.