Not sure if I got the Screen Thief fix in, but I fixed up the progress bar and the renaming of short names. I made a bunch of UI changes including adding the file browser and text viewer. Version 1.4 attached to the original post.

One thing I haven't addressed is when trying to view a text file that's inside an archive within an archive. XArc wants to extract instead.

DaveDDS wrote on 2026-08-28, 23:08:

Oh, believe it or not, i'm well aware that we've not been talking about DOS conventional memory. Wether or not you consider XMS as part of DOS (it's an add-ons shipped with DOS) is a matter of opinion (I don't particularly - but many people disagree) - but even with "normal" XMS you can'y go beyond 4G (and even >2G is tough) [...]

Fair point. I'm personally in the camp that believes DOS is nothing more than IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, and COMMAND.COM (or IBMIO.COM, IBMDOS.COM, and COMMAND.COM for PC DOS). Everything else bundled together is just an optional, extra utility not required for DOS to operate.

OzzFan wrote on 2026-09-08, 04:58:

Fair point. I'm personally in the camp that believes DOS is nothing more than IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, and COMMAND.COM (or IBMIO.COM, IBMDOS.COM, and COMMAND.COM for PC DOS). Everything else bundled together is just an optional, extra utility not required for DOS to operate.

I for the most part agree .. but I tend to expand my view slightly to consider tools provided that are essential for most "normal" use.

You don't technically need ATTRIB, COPY or many of the other things provided with DOS (and in fact I have replaced many of these things in my own working systems).
For that matter, you don't technically need COMMAND.COM if you are either using DOS to run a non-interactive system or have replaced it with a better option.

Having fairly in-depth experience with many dedicated/embedded systems, I tend to think of an OS as a "processor", "memory" and "storage" manager, and everything else just an application program.

TSRs, XMS drivers etc. are more of a grey area as they integrate into the operating environment in ways "normal" applications don't - I personally still consider them "system level" add-ons, but many people disagree.

OzzFan wrote on 2026-09-08, 04:37:

Not sure if I got the Screen Thief fix in, but I fixed up the progress bar and the renaming of short names. I made a bunch of UI changes including adding the file browser and text viewer. Version 1.4 attached to the original post.

One thing I haven't addressed is when trying to view a text file that's inside an archive within an archive. XArc wants to extract instead.

XArc 1.4 tested. Before XArc, to extract archives with long file names, I had to list the files of the archive, redirect the output to a BAT file, EDIT every file with long names in BAT file, execute it and finally extract the files. And this only worked if the command line in BAT file was shorter than 128 characters (DOS limit). Now I'm able to not only extract without all the hassle but to read the text files inside archive to check if it's worth the extraction. Many thanks for this!

Bugs found:
-Random crashes with Screen Thief 2.04 loaded stil persist. It happens trying to extract, viewing a file or doing nothing.
-At DOS statup, I have 618K of conventional and about 64K of XMS of memory free. In a DOS Shell session with Links Web Browser loaded, according MEM there's 360K of conventional, 15K of upper and 0K of XMS memory free. XArc is able to run with this amount of free memory. But, if I open a compressed file inside XArc, when I exit XArc there is 258K of conventional and 0K of upper memory free. When I return to and exit from Links Web Browser, the memory restores to 618K. XArc does not free the memory used after an archive has been loaded. This does not happen if I only view a text file inside XArc.
-When extracting files inside a long file name folder, if Extract Pathnames and Auto-rename to 8.3 are off, XArc asks for a folder name. Pressing Ok will extract the files without creating the folder. Pressing Skip or Cancel during folder rename dialog will cancel the extraction.
-Items in status bar also count [..] as an item.

Suggestions:
I see you did not implement all of my suggestions. I will assume you did not agree with them and I will not comment about them.
-Change F3 to view text file (as in Norton Commander), use F7 to test integrity.
-Keep the [..] to return to previous level when inside a file and remove option F2 return to disk.
-Change [..] to ..
-Maximize view text file window or, at least, show 80 characters wide to be able to read a file without the need to keep scrolling left and right.
-Show archive comment: add to menu Options Auto-show comments (off by default; if on, a text window will pop-up showing comments when opening an archive with comments), reuse text window to show comments with "Archive comment" in title, F2 will show archive comment if exists or will show a message box indicating that there are no comments in file, show in Archive info: Comment: Yes/No.
-Allow uncompress of password protected archives: when trying to extract, show a textbox to enter the password, show in Archive info: Password: Yes/No.
-Allow multi-volume archives (in RAR is: .rar, .r01, .r02...): when open any volume file, show all the files in all the volumes, show in Archive info: Volumes: [number].

OzzFan wrote on 2026-08-30, 20:43:

I've fixed up the XMS memory detection to try XMS 3.0 first before falling back to XMS 2.0 calls. Hopefully this should resolve the memory issue for you.
I also fixed the inability to extract to the root of a drive. This was caused by a double backslash when putting together the full path, e.g. C:\\MYFOLDER\.
The rest of your UI suggestions should now be implemented. Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for taking the time to code such a utility.

I wouldn't get too hung up on whether the utility works with 3G+ of memory - that seems to be a very edge case scenario for most users of DOS (unless it helps understand a more general use issue/bug). A machine with >1GB RAM probably has other ways to unzip a 7ZIP file?

Thanks again...

ntalaec wrote on Yesterday, 09:30:

-Change F3 to view text file (as in Norton Commander), use F7 to test integrity. -Keep the [..] to return to previous level when […]
Show full quote

-Change F3 to view text file (as in Norton Commander), use F7 to test integrity.
-Keep the [..] to return to previous level when inside a file and remove option F2 return to disk.
-Change [..] to ..
-Maximize view text file window or, at least, show 80 characters wide to be able to read a file without the need to keep scrolling left and right.
-Allow multi-volume archives (in RAR is: .rar, .r01, .r02...): when open any volume file, show all the files in all the volumes, show in Archive info: Volumes: [number].

Thanks for all of the improvements! v. 1.4 is now a really great program.

I agree with implementing the above. Viewing of .txt files within archives should definitely be on an 80-column screen with pgdn/pgup being able to scroll a full page at a time.

Multi-volume archive handling would be nice, but probably hard to implement and / or would increase the size of the .exe too much. We don't want XARC to become too bloated.

ntalaec wrote on Yesterday, 09:30:

OzzFan wrote on 2026-09-08, 04:37:

Not sure if I got the Screen Thief fix in, but I fixed up the progress bar and the renaming of short names. I made a bunch of UI changes including adding the file browser and text viewer. Version 1.4 attached to the original post.

One thing I haven't addressed is when trying to view a text file that's inside an archive within an archive. XArc wants to extract instead.

XArc 1.4 tested. Before XArc, to extract archives with long file names, I had to list the files of the archive, redirect the output to a BAT file, EDIT every file with long names in BAT file, execute it and finally extract the files. And this only worked if the command line in BAT file was shorter than 128 characters (DOS limit). Now I'm able to not only extract without all the hassle but to read the text files inside archive to check if it's worth the extraction. Many thanks for this!

Glad to hear it!

ntalaec wrote on Yesterday, 09:30:

Suggestions:
I see you did not implement all of my suggestions. I will assume you did not agree with them and I will not comment about them.

I didn't disagree with the rest. I'm still working on the locality/region code to show group separators. I want to re-use this code for my Dobson Utilities suite too.
The only suggestion I was hemming and hawing over was renaming the .INI file. XArc is my guinea pig. All these features are getting ported to a Win32s and an OS/2 version with the full name XArchive, and all programs will work with the same .INI file.

ntalaec wrote on Yesterday, 09:30:

-Change F3 to view text file (as in Norton Commander), use F7 to test integrity. -Keep the [..] to return to previous level when […]
Show full quote

-Change F3 to view text file (as in Norton Commander), use F7 to test integrity.
-Keep the [..] to return to previous level when inside a file and remove option F2 return to disk.
-Change [..] to ..
-Maximize view text file window or, at least, show 80 characters wide to be able to read a file without the need to keep scrolling left and right.
-Show archive comment: add to menu Options Auto-show comments (off by default; if on, a text window will pop-up showing comments when opening an archive with comments), reuse text window to show comments with "Archive comment" in title, F2 will show archive comment if exists or will show a message box indicating that there are no comments in file, show in Archive info: Comment: Yes/No.
-Allow uncompress of password protected archives: when trying to extract, show a textbox to enter the password, show in Archive info: Password: Yes/No.
-Allow multi-volume archives (in RAR is: .rar, .r01, .r02...): when open any volume file, show all the files in all the volumes, show in Archive info: Volumes: [number].

I can do these. The hardest one is the password protected archives. 7Zip and later versions of .Zip use AES 256 encryption which is going to kill a 386, performance wise, but it is doable.

Thank you for the bug reports. The memory leak is particularly worrying to me, and I think I found it based on your report of viewing text files doesn't seem to trigger the leak. I'll get to work fixing and coding these suggestions. I appreciate it!

NeilKnows wrote on Yesterday, 10:20:

Thanks for taking the time to code such a utility. […]
Show full quote

OzzFan wrote on 2026-08-30, 20:43:

I've fixed up the XMS memory detection to try XMS 3.0 first before falling back to XMS 2.0 calls. Hopefully this should resolve the memory issue for you.
I also fixed the inability to extract to the root of a drive. This was caused by a double backslash when putting together the full path, e.g. C:\\MYFOLDER\.
The rest of your UI suggestions should now be implemented. Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for taking the time to code such a utility.

I wouldn't get too hung up on whether the utility works with 3G+ of memory - that seems to be a very edge case scenario for most users of DOS (unless it helps understand a more general use issue/bug). A machine with >1GB RAM probably has other ways to unzip a 7ZIP file?

Thanks again...

I really appreciate hearing it. Thanks!

zyzzle wrote on Yesterday, 20:46:

ntalaec wrote on Yesterday, 09:30:

-Change F3 to view text file (as in Norton Commander), use F7 to test integrity. -Keep the [..] to return to previous level when […]
Show full quote

-Change F3 to view text file (as in Norton Commander), use F7 to test integrity.
-Keep the [..] to return to previous level when inside a file and remove option F2 return to disk.
-Change [..] to ..
-Maximize view text file window or, at least, show 80 characters wide to be able to read a file without the need to keep scrolling left and right.
-Allow multi-volume archives (in RAR is: .rar, .r01, .r02...): when open any volume file, show all the files in all the volumes, show in Archive info: Volumes: [number].

Thanks for all of the improvements! v. 1.4 is now a really great program.

That's great! Glad I can contribute something to the community that people enjoy using.