Zip files

[ed1]

I posted this suggestion/feature request in the Technical Support forum, but thought it might a good idea to include it here too:

@AmberV

AmberV wrote:
Scrivener will not open .zip files.

@ed

Perhaps that could be a feature to add to the wish list.

It would be quite handy if Scrivener could leverage the functionality of working with the archive files it creates in order to provide users with a one-click solution to accessing such an archive: select the zip from a dialogue box or menu within Scrivener, click the “open backup” button which prompts the user to specify a destination directory into which the zip is extracted before Scrivener simply opens the project in a new Scrivener window/instance.

@AmberV

Your idea of allowing Scrivener to open a Zip file in an extraction mode isn’t a bad one on the surface. Personally it would never cross my mind to consider opening a .zip file in a program that isn’t a .zip file management tool. That just seems odd to me, but I suppose I see the root cause of such an inclination. I’ve used a number of multi-file format applications over the years, so I’m kind of used to the idea of a “thing” that the program works with, being lots of files in a structured folder. It isn’t terribly common though.

@ed

It didn’t occur to me either until I found that XBMC could handle zip and rar files; VLC can also handle zip and ISO files so, while it’s not terribly common, it’s not unknown. Also, as the default backup behaviour in Scrivener actually uses (writes) zip files, I think providing the complimentary read function has an elegance that fits right in with the whole “why doesn’t it just work” agenda.

To help guard against any risk of confusion when working with backup files, and a user might have two or more copies/versions of a project open at the same time, it might also be a good idea to make the Scrivener window or its chrome a different colour, or to enable some kind of overlay, when the “open backup” feature is invoked.