I'm currently working on the next version of Universal Extractor. During my research into what features should be included in the new release, I came across a couple of new applications that will provide a substantial benefit to Universal Extractor.
In no particular order, the first is cmdTotal. This tiny assembly program "is a generic approach to make it possible to use any Total Commander WCX packer plugin from a command line." This has been something of a personal holy grail for me, as there are a number of extremely useful plugins for Total Commander that could greatly benefit Universal Extractor, but in the past could never be used because Total Commander itself is a shareware product. cmdTotal changes that by letting my use these plugins directly from Universal Extractor. Thanks to cmdTotal and the associated plugins, I've been able to add support for five entirely new formats, as well as expand support for six existing formats. I'd like to thank Adam at KaKeeware for making this possible, as well as the personal assistance he provided to help make it work correctly with Universal Extractor.
Up next is TrID. TrID is a "utility designed to identify file types from their binary signatures." The ability to identify filetypes based on their signature rather than relying on their extension has been another long standing item on my todo list. I had looked at a few such applications in the past, as well as toyed with the idea of writing my own, but nothing was quite appropriate for integration with Universal Extractor. When I came across TrID, however, I instantly realized I had found what I was looking for. This program integrates very easily with Universal Extractor, recognizes a large number a filetypes by default (currently 2377), and is very extensible. I've been able to add definitions for several additional filetypes to TrID, as well as tune existing definitions to better suit my requirements. This has allowed me to greatly increase the reliability and robustness of Universal Extractor's filetype detection, and instantly expands its file support by adding recognition of any file that matches a particular supported signature regardless of extension. For example, I was recently asked to add support for OpenOffice documents, which use the ZIP format for storage. I tested a few samples with the 1.5 beta version, and it worked right away without the need for any code changes! I'd like to thank Marko Pontello for writing this immensely useful application, and for giving me permission to include it with Universal Extractor.
Thanks again guys!
Here are the full links to the product pages. Check them out!
cmdTotal - http://www.kakeeware.com/i_cmdtotal.php
TrID - http://mark0.net/soft-trid-e.html