I've been running into an increasing number of ZIP files that `ark` can't extract because it apparently uses an ancient ZIP library. In some cases it fails silently, in others it opens and says "Failed to open archive: Zip archive inconsistent", and in still others it says the file is corrupt. In ALL cases, `unzip` (version 6.00 of 20 April 2009 by Debian) uncompresses the files without complaint or error. One such file, when examined with the `file` command, returns the following: "Zip archive data, at least v4.5 to extract". So presumably, whatever Ark uses for ZIP files is an even earlier version than that. This is on KDE Neon User Edition, which is based on Ubuntu 16.04.
Can you try to disable the libzip plugin the ark settings and see if that helps? Also, cna you upload a test archive that is affected by the issue? This would help a lot.
Disabling the libzip plugin fixes the problem partially, at least with the one problematic ZIP file I happen to have lying around. It allows me to *extract* files from this ZIP, but not *modify* it -- if I delete one of the files it contains, Ark shows it as deleted, but when I close Ark and reopen the ZIP file, the supposedly deleted file is still there. This problem does *not* occur with ZIP files I make with Ark -- I can extract and modify those. I can't upload the problematic ZIP file publicly, but I'm going to mail you a link so you can download it.
@Scott: the archive you sent me (Ascoli.zip) appears to be corrupt, and libzip does not like it. 7z does open it but it detects the corruption as well. The only thing we could do is trying all plugins until one of them opens the archive, but it's not going to be easy. Doing so, btw, would also help with https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=379964
@Elvis: I know libzip reports some sort of corruption, but the file can be uncompressed with no problems whatsoever not just by 7zip on Linux, but also by 7zip 16.04 on Windows, Linux's unzip 6.00, WinRAR 5.40 on Windows, the built-in compression/decompression in Directory Opus (a Windows file manager) and Windows 10's Windows Explorer. Also, as I mentioned before, Ark extracts it just fine with libzip disabled -- I assume it's the InfoZip plugin doing the work in this case, but that's something you know far more about than me. (7zip on Windows does complain about a "Headers Error", but it otherwise extracts the files without issue, and it's the only program of all the ones I mention above that even complains.) I'm not sure, but I *think* this file was created by a Mac user, for what that's worth. In any case, I'll gladly try all the plugins. Does that just involve disabling all of Ark's plugins and then activating them one at a time?
Yes. Though I meant that ark should try automatically all the plugins until one of them opens the archive.