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Ark really needs some love. I like how it already has support for many formats, but it is totally inflexible when it comes to actually using them.

Point one: there does not seem to be a way to set any compression options - it always uses the default. With formats like 7z and rar, this is way too inflexible.
There should be an "options" button on the "add file" dialog, which either leads to a configuration dialog for this format OR at least a text field for a "custom command line", where the user can enter any custom switches the format supports. The layout of the option dialog could be copied from tools like 7zFM or winRAR.

Point two: presets. Sometimes I compress files to .rar in RAR5 for higher compression, sometimes compression ratio is unimportant, but compatibility is. Ark should provide a function to save those settings as presets.

Point three: service menus for dolphin should have their actions auto-generated to include any presets the user created. Since the menu could get crowded, offer the user an option to show/not show it in the menu (this is probably covered by disabling the entries in dolphin's config though).

I've actually tried editing the existing service menus and adding the custom options I need, but the entry doesn't work. It seems that ark does not pass the command switches after, say, "rar" statement, but attempts to actually parse them, obviously resulting in "unknown option" error messages.

A bonus would be to allow handling winRAR's comments. I know of no linux tool that can handle them at the moment.

Good suggestions.
Please note that the KF5-based Ark should be released with Applications 15.08.
Since most of the devs are currently working on the port itself, it's unlikely that there will be enough time to implement these features before that.
In the meantime, feel free to open a feature request on the bug tracker, for each feature you described here.

Added those to the bug tracker as requested.
Assuming I'd want to take a stab at it myself, is there anything that could help me start/setup stuff? Looking at the source files, at least the per-format config options are already planned, I guess? (addtoarchive.ui)

Soukyuu wrote:Added those to the bug tracker as requested.
Assuming I'd want to take a stab at it myself, is there anything that could help me start/setup stuff? Looking at the source files, at least the per-format config options are already planned, I guess? (addtoarchive.ui)

Yes, the compression options are supposed to be showed in the AddDialog widget, which is described by adddialog.ui