diff --git a/src/Codec/Archive/Zip.hs b/src/Codec/Archive/Zip.hs
--- a/src/Codec/Archive/Zip.hs
+++ b/src/Codec/Archive/Zip.hs
@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@
 
        -- * Pure functions for working with zip archives
        , toArchive
+       , toArchiveOrFail
        , fromArchive
        , filesInArchive
        , addEntryToArchive
@@ -156,6 +157,13 @@
 toArchive :: B.ByteString -> Archive
 toArchive = decode
 
+-- | Like 'toArchive', but returns an 'Either' value instead of raising an error
+-- if the archive cannot be decoded.
+toArchiveOrFail :: B.ByteString -> Either String Archive
+toArchiveOrFail bs = case decodeOrFail bs of
+                           Left (_,_,e)  -> Left e
+                           Right (_,_,x) -> Right x
+
 -- | Writes an 'Archive' structure to a raw zip archive (in a lazy bytestring).
 fromArchive :: Archive -> B.ByteString
 fromArchive = encode
@@ -573,7 +581,7 @@
 putLocalFile f = do
   putWord32le 0x04034b50
   putWord16le 20 -- version needed to extract (>=2.0)
-  putWord16le 2  -- general purpose bit flag (max compression)
+  putWord16le 0x802  -- general purpose bit flag (bit 1 = max compression, bit 11 = UTF-8)
   putWord16le $ case eCompressionMethod f of
                      NoCompression -> 0
                      Deflate       -> 8
diff --git a/zip-archive.cabal b/zip-archive.cabal
--- a/zip-archive.cabal
+++ b/zip-archive.cabal
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 Name:                zip-archive
-Version:             0.2.2.1
+Version:             0.2.3
 Cabal-Version:       >= 1.10
 Build-type:          Simple
 Synopsis:            Library for creating and modifying zip archives.
@@ -34,7 +34,6 @@
   Default-Language:  Haskell98
   Hs-Source-Dirs:    src
   Ghc-Options:       -Wall
-  Default-Extensions: CPP
   if os(windows)
     cpp-options:     -D_WINDOWS
   else