mkwcon - MKW Console utility
----------------------------

mkwcon is a console utility to encode and decode MKW files.  MKW stands for
Michael K. Weise, who is the original author of the MKW audio compression
algorithm.  Until now, MKW files could only be manipulated by his front-end
GUI, mkwACT.

mkwcon is essentially a wrapper around mkwm4.drv, the external MKW compression
library used by mkwACT.  While mkwcon can be used as a standalone program, it
was developed primarily to support the MKW format in shntool.

mkwcon is a win32 program.  Since it relies on a win32 library (mkwm4.drv) to
function, there are currently no plans to port it to other systems.


Quirks
------

If any errors are encountered in the library functions that mkwcon calls
within mkwm4.drv, then you may see a popup window.  mkwcon may even crash.
There is not much I can do about this, short of a) taking a hex editor to
mkwm4.drv (forbidden by the MKW license), or b) rewriting the MKW algorithm
from scratch (which I have neither the time nor inclination to do).

When reading MKW files within shntool, you may hear the Windows Exclamation
sound multiple times per file.  This is because shntool closes the WAVE stream
prematurely when scanning the WAVE data within any file, and mkwm4.drv does
not like this.  Again, this is something I don't think can be changed easily.


Installation
------------

Copy mkwcon.exe and mkwm4.drv to any folder in your PATH.  If you use shntool,
a good location would be the same folder where shntool.exe is located.

Once installed, open a Command Prompt window, and type 'mkwcon -h' for usage
information.


License
-------

mkwcon is distributed under the MIT License.  See License.txt for details.

mkwm4.drv falls under the original MKW License.  See MKW-License.txt for details.


==================
Document revision:
==================

$Id: Readme.txt,v 1.8 2007/01/24 15:50:15 jason Exp $
