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<h2 class="chapter">9 .MDZ files</h2>
<p>This was written by Fabian Giesen, based on the original
<samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> description by Niklas Beisert.
<h3 class="section">9.1 What are <samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> files?</h3>
<p><samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> files are Module Description files (the <em>MDZ</em> is a short
form of <em>DIZ</em>, which is in turn a short form of Description).
The <samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> format can, however, contain much more information than
normal Module/Sound files, which normally only contain the song's title and
sometimes a “song message”, which can be freely entered by the author.
Things like the name of the author of a song, its playtime, a comment about
it etc. which can be entered in OCP's Fileselector cannot be stored inside
the module file, so they have to be stored somewhere else. Usually this is
in the file <samp><span class="file">CPMODNFO.DAT</span></samp>, which normally perfectly suits this task.
<p>However, this format has some disadvantages. Imagine you give a module file
to a friend. Simply copying your <samp><span class="file">CPMODNFO.DAT</span></samp> together with the
song on the disk is impractical, because this file overwrites your friend's
<samp><span class="file">CPMODNFO.DAT</span></samp> when he simply copies it. So he could take your
description, write it down somewhere, and take it with him, but that is
pretty uncomfortable.
<p>That's why the <samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> files were invented. <samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> files
contain the description of one or more module file(s), just like the
<samp><span class="file">CPMODNFO.DAT</span></samp>, but have attributes which make them interesting:
<ul>
<li><samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> files are normal text files and therefore human readable
<li>The content of <samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> files gets automatically inserted in the
module description database <samp><span class="file">CPMODNFO.DAT</span></samp> without need for user
interaction
<li><samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> files can be exported from within the OCP fileselector
with one keystroke (see section See <a href="fileselector.html#fileselector">Reference</a>.)
</ul>
<h3 class="section">9.2 Why should I use them?</h3>
<p>(This section is intended for composers)
<p>There are of course some good reasons for using them:
<ul>
<li>Every OCP user sees your description automatically when he moves the
cursor over the file
<li>The module type is also stored in <samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> files, so you can
explicitely force OCP to play your Module in Protracker (or FastTracker)
mode, for example.
<li>Even if the user does not use OCP, he can still read your description,
because <samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> is a simple, human readable text format
<li>Creating <samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> files is almost no extra work (you can create a
complete <samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> file from within OCP in less than one minute)
</ul>
<p>So, as you see, using <samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> files has many advantages, but (almost)
no disadvantages. It is surely worth trying.
<h3 class="section">9.3 The <samp><span class="file">.MDZ</span></samp> file format</h3>
<p>This is not documented here. If you want a complete description, wait for the
soon to be released OCP Technical Reference Manual.
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