MODCLEAN v1.1

- What is MODCLEAN ?

MODCLEAN is a small utility that can reduce the size of ProTracker
compatible MODs - without affecting the songs contained in them in
ANY way! It does so by removing useless information from the MODs.
Many MODs contain extra patterns which were made by the composer
but later excluded from the song. It also removes any samples not
used in the song. As you may have guessed, MODCLEAN can not reduce
all MODS - only those containing unused patterns and/or samples.

- How good is it ?

Quite good! I've tested it on the 70-odd MODs I have on my harddisk
and it reduced about 1/3 of them. Smallest reduction was 1024 bytes
and largest reduction was 50092 bytes! And all of the MODs sounded
just the same as usual when I played them afterwards. I received no
more than four bug reports on v1.0 (all reporting the same bug), so
I think it's OK. Should you, however, come across a MOD that causes
MODCLEAN to crash, I'd really like to hear from you. You can find
my address near the end of this file.

- How do I use it ?

The syntax for MODCLEAN is:

	MODCLEAN <options> <filelist>

The filelist can be any number of file specifications. Wildcards are
accepted and so are references to other directories and drives. If you
don't specify an extension to the files, '.MOD' will be used. Note
that MODCLEAN creates a temporary file in the same directory as the
original MOD file. If there's not enough disk space for this tempfile,
MODCLEAN aborts. The tempfile will be deleted after use, except if
you specify the option -B (see below).

The options can be any of these:

-B	Keep backup of the original MOD. This option is mostly included
	to persuade the inevitable sceptics that MODCLEAN is safe to
	use ;)
-N	Don't reduce any files, just report how much each MOD can be
	reduced.
-I	Print some information about each MOD. The info printed is
	module name, module ID, number of channels, song length (in
	patterns), number of patterns and number of samples. The two
	last numbers are as AFTER a reduction, even if you specify
	-N.

- Examples of use

MODCLEAN *
  Scans and reduces all MODs in the current directory.
MODCLEAN -N -I D:\SONGS\*
  Prints info about all MODs in the D:\SONGS\ directory. No reduction
  is performed on the modules.
MODCLEAN -B FAB*.MOD
  Cleans up all FAB*.MOD in the current directory, keeping backups of
  all the MODs as FAB*.OLD.

- What kinds of MODs are supported ?

MODs written by ProTracker, StarTrekker and FastTracker. If you know
what this means, MODCLEAN supports the IDs "M.K.", "M!K!", "6CHN",
"8CHN", "FLT4" and "FLT8". I think there are other valid IDs, but I
don't know what they are... If you don't know where your MOD came
from, just try MODCLEANing it - if it isn't one of the above, you'll
get an error message. In that case, please tell me what the ID is
and I'll add support for it.
NOTE: ModClean does NOT support 15-instrument MODs. These are an old
style of MODs and there's just no way of telling them apart from
other files (they don't use IDs). So if have some MODs that ModClean
won't load, they could be old 15-instrument MODs.

- Requirements

The program should be able to run on any IBM PC compatible computer.
There are no memory minimums, but the more memory you have, the larger
MODs can be reduced. DOS version should be 3.xx or above (I think).
MODCLEAN does not utilize EMS/XMS, so there is an upper limit to the
size of the MODs to be reduced. On my 386/40 with EMM386, I can read
MODs up to app. 580Kb.

- Public Domain

This program is in the public domain, which means that you may freely
use and distribute MODCLEAN as you like. However, you're not allowed
to alter the program in ANY way - I still have copyright!
I can not be held responsible for any damage caused by MODCLEAN.

- Thanks to:

Various people on the InterNet for typing up some docs on the MOD
format. Without those docs, this program would never have been made
(not by me, at least).
These people are: Vishnu/CRB, Andrew Scott and Lars Hamre.

Also thanks to Michael J. Sutter (FreeJack/Elven Nation) for testing
the program.

- Bugs in earlier version

Some MODs have extraneous information in their sequence table, that
ModClean wouldn't blank out. As a result, the MOD will sound distorted
and some of the patterns will be screwed up. If you have come across
this problem and don't have a backup of the MOD, please contact me
and I'll tell you how to "revive" the MOD (It's not all that screwed
up...).

- The author

My name is Torben Thellefsen and I live in Denmark (that's in Europe,
in case you didn't know). If you want to contact me about MODCLEAN
or anything else, here's the address:

	Torben Thellefsen
	Kanalstien 14, 2th
	DK-9000 Aalborg
	Denmark

	InterNet: monty@iesd.auc.dk   (expires September 1993)
	FidoNet: Torben Thellefsen	2:234/116
	(InterNet: Torben.Thellefsen@f116.n234.z2.fidonet.org)