Talk:SZS (File Extension)

szs means: compressed archive

If you change the first sentence to:

• The extension .szs is used for file archives, that are compressed, mostly by Yaz0. Examples are U8, BRRES and RARC archives. This is like the .gz extension in Unix systems, that is used for different compressed file formats and archives.

... then the whole article can be shorten, because the are no misunderstandings.

For more info read: List_of_File_Formats#Further_Information

-- Wiimm (talk) 13:42, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

And SZS is still a file format for compressed data!! -- Wiimm (talk) 13:45, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I rather bring up many examples instead of making a short and pointless page. I'm no expert at this, but I would say the file format doesn't change because of its extension. A SARC is still a SARC, it doesn't matter if its extension is .szs, .arc or .sarc, it is still a SARC file. The content of the file should be the actual file format.
--Wexos (Talk | Contribs) 13:52, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

File extensions are used very often as short names for file formats. Nobody says "Microsoft Open XML formats, Office Document, Spreadsheet". It is called simply "xlsx" file. So xlsx is a synonym for the file format. "tgz" and "szs" are equal:

• A TGZ file is a GZ file containing a TAR file. And so TGZ is not only an extension, it is also a name for a combined file format. If you rename "a.tgz" to "fuu.baa", it is still a TGZ file (file format remains same!) with a new extension.
• A SZS file is a YAZ0 file containing a U8/BRRES/RARC file. And so SZS is not only an extension, it is also a name for a group of combined file format. If you rename "a.szs" to "fuu.baa", it is still a SZS file (file format remains same!) with a new extension.

Hope this classical examples help to understand.

-- Wiimm (talk) 14:07, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I see. The only thing is that a SZS file can contain any file, not only BRRES and U8. I took the examples of SARC and BFRES. Also, I haven't found any RARC files with .szs extension, only .arc but all RARC I have found are also compressed.
--Wexos (Talk | Contribs) 17:07, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Why not like this? SZS is like a LZ: you can have a LZ compressed BRRES (like in globe.arc → earth.brres.lz) and you don't consider this file a LZ format but a BRRES format with LZ compression (in this case, the file in globe.arc is LZ77 compressed). Just imagine if the file was named earth.lzb for example, LZB wouldn't be a format but the extension given to the LZ77 compressed BRRES. —Atlas (talk) 17:18, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

There is a difference between TGZ and SZS. You say TGZ contains a specific content. A .szs can contain anything, the extension only tells us the data is Yaz0 compressed.
--Wexos (Talk | Contribs) 17:29, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

SZS is always a YAZ* compressed archive file. I haven't seen any other combination (or I can't remember). That's the reason I wrote: "for a group of combined file format"

If we talk about SZS files, nearly always YAZ0+U8 and sometimes YAZ0+BRRES are meant. And If I ask you "give me the SZS file of the track", then I mean a file of format SZS and not any file with extension .szs of any other file or archive format. And you understand me. So we implicit talk about the file format when talking about SZS.

-- Wiimm (talk) 23:15, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

As I said before, if your statement was true, then we would say the file format from earth.brres.lz is LZ instead of BRRES. Think about it as a kind of BRRES instead (BrawlBox also specifies BRRES files with different compression types and it's still BRRES format after all) with a LZ77 attribute. When you use the compression tool, it adds the new magic to the file, but the format still remains the same, even if it's covered by a compression or encoding algorithm. The main reason I think they kept SZS as the extension is just to identify it's a compressed file without needing to go through its data.

Also, take in mind that Yaz0 as well as Yay0, Yaz1, Yay1, MIO0, MIO1, MIL0 and MIL1 are compression types used way back into N64 and 64DD games. And specifically, the first Yaz0 compressed files used in the N64 weren't found into files with the .szs extension, but into sound data archives.

—Atlas (talk) 08:27, 19 April 2017 (UTC)