Enjay
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Gez said:
PK2 is not an id software format...
Thanks for the clarification. To be fair, I wasn't sure that PK2 even existed but (without anything handy to actually check) I figured that with Quake uaing PAK files and Quake3 using PK3 files, it was a reasonable guess that Quake2 had used PK2 files. My mistake.
However, it kind of backs up my point even further in as much as id deliberately jumped over PK2 to use PK3 because the name tied in with the name of the game that they were specifically meant for - which was not Doom. ;)
Gez said:
Tip for annoying me: put your pk3 file in a zip. It's redundant and I can play any other ZIP file directly in ZDoom without having to extract it first.
Uploads to idgames excepted, presumably, where zip files containing the playable file plus a text file are supposed to be uploaded.
DaniJ said:
Besides, using the file name extension as a means of signalling anything about the actual format of the file is unnecessary.
I disagree. However, the usefulness is not from the program POV but primarily for the user.
Take, as an example, the DMD model format. When I see the DMD extension, I know that it is a model but that it is not one that any of my modelling programs can access. However, I also know that I can use the command line util to convert it to an MD2 and then I can work with it. None of my programs need to know that, but I do and the extension tells me.
Contrast that with PK3. I used to know that when I had a PK3 file, I could open it with Winzip and I would expect things inside to be laid out in a manner appropriate for the idtech3 engine and the resources etc would be of a type that I would expect to find in such a game. Now I have a bunch of files where it is very easy to forget whether they are idtech3 files or Zdoom files and this does cause me (minor) problems when working with these files.
And, of course, using something other than zip signals that the file is not meant to be opened for playing (as has already been mentioned) and also prevents Windows trying to pretend that it is a directory too.
In most programs, as you pretty much said, the file extension is actually used for little more than file filters and if a program is forced to load something with a non standard extension, then the program will probably load it provided the data is in a correct format. However, such an extension is likely to cause user confusion ("what's a .SEX file and how do I use it?")
So, whilst I agree that just having "some made up name" would be a bad idea, I do think that a name other than PK3 should have been picked and agreed on as a standard because using PK3 for Doom files is misleading, inappropriate and not consistent with the contents of what idtech3 PK3 files contain. However, I also think that it is too late and PK3 has been used so often that it is now regarded as the "correct" name and PK7 is also creeping in as a standard too.
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08-30-10 05:14 
