First let me say that dropping Jason's name into the discussion doesn't add to your credibility. I too have emailed Jason about shntool and received replies and even helped him iron out a bug in shntool. Yes he is a nice guy. So I guess that means we are even on that score.

But what has this got to do with anything? Where did I take away any credit from Jason for coming up with shntool by suggesting that people try out BatchEnc to run shntool? I am a big fan of shntool, which is one of the most useful tools out there for audio enthusiasts.

The biggest problem that many people have using shntool is that they want to fix only a portion of the files in a directory at one time, which means using a simple wildcard like *.shn won't work because that will fix ALL the files. The solution is either you specify more precisely what files you are working with (which is tough for ppl who already have trouble with the command-line ( @ Five)), or you have to split the files up into separate directories. BatchEnc solves this problem by allowing you to pick the files you want to work with in a simple GUI interface, which is what most people prefer. You have not addressed this point at all in your tirade against me. But it is the key point for why someone would want to use BatchEnc. If anyone is doing any bashing here it is you when you called BatchEnc 'just another useless frontend'. Btw as I pointed out above, BatchEnc was apparently NOT even written with shntool in mind. It was written as a general frontend encoder. I was merely pointing out another use for it. And judging by peoples' replies, they have found it useful. I am sorry that this conflicts with the politics of thanking the coders of binaries by always using the command line.

I advocate the use of frontends b/c they are incredibly handy tools for people who want to work with binary files but who don't want to fuss w/ the command line each time. I do not advocate frontends as a way of bashing the programmers of binaries by suggesting that they have not done a complete job. As a matter of fact, I do most of my encoding with batch files that I wrote myself, NOT with frontends. But I am trying to offer advice to the average TTD'er (not to experts like you) who probably don't want to learn how to make a batch file.

And MKW IS obsolete for a number of reasons: 1. It doesn't produce revision 1 seektables, only revision 0; 2. It has serious issues with Win XP SP2 which can render it inoperable. In addition, it is buggy: 1. the tendency to produce .bak files for inexplicable reasons; 2. its default production of .mkw files which has led more than one person to seed such files w/o knowing why they chose that format. The fact is MKWAct is no longer in active development due to the illness of the author (against whom I have nothing, and I wish him all the best), so I think it only makes sense to conclude that it's now obsolete.

But with Multi-frontend you can take advantage of the LATEST developments in SHN because all you have to do is switch to the latest binary. AND it works with flac.exe and even ape too, i.e. one frontend for ALL formats accepted at TTD. But that being said, if MKWAct works for you then keep using it. I've never suggested that anyone should stop using it for decompressing SHNs if they are having no issues with it.

Of course I tend to try to sway ppl to my views. Should I be trying to sway them towards a viewpoint that I don't agree with? That's just plain absurd. Explain to me how what you do is any different.

I've noticed that you seem to have a real chip on your shoulder regarding people who give advice and have opinions, e.g. wazoo2u. And yet you offer very little useful advice yourself; just pointless criticism ('useless frontend') and selfish tirades against people (i.e. wazoo2u) who are only trying to help you. Next time you need help just email your buddy Jason and don't bother posting here.