Mr_KrzYch00 webpage

KrzYoptimizer is a great Graphic User Interface (GUI for short) tool to optimize ZIP, JAR, GZ, PNG and JPG files. Deflate archives can be added one by one, Images can be added by selecting multiple files, but there is an option to add all files from a directory to the list, it can be found in File menu ('Browse for Directory'). It uses a set of 10 programs that run in command line and tries to find BEST SETTING for each of your file (including file by file work on ZIP/JAR content). You can actually call it front-end or a guide since it DOES NOT write the files - other software that belongs to other authors DO! (But it can convert ZIP to GZ, PK to ExtPK, ExtPK to PK, check CRC32 or download programs)

You can download it here or run it directly from here as EXE (prerelease)

In order to run it you would need 10 tools. That's 7z.exe, deflopt.exe, kzip.exe, zipmix.exe, cjpeg.exe, advdef.exe, optipng.exe, pngoptimizercl.exe, pngout.exe and pngrewrite.exe You can download them manually by googling a bit or by pressing 'Download & Install' button in 'Program Executables' Settings' tab. After successfully download/installing the software mentioned you may want to Press 'Update CRC file' button and 'CRC' button to make sure program's CRC matches the ones written in KrzYopti.crc file. Now you can finally, if You didn't do so earlier, start the application by running KrzYopti.exe. If you have Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Run-Time installed you should see a small window popping up with 1 button, 2 progress bar, 1 list and menu. That's right, everything you need to set is in settings!

When you pick 'Configuration' from 'Settings' menu you will be welcomed with 3 tabs. First one is for you to show KrzYoptimizer where files it needs to run are located. So you simply click '...' button and navigate to a file. After successfully selecting all files, You can check CRC to make sure everything is OK.
Second tab is all about how much of your computer resources (your CPU time) you are willing to share with this application to optimize data in Custom Mode. Basically it looks like this:

You can see 'Total Maximum Blocks to use' ComboBox, 'Maximum number of random Huffman Tables inits' slider and 4 checkboxes. The most top one may be bit of mystery. Every file that is processed starts from being optimized by selecting best number of blocks resulting in smallest possible file. It's performed by trying blocks range and increasing it if necessary. First it would start from 1 to 16, if the size was last time reduced at 2/3 of best block search range (11 in this case) program will increase it by increasing range to 32, and again at 2/3 (23 this time) to 64 and so on. This is actually good for big files since they have data that varies a lot and splitting it into more blocks helps compression. It can be very slow by doing so. So if you don't care about saving, let's say, 1% on 3MB file, you may want to set Total Maximum Blocks to use to 16.

'Maximum number of random Huffman Tables inits' slider tells program how much it should care about trying to decrease file by few bytes after finding best number of blocks (sometimes it's 10b, sometimes 600b or more). You can't turn this off, but decreasing to 10 speeds up things a lot, and it sometimes reduces file size a bit (depends on a luck because it's totally random as the name implies). I use 500 most of the time it may be a pain for big files splitted to many blocks (sometimes it doesn't even decrease the size a byte) but it's quite good if file is small or medium size.

All settings mentioned earlier are for optimizing ZIP, JAR or GZ archives.
Last 4 checkboxes should speak for themselfes... First one writes archived filename to optimized GZ files (you know how GZ files are written? It's basically 2 bytes of ID tag, 1 byte - compression stream ID (always deflate anyway), 1 byte telling decompressor if there is any optional tag included here - in this case it's filename if CheckBox is checked, 4 bytes of modification date of compressed file (NOT SUPPORTED YET! Always the same as archive date), 1 byte 'maximum compression was used' information (doh!), empty byte, filename string and empty byte if CheckBox is checked. Footer? It conains filesize and CRC only. So when you leave it OFF you gain (filename size-2) bytes but someone may rename the archive to x.gz and it will be extracted as x. Sometimes it's better to check it if You don't want your program.exe.gz to change name to x =D
By the way, ZIP to GZ conversion is ACTALLY done by the front-end itself (aka Me;)! That means it DOES NOT depend on any external programs ;)

'ZIPslim: Run JPGslim on JPG files...' before repacking archive. That means it optimizes JPG files LOSSLESSLY (Yeah, You heard it! It DOES NOT change quality of the image) by deleting all junk info (including comments of course) and repacking it as progressive if 'JPGslim: Save JPEG images as progressive' is checked, that will reduce the size by additional 1-3%, as said before, also losslessly ;)

'ZIPslim: Run PNGslim on PNG files...' before repacking archive. That means it optimizes PNG files, also LOSSLESSLY by repacking the file with same method any other Deflate archives is. It sometimes saves up to 50%(!) or more of the original size. It takes some times to do the processing. So that's all. Now pick preconfigured Mode from Mode menu. Fast method is the best to get few bytes smaller archive size in reasonable time. Medium is recommended for good results, it DOES work few times slower than Fast Mode but results can be much better. Extreme mode is good for VERY fast computers, it takes very long time to finish especially for big files, due to 1000 random Huffman Table inits. Last, Custom one, is predefined in Settings, so you can easly changed, for example to set mode between Fast and Normal mode (more in readme.txt about what each of modes does). Last thing to do is to open file(s) by picking Open from File menu. Program is now ready to start optymization, click START button and wait for program to finish. If you need your computer resources for something else, simply, press PAUSE button. Then press again START button to resume operation.

You can download it here or run it directly from here as EXE (prerelease)

Sourcecode will be provided later - when the project is [almost] finished ;)

Please note that ZIPtoGZ converter, ZIPslim and JPGslim algorithm, that are within EXEcutable of this software, are done by ME (Mr_KrzYch00). Meaning - the idea IS NOT taken from any other script or file, althought inspiration came from PNGslim by Andrew C. E. Dent.

NEW

Mr_KrzYch00's KrzYoptimizer

Windows x86 or x64

Linux-ARM (NAS fun_plug - tested on ZyXEL NSA-220 Plus)