PGNPack

File Format
Name	PGNPack
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Compression PGNPack
Extension(s)	.ppk
Released	1996

Not to be confused with PGMPAK.

PGNPack is a utility that compresses a PGN file to a special .PPK format. It was developed by Paul W. Onstad.

Discussion

PGN is a format that usually contains a record of one or more chess games.

The purpose of PGNPack is not immediately obvious, but part of it seems to be that the PPK file remains email-compatible (at least for small values of "email-compatible").

PGNPack is a Windows 3.x (GUI) program with a somewhat unusual command-line interface.

The "Version 1.0 (beta)" release may have been the only one.

Identification

PPK files made by PGNPack v1.0-beta start with ASCII "@1.0 (beta)", followed by bytes 0x0d 0x0a.

Software

• PGNPack v1.0-beta:
  • https://www.sac.sk/download/pack/pgnpack.zip
  • http://cd.textfiles.com/swextrav8/swextrav8-2/gamchess/pgnpack.zip
  • https://pushedpawn.org/downloads/prgs/ → pgnpack.zip

Sample files

• pgnpack.zip → TRIAL.ZIP → TRIAL.PPK