Re: LZ: Compression program (and quest
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Re: LZ: Compression program (and quest
On Thu, 12 Sep 1996, Scott J. Rein wrote:
> >It might be copyrighted then. I know that lasts longer. In any
> >case the rights are definitly owned by Unisys. They won a court
> >case against Compuserve about a year or 2 ago because they used
> >it in their GIF format. They decided to be real easy about
> >pricing but they'll sue anybody that uses it without permission
> >in a minute. They have to to continue to protect their rights.
> >I wouldn't consider using LZW without their permission, but I
> >don't think it'll be that difficult to get permission.
>
> It shouldn't be that hard, but why do we want it? I mean, it
> is not made for compressing random data such as a program. I am
> sure there are some other algorithms out there that are better.
It's very good. Sure there are algorithms that sort and do all
sorts of fancy stuff to get better, but those assume you have
plenty of ram to work in and a very fast cpu. In the 85 you dont
have those things so do what you have room for.. LZW compression
works very well for anything. Programs never comress as well as
data because it's more random. That's true for any algorithm you
use.
The 2 that I would look at first are LZW and Huffman encoding
because they've been around a long time, they compress well,
they're compact and there's lots of sample code around, some
of it very highly optimized.
Barry
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