A85: Re: Flame, Impossible? I think not! etc.

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A85: Re: Flame, Impossible? I think not! etc.


Since my response seems to have started all this I think I better answer
some of it. In my mail I wrote that:

1.  The program was impossible to make
2. An on calc compression program had been tried before and it was not a
good idea
3. Told how to delete/create vars

Lets take this one thing at a time

1.
It is impossible to compress any string to half its size! This is not a
matter of programming, but information theory/datacompression. Example:

Take a string of idependant random bits (X), and try to compres it.
Uncompressed length : n
Minimum compressed length : H(X)=n*1=n

So X can not be compressed at all, therefore: Itis impossible to compress
any string to half its size.

Another example:

Lets take a 1000 bytes long TI85 string, and use your program on it. Doing
this we get a 500 bytes long string, which we use your program on. This
gives a 250 bytes long strong, which we use your program on .... We end up
with a 1 bit program ! How are you going to store 1000 bytes using 1 bit ?

2.
Since assembler programs are not completly random some compresion can be
done, which is what I stated in my email. The problem is that it is hard do,
because programs are "fairly" random. Data can all ready be compressed using
run length encoding and huffman coding, so the only way to make programs
shorter is to compress the code. If you want good compression rates for code
you need to use arithmetic coding, like what sis used in compression
programs like zip, compress and arj. The algorithm used to do that is fairly
complex, which means that your program would take up some space on the calc.
To actually get anything out of the compression the space saved would have
to be bigger than what youre program took up.

A long time a go when this was first suggested on list-zshell, I discussed
the topic with the guy who suggested it. He tried to make a compression
program, but after having spend a long time on it he gave up. The reason for
this was that to get any compression the program became so big that it did
not save space.

The same ideas has been suggested after that, and I have actually discussed
it with the people who suggested it. Untill now no one has found a way to do
it.

3.
Two question was asked in the email, both of them was answered in my reply!
I took the time to answer all the questions asked, and the only respons i
get is : "I'm wondering what good some of you guys actually are". I am
certainly glad that I took the time to answer the questions now.

David Phillips wrote:
"Truthfully, it is hard to get good answers out of people on an assembly
list like this."

I did answer all the questions didn't I ?

and

"Usually people who have been programming in asm long enough to get very
good
at it lose interest/move on or do not have time/feel like writting up code
for people.  The best way to find information is to look through source code
to other programs that do what you want to do.  And if it hasn't ever been
done, you'll have to figure it out yourself."

I have been programming for Ti8x's for a long time and I still answer
questions from beginners, write up code for people who need it etc. The
problem is that some people ask questions to the list or programmers which
email addr they have, instead of reading the readme file/FAQ. If people
download Ash and asks how to install it, without having read the readme
file, that is just wasting other peoples time.

R.O. Lewis wrote:
"People on this list keep saying things are impossible.
It would be nice if they would stop saying that.  All saying that will do is
discourage people.
Nothing is impossible, just improbable..."

No, somethings are impossible ! You can mathematically prove that what the
person suggested is impossible, and there is nothing which can change that.

I spend some time answering an email send to the list, and the email contain
answer to ALL the quiestions asked. Besides that I decided to include a few
other things, so the person would not waste his time doing something which
can not be done. What do I get as a response ? FLAMES. And some people
wonder why people don't want to answer questions on this list !

Dines