Message-ID: <000701bda384$63ac78e0$364e08c3@arthur>
From: "Arthur" <arfa AT clara DOT net>
To: "DJGPP Mailing List" <djgpp AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Re: This is not a problem but...
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 14:50:30 +0100
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>> The best things about the program packers on the ST and Amiga were that
they
>> compressed a file to about a third of its original size, and wrote a
small
>> stub to the file so that it would uncompress the file to memory as if it
had
>> loaded up normally. This way you could compress any program, not just
those
>> written in a certain language. They also could compress data files and
>> sistributed the algorithm to uncompress these on the fly, so you could
>> easily use data compression in your own programs. AFAIK there's nothing
on
>> the PC which can touch these.
>
>Actually, there are several programs that do this for DOS/Windows
>programs.

Can you reccommend one?

>There's even one that supports the DJGPP executable format.
>It's in the FAQ.


Yes, I know. I mentioned it in the bit of my message that you cut off :^)

But it doesn't compress any executable, does it? Only COFF exes. I want one
that'll shrink any and all programs.

I've just thought of another advantage of these programs. As the disc file
is reduced, it not only saves space but time to load. As RAM (especially EDO
or SDRAM) is *much* faster than the hard disc, the time taken to load the
compressed file and then uncompress it is actually less than the time taken
to load the uncompressed prog. This is assuming that the difference in sizes
is significant.

There was a TSR on the ST which would uncompress any compressed file (not
just programs) as it loaded. It wasn't 100% reliable but it meant that I
could halve the size of my font collection.

James Arthur
jaa AT arfa DOT clara DOT net