| I generally PowerPack as much as many executables as I can - particularly
the large apps. I don't notice any real delay due to decompression, but
the 020 probably helps that.
It might be worth doing some rough timings on starting up compressed -vs-
uncompressed applications. M68000 vs 020 vs 030 might be useful.
Depending on the degree of compression you choose, I think it's generally
a 50-60% reduction. There are somethings that won't compress, but I've
never had any problems with the stuff that is. You compress the file
one time, and it attaches a small decompress header onto the file.
Very transparent.
Steve
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| I finally got PowerPacker, and it seems to do a good job. I spent an evening
going through files to compress, but I believe you can set up a script to do
that as well.
I saved about 2 Meg out of 25 Meg used, and while the executables are 40 to
60% smaller, it turns out that the scads of other files applications use
aren't compressable. (Like ProWrite is smaller, but the thesaurus and
dictionary are the same size...) So it's not like everything you own can be
condensed.
I've got a 33 Mhz '030 GVP exhilarator, and it takes maybe 2 tenths of a
second to unpack a 300K application.
It takes a minute or so to do the compression, and I've never seen more than a
few per cent difference between the 5 or so levels of compression available.
Graphic and text files can be compressed, but then you can't just call them up
into your paint program or editor and let them decompress themselves before
use. Mainly, once you've completed them, you can compress them, and then use
the PowerPacker utilities to view them. Maybe that means I have too many
unfinished projects on my disks! .-)
Question: I've generated several multi-Meg animations, and when I try to
PPack them, I'm told that there's not enough memory available (for instance a
3 Meg anim file, and I've got 6 Meg Fast RAM, 2 Meg Chip) (I think that's
what the error window says, my memory gets more volatile every day.) Any
clews?
Overall, I think it's worth the $23 I spent for it.
Thanks,
Jim
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| There is a program out that will do kinda what you are looking for. It
intercepts the read from a file, and decompresses it on the fly for
data. So, you could use it to decompress the thesaurus, and any other
static data.
It does not do the compress on a save, you have to do that manually.
So, it is only good for static datafiles.
It think it is called pppatch or something similar. I would imagine it
is on a fish disk, or I found it on a local bbs. I'll see if I can
still find the original lzh file I got it from.
Rob
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