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From: time@ox.com (Tim Endres)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,comp.sources.d
Subject: WANTED: News compression information...
Message-ID: <1990May29.202056.26271@ox.com>
Date: 29 May 90 20:20:56 GMT
Article-I.D.: ox.1990May29.202056.26271
Organization: Ocwen Trading, Inc.
Lines: 20


I am working on an implementation of News for the lowly Macintosh.
I have had many requests to support compressed/batched news.
I have easily added the support for batched news, but have found
the support of compressed news to be a dilemma.

Most people have indicated that "compress", the PD version, is what
is normally used for news compression. This would *seem* fine, but
the darn thing requires 500K RAM just to uncompress. This not only
seems extraordinary, but I can not see how implementations on a PC
limited to 640K could even work.

QUESTIONS:
Is "compress" the common news compression algorithm?
Do all news feeds compress at 16 bits or 12 bits?
What are the implications of using compress in commercial sw?
Are there any other, more miserly, compress programs available?

Thanks, tim.
time@ox.com