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From: aks%anywhere@HUB.UCSB.EDU (Alan Stebbens)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs
Subject: Public Domain compression algorithm available
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Date: 22 Mar 91 17:58:15 GMT
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There was a recent submission to "comp.sources.unix" of a couple of
public-domain, unpatented compression programs, called "yabba" and
"whap".  The first paragraph from the package is included below; it has
been ported to *many* systems already.

Alan Stebbens

Submitted-by: Dan Bernstein <brnstnd@nyu.edu>
Posting-number: Volume 24, Issue 73
Archive-name: yabbawhap/part01

[ The file PATENT gives a nice summary of the issues.  --r$ ]

yabba applies Y compression to its input; unyabba decompresses the
result. whap applies AP compression to its input; unwhap decompresses
the result. whap and unwhap run at about the same speed as UNIX compress
and uncompress, which use LZW coding; yabba and unyabba are two to three
times slower. AP and Y compression are typically 10-20% more effective
than LZW compression in the same amount of memory. Y coding, unlike LZW
coding and AP coding, is unpatented. It should be possible to use these
programs on any reasonable C platform, though they were originally
designed on a BSD UNIX system.