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From: brnstnd@KRAMDEN.ACF.NYU.EDU (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Re: Standards Update, IEEE 1003.2: Shell and Utilities
Message-ID: <1991Jun15.203211.11295@uunet.uu.net>
Date: 15 Jun 91 19:58:30 GMT
References: <1991Jun12.034606.16284@uunet.uu.net>
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Submitted-by: brnstnd@KRAMDEN.ACF.NYU.EDU (Dan Bernstein)

In article <1991Jun12.034606.16284@uunet.uu.net> pc@hillside.co.uk (Peter Collinson) writes:
> The group is also looking for a new family of compression utilities,
> now that the Lempel-Ziv-Welch family of commands have been removed
> from the standard.  The main requirements for a substitute are:
>    o The algorithm should be expressed (expressible) in a
>      language independent form
>    o The algorithm should be free of patent issues

My compression method, Y coding, appears to be free of all patents,
including LZW. There's nothing language-dependent about the method or
current file format. My reference implementation, yabbawhap (see
comp.sources.unix volume 24), works on a variety of UNIX and non-UNIX
systems, and produces better results than compress at reasonable speed.

Another possibility is Ross Williams' LZRW1, which produces worse
results than compress but is blindingly fast.

---Dan


Volume-Number: Volume 24, Number 9