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From: luke@citycs.UUCP (Luke Whitaker)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: compression makes stack bigger!
Keywords: compression size
Message-ID: <48@citycs.UUCP>
Date: 6 Mar 89 17:21:32 GMT
Organization: Computer Science, City University, London
Lines: 30

I have a problem with a stack I am creating. The size of the stack is very 
critical as it must fit on a standard floppy together with several other
stacks. The stack has one background and about thirteen bg fields. No cards
have any graphics, card fields, or card buttons.

When the stack is empty (ie one card, nothing in any of the fields) its size is
13k. I am loading the data in from a text file whose size is 221k. When the
data is loaded into hypercard, stack size becomes 353k (this is with 1038 cards,
9k free space).

However, when I compress the stack, it gets bigger! (377k, 0k free).
The stack also grows slightly from the 353k minimum when browsing.

I have two questions.

1) Why should a stack get bigger when I compress it?

2) Even on the original minimum size, why is there such a large overhead in
loading the data into the stack (eg 13k empty stack + 221k data = 353k stack,
that's a 119k overhead on 221k of data). Can I do anything to reduce that?

Sorry if this has been dealt with. If so please mail me replies and I will 
summarise.

Thanks very much,

Luke Whitaker, Computer Science, City University, London, EC1V OHB, England.
JANET:	l.whitaker@uk.ac.city.cs	BITNET:	l.whitaker%uk.ac.city.cs@ac.uk
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