From: Clive Wright (clive_wright@telinco.co.uk)
Date: Sat May 20 2000 - 23:20:00 CEST
Michele Andreoli wrote:
>
> This is a general question: what is better between:
>
> 1) to compress a directory with many files compressed in it
> 2) to compress a directory with uncompressed files in it
>
> I think 2).
>
I agree 2) if the purpose of compression is to produce the
smallest image, as the compression programme adds an
overhead and compressed files do not compress very well. To
prove this I gzipped a jpeg image and then gzipped the
resultant .gz file which resulted in:
-rw-r--r-- 1 clive users 108312 May 20 20:26
themepic.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 clive users 106948 May 20 20:59
themepic.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 clive users 106997 May 20 21:00
themepic_gz.gz
note the increase in size.
However for files like man pages where they are rarely
used; having a directory with many files compressed in it
saves disk space. This prompts the question, how do you
distribute a set of man pages? The major Linux distributions
sidestep this question by using "rpm" packages. How about
"gzipped_manpages.tar"? Though I guess for conformity this
would end up as "gzipped_manpages.tar.gz" even if it was
larger than the ".tar" file.
Manpages are not the only area where this question arises.
I guess Tom Poindexter faced this same dilemma when packing
his TCL addon.
IMHO it would be beneficial to have an archive programme
that intelligently creates an archive by compressing the
individual files and then packing the compressed file or the
original file dependant on which was the smaller, finally
compressing the list file and appending this to the archive.
The complement of this archive programme would also be
useful where temporary file space was at a premium.
Clive
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