Compression Coding Editorial

Written by Dario Phong

The first compression articles were about lzss, written by Picard, lzp, by Red XIII, and btc, by Dave. This was in Hugi #12, way back when dinosaurs ruled the earth. In Hugi #13 we could find an introduction to BWT by Ryg. Hugi #14 bought us some thoughts of Decoy about bwt, and my first article, lz77. And then Hugi #15, due to the quantity of articles by TAD and two by me, had a special sub-section for compression. Hugi #16 had even more articles by TAD, more by me, and one about lzw by Paradox.

To say the truth, the articles from Hugi more or less represent my "career" at compression. I learned lz77 and lzp with the articles from Hugi #12, and knew bwt, which I later implemened. And then the big step, the difference between learning and teaching. My first article about lz77. Though it was better than most of the articles about lz77 which you can find in the net, it was my first article, so it could be better, and later on I made a new version which will be published in a future issue of Hugi. In Hugi #15, Adok published some introductory articles about rle and mtf, which are both used in bwt. Finally in Hugi #16, you could enjoy a high quality article, about static huffman. If you want to read some of my not yet published articles you can find them at my h-page.

Also in Hugi #15, a thread about optimizing the putbits started, which fortunately ended soon. As soon as TAD got tired of it.

When I started learning compression it was very hard for me, as there was almost no good info on the net. And I decided to change it. Nowadays, I've achieved it with my articles, and with the help of other article writers, mainly TAD, who has flooded us with his ideas. Now things are better.

In this Hugi issue we have one article from TAD (only one, huh?) about audio compression, and two from me focussed on Huffman. In case you don't know Huffman, learn it in Hugi #16.

Now enjoy the new articles!

Dario Phong, Barcelona 26-Aug-1999