Important Notice: Our web hosting provider recently started charging us for additional visits, which was unexpected. In response, we're seeking donations. Depending on the situation, we may explore different monetization options for our Community and Expert Contributors. It's crucial to provide more returns for their expertise and offer more Expert Validated Answers or AI Validated Answers. Learn more about our hosting issue here.

How are packages compressed?

April 26, 2017COMPRESSED Packages

0

Posted

How are packages compressed?

1 Answer

0

Posted

Packages are compressed when loaded on the Newton (i.e. when transfered from a desktop computer). They are uncompressed on the fly when mapped on the Virtual Memory. This may result in a (little) slow down. The Newton OS compresses packages according to a flag called the compression bit. This flag is set by the programmer in NTK (NDE offers the same option). But it can be set on some packages that were not designed to be compressed. Moreover, NOS 2.x packages also have a fast compression bit. Having it set reduces the compression gain, but it is said to speed up things. I have never felt an important change, however. Some packages must not be compressed (so wrote Apple’s guys in Newton Formats) because they need to be resident. This is very rare, so you may want to compress the uncompressed packages. To do so, you can use a software for MacOS called PackageFlag Changer 0.1a2 that can be found at: http://tmurai-web.hp.infoseek.co.jp/computers/freeware/newton/jfont/newtonfont.html Victor