Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!pro-pac.cts.COM!tsouth From: tsouth@pro-pac.cts.COM (Todd South) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Re: Optimizing (or why the 00's?) Message-ID: <8806271916.AA10419@crash.cts.com> Date: 27 Jun 88 15:10:10 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: pnet01!pro-simasd!pro-pac!tsouth@nosc.mil Organization: The Internet Lines: 24 In Article <8806270057.aa23609@SMOKE.BRL.ARPA> PGOETZ@LOYVAX.BITNET writes: > Lazlo: Optimizing does not mean writing 0s to unused portions of the disk. > That would do nothing for performance. > Phil Goetz Phil, I know one half of the team very well, and he has stated (I believe it is also in the documentation) that this is exactly what the optimizer does in DDD Pro. In the Huffman algorythm, I think that Hex 00 is supposed to be the single character that takes the fewest bits to express. Therefore, if one writes 00's to all unused area's on the disk the total compression of the disk would be smaller. Remember, we are talking about a *disk* packer, not a file compressor. It looks only at the raw data on a track. Todd South -- UUCP: {nosc, cacilj, sdcsvax, hplabs!hp-sdd} ...!crash!pnet01!pro-simasd!pro-pac!tsouth ARPA: crash!pnet01!pro-simasd!pro-pac!tsouth@nosc.MIL INET: tsouth@pro-pac.CTS.COM - BITNET: pro-pac.UUCP!tsouth@PSUVAX1