xpkBZP2 1.7

Short:        Bzip2 xpk compression library V1.7 (68k,OS4,WOS,MOS)
Author:       oliver@futaura.co.uk (Oliver Roberts)
Uploader:     oliver futaura co uk (Oliver Roberts)
Type:         util/pack
Version:      1.7
Requires:     OS 3.0+,68020+,xpkmaster.library
Architecture: m68k-amigaos; ppc-amigaos; ppc-morphos; ppc-warpup

Changes since previous Aminet release:

 - PPC OS4 native version public release - rebuilt with GCC 3.4.3,
   now 10% faster at packing, and upto 30% faster unpacking
 - MorphOS and WarpOS versions recompiled with VBCC 0.8h, both
   now 2% faster at packing/unpacking and 6% faster unpacking for MorphOS


DESCRIPTION

Julian Sadler's bzip2 compresses files using the Burrows-Wheeler block
sorting text compression algorithm, and Huffman coding. Compression is
generally considerably better than that achieved by more conventional
LZ77/LZ78-based compressors, and approaches the performance of the PPM
family of statistical compressors.

xpkBZP2.library uses the same compression algorithm as bzip2, and allows
you to compress files with the same high crunch factor as bzip2, but under
the XPK interface.

In summary, xpkBZP2.library offers generally a very high compression ratio,
typically around 70-90%.  Of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch,
and the downside is that the compression routines require lots of memory,
although there are modes available which use less memory, at the expense of
compression efficiency.