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On Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:56:02 +0300 |
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Peter Volkov <pva@g.o> wrote: |
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> В Птн, 19/12/2008 в 14:45 +0000, Ciaran McCreesh пишет: |
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> > If it reads (and presumably uncompresses) all of them at startup |
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> > anyway, what's the point in compressing them at all? |
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> |
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> It makes size smaller: both index and data files are text files so |
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> compression is very effective. All distributions I've checked compress |
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> data files, some compress both data and index. Probably all desktop |
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> users want dictionaries to be compressed because modern cpu's are |
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> really fast in decompression and even on my 4-years old notebook it |
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> takes less then second... But still there are environments where it's |
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> better to keep dictionaries uncompressed. That's why I want to keep |
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> this feature optional. |
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But disk space is cheap. How big are the dictionaries? The vim |
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dictionaries are around half a meg uncompressed, and if you're looking |
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to save a meg or two in disk space on the kind of system that includes |
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dictionaries then you're doing something seriously wrong... |
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Really, all that compression seems to do is save a small amount of |
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irrelevant disk space, at the cost of requiring more disk space and |
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memory for a new library and slowing things down to a level that's |
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unacceptable on some systems. Compression makes sense for network |
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transfers, backups and file formats that do their own domain specific |
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compression. Elsewhere? Likely not so much. |
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-- |
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Ciaran McCreesh |
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