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Date:      Mon, 13 May 2002 20:07:14 -0600
From:      "Long, Scott" <Scott_Long@adaptec.com>
To:        "'Jonathan Mini'" <mini@freebsd.org>, Peter Wemm <peter@freebsd.org>
Cc:        cvs-committers@freebsd.org, cvs-all@freebsd.org
Subject:   RE: cvs commit: src/sys/boot/i386/boot2 Makefile boot2.c
Message-ID:  <2C7CBDC6EA58D6119E4A00065B3A24CB046345@btcexc01.btc.adaptec.com>

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> Peter Wemm [peter@FreeBSD.org] wrote :
> 
> > peter       2002/05/11 14:39:59 PDT
> > 
> >   Modified files:
> >     sys/boot/i386/boot2  Makefile boot2.c 
> >   Log:
> >   Use a crowbar and duct-tape to make boot2 fit again.  
> This gets it down
> >   to 4 bytes free.  I removed a printf (the Keyboard 
> yes/no) since it is of
> >   marginal value and sed'ed the generated asm output to 
> remove the unwanted
> >   aligns.  There's probably a better way to gain a few 
> extra bytes than
> >   losing the printf.  Shortening strings is probably a 
> better option but this
> >   should get us over the hurdle.
> 
> Have we considered compressing the strings using come nefariously lame
> compression mechanism?
> 
> ASCII text tends to compress really well even with methods 
> that have really
> small decompression algorithms.
> 

Years ago I played around with an algorithm that decomposed ascii
from 8 bits to 5 bits [*].  That gave you 26 characters for letters,
and a few control characters for doing elite tricks like selecting
which 32 character window you wanted to map into.  It could 
probably be implemented in less than 100 bytes, but I'm not sure
if you would get a net gain or not in this case.

Scott

[*] I learned about this from the old 'Compute!' magazine, circa
1985 or so.  What I describe is probably obvious to most people,
though.

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