I have a program where I generate bitstreams, of about 80 to 150 bits or so, which I would like to compress, because I’m going to turn them into some kind of ASCII string so people can transmit them around.
Does anyone know of a good, free bit-aware compressor that might work on such a stream? My main problem with the ‘standard options’ is this stream should really be treated as bits, not bytes, else the structure is lost, and their overhead swamps any gain.
Addition:
The reason I want to compress these streams is because users are going to be cutting+pasting them, probably using something like base64 encoding, so saving some data is helpful.
Here is an example, for those who would like to see it. I’ll add formatting to make it easier to read:
110 110 - This is a 6x6 grid (the maximum is 7x7, so we only need 3 bits!) 000000 011110 010010 010010 011110 000000 - This is one layout grid 000000 000000 001000 000100 000000 000000 - This is the second layout grid Now we list some pieces
010 11111111 - A piece is a 3-bit colour code, then an 8-bit list of 'on / off' bits. 001 10101010 - Another bit! 001 10101010 - Another, identical bit! The reason I say this should be considered ‘as bits’ is that there is obvious compression options when viewed as a bitstream (in particular, usually many 0s in the ‘grid’s), which disappear when you consider it as a byte-stream.
What are you hoping to accomplish by compressing 150 bits? Unless you aggregate several of this 19b messages, I’m not sure what you hope to gain. Is it a UI issue–wherein you want your users to send/receive ‘codes’?
How about base 64 encoding? This will take binary data and turn it into coded characters for easy transmission or entry.