[sword-devel] Some other fast search index options

[sword-devel@crosswire.org]

Paul Gear writes:

> "Trandahl, Steve" wrote:
> > 
> > I don't know too much about searching and compression algorithms, but here's
> > a suggestion...  SWORD already has a compression/decompression module that
> > was added to support STEP format Bibles.  As I understand it, the algorithm
> > is public domain.  I haven't tested the compression portion of the code, but
> > decompression works.
> 
> ...sometimes.  I've certainly found some STEP books that it wouldn't
> decompress correctly, but that could be just because of me making a
> mistake with the rather obtuse API.
> 
> ...and not with a very high compression ratio.  Far better to
> standardise on something like zlib or bzip2.

I recall reading (perhaps here) that algorithms like zlib and bzip2 would
be inappropriate to compress Bible (or other) texts for this type of
application because they are designed to compress and decompress entire
files.  This in general seems beneficial, but when you want to view a
single passage you would need to expand the entire file, therefore making
lookups highly costly for resources and performance.

--
   Darwin Gregory

   Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
   Evolution is a myth...