[sword-devel] File Compression (Was: Making Import Easier)

[Jonathan Morgan]

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Greg Hellings <greg.hellings at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mike,
>
> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Mike Hart <just_mike_y at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> On this subject, why are ALL modules (especially beta mods) compressed? Once upon a time, compression made the world of POTS (telephone) based file transfer possible.. turning a 2 hour 5 meg download into a 20 minute download made sense.  Today with the exception of very low end mobile devices, the need for compression is zero, and the compression used by Sword is rather CPU intensive.  CPU speeds are driving what you can do with a given computer far more often than disk space. It would make more sense to optimize the compression for speed rather than maximum compression in cases where it is required, and to eliminate it altogether where possible.
>>
>> For final modules, it does make some sense to compress as a discouragement to make changes to other's work.  On beta modules however, the ability to 'view the source' to troubleshoot is in the hands of the few.  Considering the number of works in beta (and the trend is up), being able to do more end user troubleshooting is a good idea.
>>
>> I'm saying this in the hopes that an 'import' menu option outputs a rawtext module, not a zipped file.  Also, the companion 'compress' option as a separate menu item should be accompanied by an 'uncompress.' (with the ability to lock out 'unmodifiable' or non-beta modules.)

Reading compressed modules is significantly faster and more efficient
in SVN trunk than it was, and has been for about six months.  However,
they are still comparatively slow for random access (~10x slower).
While it is common to view a chapter at a time, this can affect the
speed of a window displaying the same verse in multiple versions.
However, once the new Sword comes out it shouldn't have the major
slow-down and CPU usage of current (if it still does, please report
it).

Jon