Re: [Groff] Compression support for files?

[Werner LEMBERG]

>  |> The original intent of Matthew Dillon i think was to be able to
>  |> blindly use the `.so' request and make it work regardless of
>  |> wether whatever file is compressed or not.
>  |
>  |Why would you ever want this?  TeX doesn't have this either, and
>  |up to now I've never seen a request for adding this.
> 
> I'm not using TeX -- why do you refer to it?

Because it is very similar to groff regarding (text) input files.

> And i don't know why there never was a request; i guess many people
> try out something in a situation and either it works for them or it
> doesn't and then they either find some workaround or quit right
> away.

So please tell me a typical use-case you are envisioning.

> Yes, TTF fonts, transparently, would be so nice;

Not TrueType but OpenType, since the latter supports both the CFF and
TrueType font outline format.

> i'm not the right person for that as i would start from scratch
> there; however, if i use xz(1) i still can gain 50% space saving on
> a TTF font that i possibly use once a week or even less often.

Compressing fonts is not for free: you have to completely load the
fonts into memory since OpenType fonts are not accessed sequentially.

Basically, I don't object if you want to contribute reading of
compressed files.  Note, however, that this makes groff dependent on
external libraries, which is not optimal.  Additionally, there are
much more important issues to solve IMHO, but it is really up to you
how you spend your time...  Expect critical eyes everywhere :-)

An additional warning: It is easily possible that it takes a long time
until your patch gets merged into the git repository since right now
nobody has time and enough interest to do that.


    Werner