The Data Compression Book [Paperback]

Mark Nelson (Author), Jean-Loup Gailly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 14, 1995

The Data Compression Book Second Edition The Data Compression Book is the most authoritative guide to data compression techniques available. This second edition has been updated to include fractal compression techniques and all the latest developments in the compression field. All the code in the previous edition has been updated to run with today's compilers and has been tested on multiple platforms to ensure flawless performance. You'll learn to write C programs for nearly any environment as you explore different compression methods. Nelson and Gailly discuss the theory behind each method and apply the techniques involved to shrink data down to a minimum. Each technique is illustrated with a complete, functional C program that not only demonstrates how data compression works, but it also can be incorporated into your own data compression programs. You'll also get detailed benchmarks demonstrating the speed and compression ability of each technique. The code in this book has been tested on a variety of platforms and compilers including Microsoft Visual C++ 1.5 with MS-DOS 5.0 and 6.22; Borland C++ 4.0 and 4.5 with MS-DOS 5.0 and 6.22; Symantec C++ 6.0 and 7.0 with MS-DOS 5.0 & 6.22; Interactive Unix System 3.2 with the portable C compiler; Solaris 2.4 with the SunSoft compiler; and Linux 1.1 with the Gnu C Compiler. Topics Include:

• The Shannon-Fano and Huffman coding techniques
• Adaptive Huffman coding techniques
• Lossy compression
• The JPEG compression algorithm
• Fractal compression techniques
• Arithmetic coding
• Dictionary compression methods

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

MARK NELSON is a regular contributor to various technical publications including Dr. Dobbs Journal, Computer Language, and the C User's Journal. JEAN-LOUP GAILLY, a software consultant with more than 15 years of programming experience, wrote the compression code of the freeware zip archiver and is the author of the gzip data-compression program.

Product Details

• Paperback: 557 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; 2 edition (December 14, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558514341
• ISBN-13: 978-1558514348
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #349,866 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars a book which has its positive and negative sides..., June 19, 2000

By 

+++ (OR, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Data Compression Book (Paperback)

PROs: 1. It is one of very few books on data compression available on the market. 2. Description of the IDEAS of compression techniques is very well written. 3. The books comes with the C code for most algorithms. 4. Fairly wide scope of data compression techniques is presented.

CONs: 1. Possibly for copyright reasons, the formats of commonly used file formats are not disclosed; the enclosed propgrams are generic compression algorithms, which do not create (or open) actual .ZIP, .ARC, or .JPG files, which can be opened by commercial programs. Therefore, this book will not help you to open standard compressed files from your home-made programs. 2. There is a missing link between the well described ideas (general principles) of the compression techniques, and their actual algorithms presented as C programs - namely, the algorithms are not described verbally. You have to analyze typically 6-page-long programs to understand how the actual encoding is done. 3. Although there is a section on sound compression, the MP3 standard is not explained. The same applies to MPEG.

SUMMARY: Good to get a general idea how the data compression is performed. Helpful if you want to develop your own compressed data format. Of very limited help if you want to work with standard compressed files in your own program. Requires knowledge of C and some time to study the enclosed code.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too much about C programming, not enough about compression, June 15, 2000

By 

Gretta Bartels (Seattle) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Data Compression Book (Paperback)

This book's target audience is the novice C programmer who needs to implement data compression of some kind. The authors go to great pains to explain exactly how the code works, but they don't do as good a job on the algorithms themselves. If you are a competent C programmer and/or have any formal training in algorithms, this is probably not the book for you, though it may be a good jumping-off point if it's the only book you can get your hands on.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK for implementors, August 25, 2000

By 

danny (Hod-Hasharon Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Data Compression Book (Paperback)

If you want to implement a compression scheme fast easily, or to have general knowledge about compression algorithms this is a very good book. If you really want to deeply understand compression algorithms, to have some kind of insight about them, and to know about the best algorithms available today - this book is has less benefit (understatement).