Data Compression: The Complete Reference (Paperback)

~ David Salomon (Author)
Key Phrases: image compression, audio compression, wavelet methods, Statistical Methods, Other Methods, The Discrete Cosine Transform (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

 From a review of a previous edition: "A wonderful treasure chest of information; spanning a wide range of data compression methods, from simple text compression methods to the use of wavelets in image compression. It is unusual for a text on compression to cover the field so completely." --Computing Reviews

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

Data compression is one of the most important techniques in computing engineering. From archiving data to CD-ROMs and from coding theory to image analysis, many facets of computing make use of data compression in one form or another. This book is intended to provide an overview of the many different types of compression: it includes a taxonomy, an analysis of the most common systems of compression, discussion of their relative benefits and disadvantages, and their most common usages. Readers are presupposed to have a basic understanding of computer science: essentially the storage of data in bytes and bits and computing terminology, but otherwise this book is self-contained. The book divides naturally into four main parts based on the main branches of data compression: run length encoding, statistical methods, dictionary-based methods, and lossy image compression (where in contrast to the other techniques, information in the data may be lossed but an acceptable st! andard of image quality retained). Detailed descriptions of many of the most well-known compression techniques are covered including: Zip, BinHex, Huffman coding, GIF and many others.

Product Details

• Paperback: 427 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (December 12, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0387982809
• ISBN-13: 978-0387982809
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,309,597 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #66 in

  Books > Computers & Internet > Programming > Algorithms > Compression

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Many algorithms included, but no in-depth discussion, May 2, 1999

By A Customer

This book explains lots of algorithms, the author tries to give you a brief overview on each of them.

However, if you're interested in the concrete ideas and proofs on how the algorithms help you to compress your data, with some mathematical works, the book isn't enough. You'll find it difficult if you want to implement the algorithms by merely reading the book.

Some idea are not clearly explained too, say, the the information on Gzip is just a summary of the GNU documentation with no in-depth discussion.

Anyway, this book is a great one judging from the (sad) fact that there are not many references on the subject.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent overview of many algorithms, October 23, 1998

By A Customer

This book is more about breadth than depth. It explains the workings of pretty much every data and image compression algorithm you've ever heard of. It's not as strong on theory as Bell/Cleary/Witten's _Text Compression_, and doesn't have source code like Nelson's _The Data Compression Book_, but it does a fine job of filling in the space between.

If you're not looking for source code or lots of theory, and just want to know what all these dozens of algorithms actually *do*, this would be an appropriate book for you.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A comprehensible but not very profound book, December 13, 1998

By A Customer

The book is quite comprehensible also if English is not your mother tongue.

Many algorithms are touched on, but often not profound enough to allow programers to implement the methods. Also the subtitle "The Complete Reference" is questionable: I bought the book because I was looking for facts about the Elias-Willems algorithm. In vain!