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I've finished my current "part-time" project and am looking for something new.
I've decided to have a crack at writing my own compression / decompression utility. I'm not planning on selling it or anything - it's more for my own interest.
Preferably, it will be be in C# but Java or C is OK.
Can anyone suggest some good sources on compression / decompression techniques that I can study. Hopefully, some that don't involve maths at a doctorate level!
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Data compression is a process in which the size of a file is reduced by re-encoding the file data to use fewer bits of storage than the original file. A fundamental component of data compression is that the original file can be transferred or stored, recreated, and then used later (with a process called decompression).
Compression techniques fall into two classes: lossless and lossy. Both are very common in use: an example of lossless compression is ZIP archive files and an example of lossy compression is JPEG image files.
There are two types of compression: lossless and lossy.
A good book on this topic is The Data Compression Book. It starts off with the basics and ends up with JPEG and fractal image compression algorithms.
I worked through this whole book years ago (the first edition, I think) and I still remember it as a really rewarding experience.
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I find that Wikipedia is a pretty good source in this respect. See, for example, Huffman coding, LZW and Deflate for some common lossless general-purpose data compression algorithms.
If you want to do something more specific, the article on JPEG is also really good.
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