Hello everyone

Some time ago, i've expressed some interest in creating "automatically
compressed libraries" for HP48, because one of my software was
becoming quite huge for this calculator.

Although i've read many times that such a thing is possible with HP49,
probably thanks to MetaKernel, I could not find any equivalent tool
for HP48.
It's very likely that i did not looked hard enough, but in the end,
out of despair, i had to produce a Library Builder tool for this
purpose.

It's named MkLibZ, as it is based on MkLib from Detlef Muller.
You can download it here :
http://mklibz.webhop.org

So far so good, latest version (v0.4c) seems to work fine with the
tested sample softwares, with typical savings up to 30%, and
negligible decompression time.
At this stage, i'm willing to collect user feedbacks, in order to
improve the software, and look for any bug that may eventually have
slipped through.

Would any HP48 user be interested ?


Regards

Yann

Hello,

I did something similar for the 49G quite some time ago. Maybe you
want to take a look at my site at http://www.software49g.gmxhome.de/En...ite01.htm#Komp

For sure the new inform engine (IfMain) has to be switched back to
DoInputForm and compression has to be adjusted for the 48. It examines
each ROMPTR, checks if the compressed file (including the overhead for
decompression) is smaller than the original file, measures the time
for decompression and rebuilds a compressed lib at the end (of course
this only works with libs that are created the "standard way" and are
not protected against splitting).

HTH,
Andreas

Indeed Andreas, i consulted your solution some time ago, when i was
hoping to find something ready-to-use.

And this was nearly *exactly* what i was looking for.

As you can guess, the only critical problem was that "Compression Aid"
only works for HP49/50,
and alas my primary target system was (and still is) HP48. too bad...


That being said, "Compression Aid" still has a pretty important
feature that i wish MkLibZ could have :
"Compression Aid" runs directly on an existing (installed?) Library,
which means it can compress *any* existing Library (which, i guess,
should be created using "CRLIB").

MkLibZ is only able to compress during the building process.
So it is not working on an already-compiled library.
A work around could be to use the splitter feature (LIB->D), but it
does not work well with libraries built straight from the compiler,
which means the majority of the "good" libraries out there.


So i guess, MkLibZ can be considered a usefull "Library Builder", but
certainly not a "Library Compressor".

I believe however that such a feature is not impossible to program,
even for HP48...