Compressor:

Compressor is a machine language program which reads an ASCII text or Appleworks AWP source file, and converts it into a new file which is about 30% smaller than the original. This compressed file can then be displayed or printed by Dogpaw, and will appear the same as the source file. This will be useful for situations where Dogpaw is being used to display large amounts of text, and disk space is getting short. Compressor can also decompress its compressed files, converting them back to ASCII text files.

Using Compressor:
Compressor is a ProDOS-based program. It requires 80 column display and lower case capability. To use Compressor, simply BRUN it and enter the pathname of your source file and the name you want to give the object file at the prompts. If the source file is ASCII text or an AppleWorks AWP (word processor) file, the object file that Compressor creates will be compressed. To decompress a file, just enter the name of the compressed file as your source file. Compressor will detect that it is a compressed file, and the new object file will be decompressed standard ASCII text. If the name you enter for the object file is the name of an existing file, you will be asked if you want this file to be overwritten. Your source file will be unaffected by Compressor.

The exact amount by which Compressor reduces a file's size will vary. Source files that include a lot of upper case and/or numeric characters will not be reduced as much as more ordinary files. A file that consists entirely of upper case and/or numerics will not be reduced at all. There is no limit on the size of the source file to be processed by Compressor. If the source file and object file are on different disks in the same drive, Compressor will prompt you to swap disks if and when necessary. Just be sure you have the object file's disk in the drive when you first enter its pathname.

The compressed file will be of type $F8 in the ProDOS catalog. This is one of the file types set aside by Apple as "user defined". For this reason, you may occasionally come across other files of type $F8 that have nothing to do with Dogpaw or Compressor.

Compressor can only decompress files to standard ASCII text (type "TXT" in the ProDOS catalog). This means that AppleWorks AWP files that are compressed and then decompressed will lose any embedded printer control characters, margin and page-break settings, etcetera. ASCII text files can, however, still be loaded into AppleWorks, worked with, and re-saved as AWP files.

Karl Bunker
January, 1988