The enclosed files are the COMPRESS v4.3 file compression utility
with modifications to compile on Minix-ST v1.1 with the ACK compiler.
This version supports compression/decompression with up to 16 bits.
It probably WON'T work (at least for >13 bit compression) under
Minix-PC.

				Dale Schumacher
	bungia!midgard.mn.org!syntel!dal -or- dal@syntel.UUCP


Notes on the port to MINIX-ST:

The get_one() function fails because MINIX won't support the dubious
practice of reading from fd=2 (aka stderr).  Instead, "/dev/tty" is
opened and read from directly.  This may not be the best way to handle
this problem, but it works.  I took the example from the Minix
distribution sources (compress.c,v 4.1 85/12/05 09:00:00 kent).

The defaults for the version of compress which was supplied with the
MINIX-ST 1.1 distribution are apparently quite different from those
of current Unix implementations.  I've added a compile-time switch
to allow 'verbose' to be default TRUE.  I've also taken advantange
of the switch for making 'keep source' also default TRUE.  The comments
in the code imply that both of these options are typically defaulted
to FALSE, but I've chosen to remain as close to the original compress
as possible.  Similarly, the default number of bits to use is 13,
although up to 16 will work properly.

In order to do 16-bit compression, you must "chmem =400000 compress".
If you still get a "not enough memory to compress" error, bump the
chmem value up a bit more.  If you only want to use 13 bits maximum
for compression, "chmem =65000" seems to be sufficient.  Decompression
takes far less space, so 16-bit decompression can be done even with
the smaller chmem value.  You may even be able to make the value
smaller and still do decompression, but the initial value from the
compiler of about 45000 is not large enough to compress with 13 bits.

Just for peace-of-mind, I have verified that this compress can
decompress files created with the original compress, and the
original compress can decompress files created with this new
compress, as long as you don't use more than 13 bits (of course).