[1] What are these newsgroups about?

comp.compression is the place to discuss about data compression, both
lossless (for text or data) and lossy (for images, sound, etc..).
comp.compression.research was created later to provide a forum for
current research on data compression and data compression algorithms;
this group is now moderated. If you are not experienced in data compression,
please post in comp.compression only.

An archive of this newsgroup since Oct 1993 is available in
ftp://spib.rice.edu/spib/news/comp.compression/*

If you only want to find a particular compression program for a
particular operating system, please read first this FAQ and the
article "How to find sources" which is regularly posted in
news.answers.

If you can't resist posting such a request, other groups are probably
more appropriate (comp.binaries.ibm.pc.wanted, comp.os.msdos.apps,
comp.sources.wanted, comp.sys.mac.wanted, comp.archives.msdos.d, comp.dsp,
alt.graphics.pixutils). Please post your request in comp.compression
only as a last resource.

If your question is about graphics only (no compression), please
post to comp.graphics, *after* reading the comp.graphics FAQ (see
item 54 below). For some unknown reason, many questions about
graphics are incorrectly posted to comp.compression.
For questions related to audio compression, check also comp.dsp.

Please do not post any program in binary form to comp.compression.
Very short sources can be posted, but long sources should be be posted
to the specialized source groups, such as comp.sources.* or alt.sources.
If the program is already available by ftp, just give the name of the
ftp site and the full path name of the file.

As for any newsgroups, do not post the same message separately to
comp.compression and comp.compression.research.

A collection of compression based information is provided at
http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~singlis/compression-pointers.html