Re: Reducing FF-made filters filesize...

["Ilya Razmanov" <ilyich@cacr.ioc.ac.ru>]

Hi folks, it's me again...

there are few things on ASPack topic I should be pointing at the very
beginning - sorry, I forgot to do so. Here it go:

I personally not going to replace my distribution of FF-made filters with
"compact" right now, although it's very tempting. The reason is that I
didn't make a good compartibility test. Plugin recognition and hosting by a
host application is a quite delicate matter, more delicate than "ordinary"
dynamic linking. "Compressing" filters with ASPack worked absolutely ok for
me but this should be tested more. The points of interest are OS and host
application IMHO. For me (Win95osr and Photoshop 5.02 respectively)
everything worked ok. But we have a negative report here also. I think it is
of interest to know what OS and host app was used in that case.

Also, speaking of hacking issue, I think using softice and asking ivanopulo
is just overkill. Who's gonna be interested in "seriously" hacking our
filters? We're talking about some dumb copyright violators here. With
current state of FF, anyone having a notepad can retrieve the sourcecode.
Programs like PiCo or PM make it absolutely simple. And ASPack could stop
this. But this also have a negative aspect - PiCo and PM wouldn't recognize
compressed filters (I didn't try but I think so). Good pluging management
tools will loose many benefits. Personally, I never store any authors
collection in the form of compiled filters since PiCo was made: I download,
extract the code into the file with respective author's name, and delete
original plugins. Having a FFL file is sufficient (and suitable) for my
"educational" use. In the case of wide usage of compressed filters, I can't
do that - that's pretty sorry...

 > Aspack for me? Nyet nye nada!Spasiva!

This really should be "nye nado, spasibo" BTW. Sounding "a" instead of "o"
is typical only in Moscow and maybe Kazan'.

> I've tested that freeware version on some other apps and it works great,
> reducing my Borland C++ Builder projects to over 50% without any apparent
> wait when starting the applications. This will be an essential tool in my
> collection.

I've also tested early freeware version (not going to pay for a minor tool
used to compress my freeware filters) on several applications and as far as
I see it works good. Although personally I'm not much interested into this
since I keep all the programs on a DriveSpace compressed drive - according
to my experience, it's stable, reliable and usually provides 2.0-2.6
compression for me. I just wished I occasionally found the way to help some
people having tons of plugins etc...

Yours,

Ilyich.
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Ilya Razmanov (a.k.a. Ilyich the Toad), Institute of Organic Chemistry RAS
http://www.chat.ru/~bufo/ - Freeware Photoshop Filters and Design Showcase
- But they're going to kill her!
- Better her than me...
Star Wars
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