packJPG, packMP3, packPNM, packARI, packHUF, packLZH and unpackJPG are now updated with new contact information and some minor bugfixes. This step was required because the original home of packJPG on the HTW Aalen University website is closing soon (granted, that website is severely outdated now, too). With the original
We are now on GitHub!
Needless to say, this step was long overdue. You may now download all of my source codes, follow my development, fork my software and collaborate with me on my official GitHub repo.
This blog will still get updated, but only with public releases.
packARC v0.7RC17 update
Incorporating the new LGPL licensed packMP3 library, packARC (with packMP3 support!) is now also licensed under the LGPL. The other major change in this version is the inclusion of the MultiArc friendly list format, a modification
packMP3 v1.0f update
… and here it is: packMP3, finally released under the LGPL v3 (formerly: GPL v3). Other than this major licensing change, very little has changed for the packMP3 source code itself.
What’s new:
- packMP3 licensing changed to LGPL v3
- some minor bugfixes
This update should mainly be interesting to anyone looking to add PMP compatibility to a non GPL software project. Keep in mind that also with the LPGL licensing you’ll need to keep the packMP3 code apart from the rest from your code (for non GPL projects) and you’ll also have to release any modifications of the code back to the general public.
packJPG & packMP3 Options by Michael Lee
Developer Michael Lee discontinued (most of) his Photo Tools page. This includes the official downloads of packJPG Options and packMP3 Options, which are excellent graphical user interfaces for packJPG and packMP3.
You may find the downloads for most recent versions of both tools in the packJPG and packMP3 sections of this page now. While you’re at it, you might also give Michael’s excellent GPStamper tool a try.
On another, slightly related note, expect the LGPL release of packMP3 and packARC soon!
Comment Spam
During the last few weeks this page experienced what I see as a particularly bad case of comment spamming. You should be seeing nothing, as all these comments are still in my review folder. They have by now only been partially reviewed and there are still 4000+ left to go, of which ~99.9% is spam.
If you have written an actually useful comment and it got/gets caught up in my cleanup frenzy: Sorry! I’m already using Akismet for spam protection (activated it today), but it still seems like an impossible task to review all these comments. If you got an idea how to solve this please write a comment below this post.
packLZH v0.5 update
Well finally! This is a big update featuring various code improvements and also much better compression ratios:
What’s new:
- Complete rewrite of all coding routines
- Added some developer options for you to fiddle around
The compression routines are a bit more complex now and feature a combination of huffman, LZ and VLI (variable length integer) coding. Be aware that this still has to be thoroughly tested. If you happen to find a bug, please contact me.
The new developer options are the following:
- Maximum LZ count [-lc?]: decrease for more speed, but also worse compression.
- Maximum LZ distance [-ld?]: increasing slows down, but (typically!) improves compression.
- LZH block size [-lb?]: decrease for less memory consumption and more adaptivity (which might not always be a good thing), increase for more memory consumption and less adaptivity.
packHUF v0.2e update
Developing packLZH, I revised the huffman coding classes for better compatibility with special cases. Here’s the packHUF update containing the new routines:
What’s new:
- revised huffman coding routines
- no external handling of special cases needed anymore
Compression-wise there are no improvements. This only does some basic huffman coding and is intended as a base for other projects rather than be used on it’s own.
packLZH v0.4a slip-up
If you have actually downloaded packLZH v0.4a earlier, you need to download again. A minor code change led to major consequences in the version online for the last few hours. If you download now everything will be okay.
packLZH v0.4a update
A rather minor update, functionality wise:
What’s new:
- Major source code cleanup
- Huffman coder improved to better handle special cases
- LZ coder handling improved
- Some minor bug fixes
This update was mainly done to prepare for the next version which will actually have better compression ratio. For the developers among you, this will be a far better base for your own projects than v0.4 was before.
