An ode to bzip
Summary
A technical blog analyzes the bzip family for text and code compression, arguing that Burrows-Wheeler Transform based approaches can outperform traditional LZ77 based tools on text-like data. It includes empirical comparisons, decoder size considerations, and discussions of deterministic versus heuristic encoding, concluding that bzip style methods offer strong text/code compression with compact decoders, at the cost of slower compression.