The Data Compression Book

Rating:
Summary: give us more information
Review: If you want to implement a compression scheme fast easily, or to have general knowledge about compression algorithms this is a very good book. If you really want to deeply understand compression algorithms, to have some kind of insight about them, and to know about the best algorithms available today - this book is has less benefit (understatement).

Rating:
Summary: OK for implementors
Review: If you want to implement a compression scheme fast easily, or to have general knowledge about compression algorithms this is a very good book. If you really want to deeply understand compression algorithms, to have some kind of insight about them, and to know about the best algorithms available today - this book is has less benefit (understatement).

Rating:
Summary: a book which has its positive and negative sides...
Review: PROs: 1. It is one of very few books on data compression available on the market. 2. Description of the IDEAS of compression techniques is very well written. 3. The books comes with the C code for most algorithms. 4. Fairly wide scope of data compression techniques is presented.

CONs: 1. Possibly for copyright reasons, the formats of commonly used file formats are not disclosed; the enclosed propgrams are generic compression algorithms, which do not create (or open) actual .ZIP, .ARC, or .JPG files, which can be opened by commercial programs. Therefore, this book will not help you to open standard compressed files from your home-made programs. 2. There is a missing link between the well described ideas (general principles) of the compression techniques, and their actual algorithms presented as C programs - namely, the algorithms are not described verbally. You have to analyze typically 6-page-long programs to understand how the actual encoding is done. 3. Although there is a section on sound compression, the MP3 standard is not explained. The same applies to MPEG.

SUMMARY: Good to get a general idea how the data compression is performed. Helpful if you want to develop your own compressed data format. Of very limited help if you want to work with standard compressed files in your own program. Requires knowledge of C and some time to study the enclosed code.

Rating:
Summary: give us more information
Review: searshing for books is very amazing in Amazone.com but i wish if we (customers )have more information about authers where do they teach; thier email andsome things like that so we could make our desecion

Rating:
Summary: Too much about C programming, not enough about compression
Review: This book's target audience is the novice C programmer who needs to implement data compression of some kind. The authors go to great pains to explain exactly how the code works, but they don't do as good a job on the algorithms themselves. If you are a competent C programmer and/or have any formal training in algorithms, this is probably not the book for you, though it may be a good jumping-off point if it's the only book you can get your hands on.

Rating:
Summary: The best book for programmers needing algorithms not theory.
Review: This books is for C programmers, interested in understanding Data compression. Both Lossless and Lossy is covered. Easy to read, and each compression is implemented in C. You will not find Mathematical details in this book.