October 25, 2013 at 17:08Unzipping poetry in slow motion (gzip)
Poetry lover and programmer Julia Evans wrote the beautiful gzip.jl program that shows how gzip decompresses text compressed using the LZ77 algorithm.
(better to watch without sound)
LZ77 uses a dictionary approach and encodes text matches. When the same fragment is mentioned again, the algorithm uses the code of the previous mention (in red).
Poetry is ideal for archiving, because it is based on repetitions - rhythm, rhyme, repetition of phrases to enhance the effect. This example shows that the amount of red (repeated) text increases with each line. This is probably one of the most beautiful visual demonstrations of the archiver. The program can be used in training courses as a visual aid.
(better to watch without sound)
LZ77 uses a dictionary approach and encodes text matches. When the same fragment is mentioned again, the algorithm uses the code of the previous mention (in red).
Poetry is ideal for archiving, because it is based on repetitions - rhythm, rhyme, repetition of phrases to enhance the effect. This example shows that the amount of red (repeated) text increases with each line. This is probably one of the most beautiful visual demonstrations of the archiver. The program can be used in training courses as a visual aid.