Pete Cordell writes:

> I wouldn't be surprised if FI + gzip was actually faster than gzip 
alone.

Me either, but gzip isn't primarily about speed.  This is a little like 
saying:  if you hook a race car to a Honda Fit (Honda's small economy car 
in the US), it may go a bit faster, and you may still use less gas than 
the race car would running at full speed.  Right.  If your primary point 
is to save gas (I.e. get compression) then it's possible that running FI 
first well help some with that.  My point is that you'll almost surely 
wind up in a speed range (a bit faster than gzip) that is way off from the 
reason you'd use FI if you wanted speed (analogy to race car).

It still seems to me that the main reason you want FI is either pure 
speed, or that speed with modest compression.  Fine that's quite useful.

It still seems to me that the main reason you want gzip is for much better 
compression when speed isn't a big issue.  Fine, that's quite useful.

As best I can tell, the FI+gzip combination is what you want when you were 
after what gzip gives you, and are willing to deal with some extra 
complexity to slightly modestly alleviate its speed issues.

--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
--------------------------------------