Compression Algorithms for Real Programmers

Author: Peter Wayner List Price: $50.95 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0127887741 Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann (August, 1999) Edition: Paperback Sales Rank: 139,846 Average Customer Rating: 3.83 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

This book does has one big plus, one of the appendices (almost
50 pages) lists many, if not most, of the relevent patents
concerning compression.

Note the word "introduction" in the title of the review, however. If you're looking for a comprehensive specification of a specific algorithm, this book is not the place to look. There are numerous papers and books digging deeply into a single algorithm or codec. Compression Algorithms will simply give you a broad understanding of the theory behind these compression techniques, along with some algorithms written in pseudocode or mathematical notation.

Compression by nature is a highly mathematical or algorithmic process, and so, by nature, the book may be slightly too mathematically inclined for some, but I simply can't fault the author for this, as any additional simplification of the material presented would have rendered it useless for real professionals looking for more than a sugar-coated description of the algorithms.

I had purchased this book for two reasons: Firstly, I am the sound programmer for a game development company, and sound compression is an important part of today's interactive computer entertainment titles. Coverage of sound compression techniques was advertised, and I feel I got my money's worth because of the information I obtained. This may seem strange since a cursory glance of the book will show the chapter on audio compression to be only 8 pages long. However, a deeper inspection will show that the chapter builds on a great deal of earlier material that, although not specific to audio compression, negates the requirement for a lengthy chapter later. Perhaps the only fault with this is in book organization. Secondly, because I will be creating a proprietary compression system, it is important to have a broad understanding of many different compression techniques in order to create the most versatile hybrid compression scheme for our sound engine. To this end, the book also does a great job. It certainly may be necessary for me to follow up with some books on specific algorithms, but without having first read Mr. Wayner's book, I would not have known about those algorithms in the first place.

I've given the book 4 out of 5 star because the book seems a bit short (177 pages, excluding the appendices) for the price, and for subjecting me to no less than 24 images of his foot (he couldn't have found a more interesing image as an example?). Overall, though, I found the book well written and extremely valuable for the work I plan to start very shortly in my new position.

This book was an introduction to the field for me, and for that I found it valuable. However, even though I am a compression neophyte, I found many errors in the examples and the explanations. What concerns me is that if compression novice, as I am, can find errors, how many more hidden errors are in there that I could not deduce? These mistakes often made it difficult to understand the algorithms the author is trying to explain. Not only must one try to comprehend the algorithms, one must first determine what the author actually meant to write. In addition, there are errors in grammar and typesetting that impact the smooth reading of the sometimes complex text.

The book would have benefited greatly from a careful reading by three editors: a technical reading by someone in the intended audience, a technical reading an expert in the field, and a literary reading to smooth out the writing, correct the grammar and point out the typesetting errors. Had the author and editors been more careful, I would have given the text four stars rather than the two.

Use it as a first book, an introduction, for ideas, and source for references. However, follow up on the references before proceeding to create even a line of code.

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