Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!npeer.de.kpn-eurorings.net!npeer-ng0.de.kpn-eurorings.net!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Neil Cerutti Newsgroups: comp.lang.python Subject: Re: hex dump w/ or w/out utf-8 chars Date: 9 Jul 2013 13:00:48 GMT Organization: Norwich University Lines: 28 Message-ID: References: <7b6fc645-8bf3-4681-821c-38fb1fa1d191@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net omk7zRgJlVOpD7tEJnMktwAqixrE2TRWIrmbam+QHwTUkru8b7 Cancel-Lock: sha1:sseI9EiiYXqBcUgIGJTJt2+ysZE= User-Agent: slrn/0.9.9p1/mm/ao (Win32) Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:50239 On 2013-07-09, Dave Angel wrote: >> One of the first Python project I undertook was a program to >> dump the ZSCII strings from Infocom game files. They are >> mostly packed one character per 5 bits, with escapes to (I had >> to recheck the Z-machine spec) latin-1. Oh, those clever >> implementors: thwarting hexdumping cheaters and cramming their >> games onto microcomputers with one blow. > > In 1973 I played with encoding some data that came over the > public airwaves (I never learned the specific radio technology, > probably used sidebands of FM stations). The data was encoded, > with most characters taking 5 bits, and the decoded stream was > like a ticker-tape. With some hardware and the right software, > you could track Wall Street in real time. (Or maybe it had the > usual 15 minute delay). > > Obviously, they didn't publish the spec any place. But some > others had the beginnings of a decoder, and I expanded on that. > We never did anything with it, it was just an interesting > challenge. Interestingly similar scheme. It wonder if 5-bit chars was a common compression scheme. The Z-machine spec was never officially published either. I believe a "task force" reverse engineered it sometime in the 90's. -- Neil Cerutti