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Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2015 20:36:10 +1100
Subject: Re: python implementation of a new integer encoding algorithm.
From: Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
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On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 7:55 PM,  <janhein.vanderburg@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Take the
>> easy option; you can always make things more complicated later.
> That makes sense alright.
> No offense, but I still believe that human readable text encoding complic=
ates things right now and shouldn't be tried until "my way" has proven unpr=
actical in its first application.
> Consider it to be a theoretical challenge: how do I find the general enco=
ding of an arbitrary integer value that minimizes the number of bits needed=
 and given that algorithm, find the python code that minimizes the processo=
r load inflicted by the codec implementation.
>

I would actually look at it the other way: a human-readable encoding
is the easy way (you can simply print() your numbers and int() them on
the way back in), and until you can prove that it's impractical, don't
write a single line of code towards this algorithm. But let's get some
figures, though: How many payload bits per byte can you achieve?
What's your average going to be? You have two baselines to beat: 4
bits per byte (hexadecimal), and 7 bits per byte (MIDI varlen, or
whatever you want to call it; I first met it with MIDI, but it's been
used in so many places that other people have other names for it).

ChrisA