🚀 go-pugleaf

>> Once apon a time, about five years ago, a UK company called DJAI, (the
>> authors of The Last One - a 4GL program generator) said that they had an
>> algorithm which would (reversibly) compress arbitrary text into 40-80 bytes.
>> They even had a demonstration system which claimed to show the algorithm in
>> operation.
>>
>> They planned to demonstrate the system by compressing the complete source
>> text of The Last One, copying the <80 bytes to a hand-held micro with a
>> printer, then decompressing and producing the total listing from the micro.

> Anyone know -anything- (or have any guesses) about the algorithm?

There are algorithms that can do this, though whether they could be
implemented on a micro is problematical.  The one that comes to mind is
converting the arbitrary text into one _very_ large number and then
representing that number as a combination of powers of smaller numbers.

E.g.:  1234^5678 + 456^123 + 90^20 - 8^2 - 3

Note the above amount probably couldn't be contained in the known universe
if you attempted to write it out in full, but the above representation is
highly compact.  Sorry, I'm not aware of the details of how the text
conversion and restoration is done.  I think Kurt Goedel (as in _Goedel,
Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid_) first proposed the technique
(occasionally referred to as "Goedelizing").

-- 
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, hollombe@TTI.COM)
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