Brent Brown wrote:
> On 28 Aug 2006 at 23:29, Robert Ammerman wrote:
>> What is the total length of all your menu text?
>>
>> I ask this question because it indicates the feasibility /
>> desirability of using some Really Sneaky Tricks (TM) to crunch down
>> the space required....
> 
> About 270 characters at present, some in LCD display text, other's in serial 
> command strings and debug output. Mostly short strings 3-5 chars long, LCD is only  
> 2 x 8. That also seems to be why Hi-Tech PICC doesn't pack 2 into a word - strings 
> need to be about 30 chars or more long before it deems it efficient to do so (added 
> code overhead I guess). I like your ideas for compression. Will do my best though 
> to just do Sneaky Tricks for now and avoid the Really Sneaky Tricks because time 
> is against me.

One Trick I've used that's only Slightly Sneaky is to use the high bit 
to indicate the last char of a string, instead of a terminating null. 
If you have 270 characters of ~4 char strings, that's a savings of 54 
bytes.  Not a lot, but maybe helpful.

Not useful if you have other than ASCII characters in your strings, of 
course.
-- 
Timothy J. Weber
http://timothyweber.org
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