On Aug 29, 2006, at 9:38 AM, Tamas Rudnai wrote:

> for example if you have English text with 28 letters you can
> store it in 5 bits.

And of course there is a standard 5-bit code that handles most
numerics and punctuation as well ("Baudot"), as well as semi-standard
mechanisms for 6 "symbol" characters in 32bits ("Radix50"); stuff
from the days when mainframes had a whole megabyte of core and
space mattered.  It's a common enough problem that developing a
full custom solution is probably something that should only be
done when you're REALLY desparate.

(now, decoding radix50 and writing to an ascii LCD on a processor
without divide might be a good topic for a coding challenge...)

BillW

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