Re: Not entirely OT: ODT format

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Harry Binswanger wrote:
In principle, you can pseudo-compress a fair amount by using the 8th
bit. Wordstar used to do this in the DOS days: instead of putting in
spaces between the words, it "turned on" the (normally unused) 8th bit
of the last letter.  You can do more than this without turning to mathematical compression
algorithms, if you use the extra bits made available by characters not
on the normal typewriter keyboard.
I suspect that's what ODT does. There were LOTS of high-order
chars in that file (some of which threw Windows into a tailspin;
furthermore, and it may simply be post hoc not propter hoc, my
keyboard went south right afterwards).
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx