PROs: 1. It is one of very few books on data compression available on the market. 2. Description of the IDEAS of compression techniques is very well written. 3. The books comes with the C code for most algorithms. 4. Fairly wide scope of data compression techniques is presented.
CONs: 1. Possibly for copyright reasons, the formats of commonly used file formats are not disclosed; the enclosed propgrams are generic compression algorithms, which do not create (or open) actual .ZIP, .ARC, or .JPG files, which can be opened by commercial programs. Therefore, this book will not help you to open standard compressed files from your home-made programs. 2. There is a missing link between the well described ideas (general principles) of the compression techniques, and their actual algorithms presented as C programs - namely, the algorithms are not described verbally. You have to analyze typically 6-page-long programs to understand how the actual encoding is done. 3. Although there is a section on sound compression, the MP3 standard is not explained. The same applies to MPEG.
SUMMARY: Good to get a general idea how the data compression is performed. Helpful if you want to develop your own compressed data format. Of very limited help if you want to work with standard compressed files in your own program. Requires knowledge of C and some time to study the enclosed code.
