>>   That may be tricky as others say, but by normalizing the start image
>> offset to zero upon saving, the resulting .image *would* be more
>> compressable by the LZ family of algorithm.  Whether it is true or not
>> is a question...
> 
> Why would it be more compressable? Because there are more zeros in oops?

Presumably, but that's not true at least for GNU Smalltalk images.

2.3.6 (normalizes offset to zero) => 72.4% gzip compression, 76.6% bzip2
2.95d (does not) => 72.2% gzip compression, 76.5% bzip2

(As a side note, that change was made to have faster startup times -- if 
you don't have to swizzle back object pointers, there is less work to be 
done on image startup -- and as a prerequisite to implement a shared 
memory space via copy-on-write).

Paolo