Andreas,

    Thanks for your help.

> >     How can I use the existing ZipPlugin to uncompress a gzipped file
> > without the interpreter.
>
> You don't (see below).

    This means I must somehow add this support through some raw C stuff.

> > Performance wise (speed, compression ratio), how does ZipPlugin
> > compare to Zlib ?
>
> Not having benchmarked it all I can guess is that for decompression speed
> Squeak should be within a factor of 1.5 of ZLib. Compression speed will be
> somewhat slower (possibly up to a factor of 3) and compression ratio
should
> be almost the same[**]. Note that this comparison holds only if ZLib
hasn't
> been specifically optimized. Some of the LZ77 implementations I've seen
had
> a bit of assembly code in those few crucial loops and they do make quite a
> bit of a difference.

    Aren't all Squeak projects stored in gzipped format ? I notice quite a
bit of time spent while loading a locally stored project. Maybe the time is
mostly devoted to uncompressing (and compiling, that's another story,
another time ;-).

    If SqM needs Zlib and the trend in Squeak (?) will be moving towards
projects format, is it worth thinking about using Zlib as a zip plugin for
Squeak ? and how hard would it be to make the switch transparent to clients
of the current ZipPlugin ?

    Cheers,

    PhiHo.