Has anyone had any experience of reducing the finished file size of an ebook compiler project by using any of the available exe compressors? Id/l a trial of ASPack which claimed to be able to reduce exe files by up to 50% However when I tried using it not just on active ebook files, but also on other ebook compilers I met with a string of problems and did not successfully shrink my ebook files at all.
Be interested to hear if anyone else has gone down this path. Or has any other ideas for reducing .exe sizes
Best Wishes
Eden
Posted on: 2:16 pm on January 9, 2004
dreuby
I zip my exe files if they're too large - I use ZipGenius, but WinZip is the best known "zipper". ZipGenius is freeware, WinZip is shareware (try before you buy).
Both allow you to create self-extracting files (so people who don't have an unzip program can use them) but these are larger than plain zip files.
Also make sure all your book contents are optimised - remove any backgrounds that you don't need, and make sure that all your image files are as small as possible.
Posted on: 8:29 pm on January 10, 2004
EBookCompiler
Hello
I can't comment on any particular EXE packer, except to say,
1. We did try briefly UPXing the ebook code (the ebook's consist of code and data). This actually led to problems as a bug/limitation/combination-with Norton AV meant these ebooks took ages to start on some PCs. We may try this again, now Norton has been updated
2. The problem you are probably getting is the ebook EXE contains code and data. The finished ebook needs to be able to parse the data in the EXE. When the compressor programs modifies the EXE, even if it works, it will compress the data, making it unreadable to the ebook itself --- probably.
3. We already compress the ebook data content (i.e. your HTML pages etc.). Thus the only part significantly compressable at all is likely the meta data, (passwords etc, which is usually not much), and the actual program code. I'd be surprised if you saved more than about 100-150K on any ebook made with 4.0x or later
The ZIP idea sounds a good one
Or try using something InnoSetup from jrsoftware.org to make an install program around the ebook EXE. This is kind of like a self-decompressing EXE. After the setup is installed, the ebook EXE will be in the normal format on the end-user's disk, so you shouldn't get the type of problems referred to above.
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