Name: nt126004 Date: 05/07/2003


A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
ZLIB can flush its output with "int deflate (z_streamp strm, int flush)" (see http://www.gzip.org/zlib/manual.html#deflate). Java's ZLIB interface should be expanded by one method to provide access, in the classes java.util.zip.Deflater and for convenience java.util.zip.DeflaterOutputStream. The Z_FULL_FLUSH flag is key; Z_SYNC_FLUSH would be nice.


JUSTIFICATION :
For some data, better compression is obtained with more frequent flushes (more deflate "blocks"). See http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&th=fb3b2f6b1b1a988d&rnum=4 for a case in point. Flushing is also needed when random access is required.
(Review ID: 185351)
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