Compressed or Uncompressed Shape Files?

dforrest · Post by **dforrest** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 1:22 pm

I see that some loco and wagon shape files (.s files) are compressed and some are not. Is there any performance advantage in having them either way?

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andrewgadd · Post by **andrewgadd** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 2:05 pm

No, they just take up less space on your hard drive and can't be edited when compressed.

johndibben · Post by **johndibben** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 8:18 pm

Most can be decompressed and edited with Decapod's shape file manager but they can't be edited whilst compressed.

There's tendancy not to compress files as hard drives get larger.

The files are compressed in the zip file or self-extractor and so 56k'ers don't lose out.

mikesimpson · Post by **mikesimpson** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 10:17 pm

Hi David,

It does not really matter if they are compressed or not. Originally it was not possible to compress locomotives with animated parts (steam locos with drive gear etc) due to a bug in ffeditc_unicode.exe - However a fix for this was posted a long time ago.

My personal opinion is that in theory compressed might be faster due to the file size being so much smaller (say only 10 pct the size of an uncompressed file), that it will load much quicker from the hard-drive which is the slowest part of your system. However this is offset by the time taken to uncompress the file. Probably not a lot in it.