Re: Will I need to re-format my partition for using the compression plugin?

[David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com>]

Edward Shishkin wrote:
> Fred Schaettgen wrote:
> 
>> On Thursday, 22. September 2005 18:41, Edward Shishkin wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> Grzegorz Jaśkiewicz wrote:


>> Or is there another reason why you packed both things into one plugin?
>>
> 
> Because sometimes it is useful to compress data before encryption since 
> compression
> destroys vulnerable regular structure of some special files (like *.html)

Although I'd imagine some algorithms are fairly resistant against that 
(RSA, maybe?), the main reason is simple -- encryption tends to 
introduce randomness.  If the crypto is any good at all, you won't be 
able to compress very well after you've encrypted.

Anyway, can't you stack plugins?  Or at least create one new plugin out 
of two existing ones?

>> If most new file features have to be implemented as part of one single 
>> plugin,
>>
> 
> Then this plugin will look like a monster ;)
> Not necessarily. On the oher hand, creating a separate file plugin for 
> each feature
> imho is not a good idea.

How about some other examples of things to group together and things to 
not group together?

I wonder if it would make sense to try to optimize for a huge number of 
plugins?  It'd be harder than optimizing for a huge number of files per 
directory, but would it be possible?