From: nowhere@never.at   
      
   James Harris asked:   
      
   >>>>> How short was the (current) shortest solution?   
   ...   
   > On the size, has anyone looked at writing a normal base64 decoder,   
   > encoding it in a form which is easy to decode, and decoding it first. By   
   > that I mean that at present I gather the source "text" will have the   
   > following   
   >      
      
   Of course we have to write a working decoder before and then encode   
   it either by an 2:1 algo, that's what Terje and Kerr use, or what I   
   use is encode only the bytes out of range to be modified by SMC.   
      
   So my shortest decoder was 54 byte, but made it 59 for lesser SMC needs.   
   Kerr wrote the yet shortest with only 44 byte and I adopted it for SMC   
   it came down to total 180 (+29 for base64 encoded Hello world test code).   
      
   > And I wonder if it would be shorter to change that to   
      
   >      
      
   > The pre-decoder would convert just the base64 decoder to binary. The   
   > binary version of the base64 decoder would then decode the text. The   
   > pre-decoder would decode a simple format.   
      
   > On one hand, the base64 decoder might take up more room. On the other it   
   > could use any asm instructions so might be shorter. (Some or all of the   
   > pad could be saved, too.)   
      
   I finally got rid of all unused padding bytes.   
   __   
   wolfgang   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)