Hi Bowerbird,

Your compression result on KJB 

4,430,861 bytes (original size)

is intriguing.

1,413,207 bytes (Stuffit alone)
958,211 bytes  (your best recipe)

OK. However you should be using a state-of-the-art
compression tool like bzip.  What figures does bzip
give? Try MacBZip at:

          persephone.cps.unizar.es/~spd/bzip2

and repeat your test.

As I have said before bzip uses some of the ideas 
you are using, and even recursively.

MacBZip alone gives about 995,000 bytes.

Now you have already done 4% better. OK. Does
MacBZip much improve your 958,211 figure?

There's another possible disappointment: the batch
size of MacBZip is only about a Meg.  So, the real
test is to compare with a BZip compression that
compresses in a single batch.  Now anyone with a
linux machine can hopefully get a king size BZip to
do this more stringent test.  Anyone?

I'm really root'n for you.  The ordering of strings
may have some new magic in it.

Cheers

larry s