10x compression factor

[David Shaw]

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On Mon, Feb 09, 2004 at 10:06:22PM -0500, Hasnain Mujtaba wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> A client has presented an astonishing metric. They say they have a 1Gig
> plaintext file which they can compress and PGP encrypt down to 80Mb! I
> don't know what tool they are using. 
> 
> How is this possible? What compression algorithm could they be using?
> Can I achieve this sort of compression using GPG?

If they are compressing before they PGP, then they could be using
anything.  It's not really a PGP or GnuPG question.  There are many
different compression programs out there, using different algorithms,
and a 10x compression is not unheard of.

If they are compressing within PGP, then it's ZIP compression, as
that's the only compression algorithm that PGP supports.  GnuPG
supports it as well, so anything your client could do in PGP, you
could do in GnuPG.

David
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