[Freeciv-Dev] freeciv is big ...

[Karl-Ingo Friese <kif@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

... and this is meant literaly. The current CVS tardist takes
more then 5 MB to download (and seriousely more when uncompressed).
And even since we all know that HD space is cheap and the modems
get faster each months, this still looks quite big.

Even if HD space gets cheaper each day; there is still a problem
left that affects many freeciv users: quota.
Out of curiousity I looked a little into this:

282     ./doc
353     ./ai
4053    ./client
1028    ./common
6865    ./data
1368    ./server
6704    ./po

Obviousely the translations as well as the data directory contain the
most space. A short look in data reveals

1302    ./engels
233     ./scenario
615     ./misc
151     ./civ1
170     ./default
640     ./trident
3172    ./hires
151     ./civ2
149     ./nation

So the big killers here are the .xpm directories, especialy the hires.
But even engels is not that small.

Two ideas:

a) Leave the engels tileset out of the main distribution. Maybe I am wrong
   but I do not think that a significant percentage of the freeciv'lers
   is using it anymore (personal opinion).
b) Convert them to pngs.
   Advantage: png compresseses image data about 30% smaller then gzip.
              Plus: The installed version is smaller as well (right now
              the freeciv data dir contains the .xpms after decompressing
   Disadvtange: pngs require an additional library. xpms are more easy to
              maintain

Just my few coppers,
Ingo

-- 

Karl-Ingo Friese
kif@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx