Yep I think they are pretty compact in their current form. Note that the resource table itself is not stored compressed in the .apk, so that it can be mmapped into the process, which is a pretty important optimization for many cases.
You can imagine doing some additional processing of the images to combine them into a few larger uber-images (we've done this kind of thing on previous platforms), but doing that well to the point where it is actually a win is not trivial, and it can easily lead to situations where you use way more memory than needed because you need to load the entire bitmap even though you only use a few things in it. Imagine something displaying the icons of all of the applications for example, loading a huge bitmap from each of the apps to pull out one little icon. If you want to work on further optimizing the data structures and code, we'd be happy to talk about it on android-framework and consider such patches. On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 10:06 AM, FranckLefevre <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Dear Raja, > > I think that compressing resources in APK would not be that convenient > for two reasons: > > 1- when resources are actual pictures, they are usually already > compressed (using GIF, JPG, PNG,...) and trying to ZIP them does not > significantly reduce their size > 2- APK resource files are offered through the framework (grep > "assets" in the source code...) that "maps" these APK files, allowing > to get a pointer to them. Compressing would lead to a buffer > duplication that may impact memory and speed. > > IMHO, this APK format is quite smart and convenient as it is... > > Rgds. > > Franck > > > > > > On Feb 3, 11:44 am, Raja Nagendra Kumar <[email protected]> > wrote: > > When we open up the .apk file in winzip (as it is a jar file), we see > > the classes are compressed and stored as one file. However the > > resources are taken as is. Would it not be a nice approach to compress > > all the resources (specially if all the application has many images) > > and store it as one file, as this could further bring down the .apk > > size. I understand it needs more runtime memory though.. Are there any > > options to pack the resources this way already.. > > > > As Android seems to run j2se.. I am assuming that such kind of runtime > > memory is not an issue. > > > > Regards, > > Raja Nagendra Kumar, > > C.T.Owww.tejasoft.com > > > -- Dianne Hackborn Android framework engineer [email protected] Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to provide private support. All such questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and answer them. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
