Deflate algorithm - deflate stream format - documentation beyond RFC1951

Question

I'm interested on documentation of the deflate stream format or deflate algorithm which goes beyond RFC1951. Sample streams, implementation hints whatever may be interesting.

Answer 1

I worked on a streaming implementation of deflate once and found this description helpful:

http://www.zlib.net/feldspar.html

At first I tried the zlib source, but it is not an easy read.

Answer 2

You could just use zlib rather than rolling your own?

To support pre-compressed preambles, you could:

Use the raw API (those using z_streamp as a parameter) rather than the higher level wrappers.

Initialise the compressed preamble with it's own z_streamp and place the output in a buffer.

Then for all subsequent uses of the preamble, copy the preamble output buffer to the output, and copy the preamble's z_streamp and use that copy for compressing the subsequent bytes.