I'm doing much better with this variant now and am almost ready to start optimizing and debugging. But first, I want to buy a few more points with the compression ratio. I have ways to optimize lz77: somebody online told me about hash tables; while processing this information, I thought to use an 8k buffer of bits, where each bit determines whether an associated word was already encountered; somebody else helped me optimize the main loop, and I was testing the current word in the lz77 sliding dictionary before checking for a match. Are there any other ways I can optimize lz77? I am working for 8-bit computers as well as more modern computers, so memory may sometimes be at a premium.

Okay. I added some optimizations to Adaptive Huffman codes that sometimes updates the Huffman code tree when writing an LZ77 or Last16 block or a reference to one of the last two literals (a derivative of my Placement Offset Basic technique--ask for more information). I also have some optimizations to LZ77 that will decrease the size of an LZ77 block if doing so produces better results. Right now, this technique does 2.6% better than Exomizer. My goal is 3% or better by the end of the day. I could apply the rllz technique mentioned in a previous post here. I plan to try it out at a later date but will need a way to identify which bytes are being filled by the rllz blocks. For now, I'm looking for other ways to do better. If you have any suggestions, I'd be happy.

I'm also not compressing using Adaptive Huffman codes if doing so will result in larger data, am sometimes updating the Huffman tree if repeating one of the last two literals in literal compression and making certain literal compression techniques optional if not being used in a block of data.

I also have a version that uses MTF instead of Adaptive Huffman. Right now, that version is doing way too well to be true. In case it is true, what can I add to MTF to make it better?

I was wrong, and I'm sorry. :'( I was exiting a loop at the first byte in a block compressed. I am still doing better but nearly as much better than I thought.