coin_compression_overview(3)

💖 coin_compression_overview 💖

okay bestie, so this one is coin_compression_overview(3) — the whole vibe is file compression. let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

coin_compression_overview — literally just: File compression. that's the whole job description 💅

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

so Coin can read and write Inventor and VRML files that have been squished down with either gzip or bzip2 — and that's it as of yet, more formats may come in the future 👀✨

ngl there's a catch though: this whole functionality is only enabled when Coin can link with the corresponding compression libraries. no library, no compression, that's just how it is 😭

Reading compressed files? fully transparent. like, the reading just happens in a transparent manner — there is literally nothing the developer has to do to support this. not one single thing. you just read and it works. iconic behavior honestly 👑

Writing compressed files is the part where you actually have to do something: it's controlled through the SoOutput::setCompression method. that's your lever 🎛️

and if you wanna know what you've got to work with, the list of available compression methods can be fetched with the SoOutput::getAvailableCompressionMethods method. peek at your options bestie 🦋

⚠️ major heads up: you cannot use file compression together with I/O to memory buffers. the one exception is reading from memory buffers that contain gzip-compressed files — that one's fine. everything else memory-buffer related? nope. not happening 🙈

💀 also for backwards compatibility with Coin 2.0 and Coin 1.0, compressed files must not be used. Compressed files work only from Coin 2.1 and upwards. periodt. don't come for me, I don't make the rules 🌸

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🌈 Since 🌈

• Coin 2.1 ⭐

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🔥 See also 🔥

• SoOutput::setCompression
• SoOutput::getAvailableCompressionMethods

iykyk — go read those next, they're the main characters of this whole compression story 💜

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okay that's the whole page, you're officially compression-literate, so proud of you 🥹💖 this was Version 4.0.10, dated Thu Jun 25 2026 — mwah, catch you in the next manpage bestie 🎀✨🦋