title: Best compression algorithm for XML?
body: <p>I barely know a thing about compression, so bear with me (this is probably a stupid and painfully obvious question).</p>
  
  <p>So lets say I have an XML file with a few tags.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;verylongtagnumberone&gt;
    &lt;verylongtagnumbertwo&gt;
      text
    &lt;/verylongtagnumbertwo&gt;
  &lt;/verylongtagnumberone&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now lets say I have a bunch of these very long tags with many attributes in my multiple XML files. I need to compress them to the smallest size possible. The best way would be to use an XML-specific algorithm which assigns individual tags pseudonyms like vlt1 or vlt2. However, this wouldn't be as 'open' of a way as I m trying to go for, and I want to use a common algorithm like DEFLATE or LZ. It also helpes if the archive was a .zip file.</p>
  
  <p>Since I'm dealing with plain text (no binary files like images), I'd like an algorithm that suits plain text. Which one produces the smallest file size (lossless algorithms are preferred)?</p>
  
  <p>By the way, the scenario is this: I am creating a standard for documents, like ODF or MS Office XML, that contain XML files, packaged in a .zip.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: The 'encryption' thing was a typo; it should ave ben 'compression'.</p>