3036	 The Selection of Optimal Tab Settings	 A new generation of computer terminals allows tab settings to be selected and set by the computer. This feature can be used to reduce the number of characters that are needed to represent a document for transmission and printing. In this note an algorithm is given for selecting the optimal set of tab stops for minimizing the number of characters transmitted. An implementation of the algorithm has reduced the number of characters transmitted by from to percent but requires a prepass through the document to compute a matrix used in determining the optimal set tab stops. The use of fixed tab stops as a heuristic alternative can achieve about percent of optimal with no prepass. Tabs word processing dynamic programming
