Burrows-Wheeler compression: Principles and reflections

After a general description of the Burrows Wheeler Transform and a brief survey of recent work on processing its output, the paper examines the coding of the zero-runs from the MTF recoding stage, an aspect with little prior treatment. It is concluded that the original scheme proposed by Wheeler is extremely efficient and unlikely to be much improved. The paper then proposes some new interpretations and uses of the Burrows Wheeler transform, with new insights and approaches to lossless compression, perhaps including techniques from error correction.