any qstr of >= 3 chars long is a candidate for use; the input byte value
(1) is used to indicate a fixed-length qstr number follows.
Before accounting for the code size changes, this saves ~100 bytes
on trinket m0, but it may end up being a wash due to added code.
A cutoff of length>2 is slightly better for ja and ru and worse for others.
This has to do with the relative frequency of latin characters vs non-latin
characters, is my guess.
lang after before change (- = more free space)
en_US 3132 2996 -134
fr 2136 2060 -76
ja 1916 1724 -232
ru 2196 2000 -196
This breaks the translation dependency to all of the other objects
and therefore speeds up subsequent builds. Now, even when the big
translate() function is inlined in the header, it only needs to be
optimized once.
Jeff Epler
MicroDev
Scott Shawcroft