Huffman and Crypto

[fnerd@smds.com (FutureNerd Steve Witham)]

Sorry if these questions have been answered in posts I recently
deleted, but...

1) Instead of modifying Huffman coding, isn't it more sensible to
   just use arithmetic coding, which is more efficient anyway, and
   doesn't use fixed bit patterns?

2) I would assume there's a branch of cryptography devoted to studying
   the protections or lack thereof, afforded by compression schemes, both
   by themselves and in addition to other types of cryptography.  I would
   guess that Huffman and LZ-family codes have been studied a lot...right??
   But also more general studies of the weakness of (even secret) 
   compression algorithms as crypto methods?  I mean, compression methods
   would tend to use methods (like table lookup) that simpler cyphers
   have used for a long time, only without having been designed with
   crypto expertise...right??

3) Does anyone know of an easy-to-get-sources, easy-to-use arithmetic
   coding compression program?

quote me
-fnerd