printtok: cc65 text questions

Hi!  I have a cc65 routine for CBM and Atari8 targets that prints strings with embedded tokens and expands those tokens.  It is inferior.  :(  It compressed the text for a text adventure by only about 13%.  I am working on a better version right now.  Does anybody here want an edition of what I currently have for the Apple2?  If so, do cc65's strings have the signed bit set?  If not, I can use literals 0x80-0x9F as tokens.