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Microsoft Claims OpenDocument is Too Slow
SirClicksalot writes "Microsoft claims that the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is too slow for easy use. They cite a study carried out by ZDNet.com that compared OpenOffice.org 2.0 with the XML formats in Microsoft Office 2003. This comes after the international standards body ISO approved ODF earlier this month." From the ZDNet article: "'The use of OpenDocument documents is slower to the point of not really being satisfactory,' Alan Yates, the general manager of Microsoft's information worker strategy, told ZDNet UK on Wednesday. 'The Open XML format is designed for performance. XML is fundamentally slower than binary formats so we have made sure that customers won't notice a big difference in performance.'"
What I didn't see mentioned in this article was the fact that back in March, Microsoft joined a subdivision of INCITS (V1 Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface group within the International Committee for Information Technology Standards). Which is the group that kind of decides whether or not it should be widely adopted. Being ISO certified is one thing but it doesn't mean everyone's going to use it as a standard.
There was much speculation that Microsoft had joined INCITS with the intent to slowdown or stop the spreading use of ODF and insert their own standard. Sounded like another Microsoft power trip to me.
I predict that Microsoft will bitch and bitch about ODF and then release study after study suggesting some other patent laden format (probably Open XML) over ODF. This is just the first complaint against ODF--too slow. Perhaps next they'll complain that it's not documented well enough, some of their apps just can't support it, it gives their developers arthritis, it looks too ugly, etc.
My work here is dung.
If I was an MS shill (like so many in these forums seems to be), I would be deeply, deeply ashamed that the company I pimped myself out for was incapable of distinguishing between a document format and an application.
(read the 'study')
But I am sure the shills will pipe up with "easier to use", "people are used to it", "noone forces people to use MS" and other such irrelevance.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
It's not a game loading complex 3D worlds and sound effects, it's a load of text being displayed on screen. What difference does a few milliseconds here or there make? OpenDocument could be ten times slower and the benefits of an open document format would still vastly outweigh the effects of loading time.
It's pretty important to me. The thing is, I highly doubt that ODF is naturally slower than MS's format. They're both XML, right? How can one take that much longer to parse?
In fact, the study cited doesn't even refer to "the speed of ODF". It's about OO.o's speed only.
Anytime Microsoft complains about OpenDocument, I just remember back to when they were on the Technical Committee at OASIS forming the standard. They then left that committee. If they truly cared about OpenDocument, they would have stayed on the TC and made changes to it.
I see this as an attempt by Microsoft to slander this format and try to further their own semi-OpenXML format.
--
Jason Faulkner
Eastern US Press Contact
OpenDocument Fellowship
Jay | http://oldos.org
Since when is a format slow? I could write an interperter for the MS format that is 3x as slow as the ODF. What are they defining as unsatisfactory and on what kind of documents?
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
If Microsoft are saying that they can't read XML documents efficiently then I guess we have to believe them, but if that's really true it says more about their lack of programming skill than the the difference between reading a binary vs text (or XML flavor #1 vs flavor #2) document on a modern processor.
If a Windows-capable PC has enough oomph to render clippy in 3-D translucent splendor for Vista, then it's certainly fast enough to load an XML document.
No MSFT's formt is a Binary XML, with binary data encased by XML tags. Images are stored directly in the file unlike ODF which is a zipfile, with a subdirectory for images.
In other words if you don't have an ODF appilication all you have to do is unzip it( a feature found in most OS's these days) and extract the data by hand.
If you don't have MSFT Word of version x you can never open MSFT's formats. Patents will prevent third parties from implenting it. Defeating the entire point of having a standard.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
You mean to tell me that parsing a file at an average of 200k of data is too slow on 1.0+GHz processors?
OPTIMIZE YOUR CODE!
I know that there are many variables here, but seriously... how slow can it be? I use OpenOffice 2.0 on an Athlon64 3200+ and I have no issues, in fact, I find it much quicker than M$ Office
This is typical FUD! The article is not comparing the speed of OpenDoc vs Microsoft's Open XML. It's comparing the speed of OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office. It does not make any sense.
.doc to give us some real numbers. (Microsoft's Open XML is not even available to compare speeds!)
How about if someone with a Windows PC at hand compared the speed of opening and saving OpenDocument vs. the usual
I'm sure Microsoft would very much like to shift the debate from OpenDocument vs. Open XML to OpenOffice vs MS Office. Let's not fool ourselves MS Office has many advantages.
In fact, until this very day I didn't even realize that performance was even in Microsoft's dictionary, and like so many other words Microsoft uses I don't think it means entirely what they think it means. Newsflash, Microsoft, "innovation" does not mean "steal other people's ideas." "Security" does not mean "It'll be taken over before you can download the first update for it." And "performance" doesn't mean "the entire fucking system stops for 30 seconds when some application decides to stop handling its windows controls." Now STFU and go back to pushing your poison kool-aid on unsuspecting consumers before Apple eats your lunch.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
There is something true in that study, indeed.
Personally I already have seen this kind of numbers, even though I've never minded to measure them.
Why? Simply put, because it matters very little.
Compared to Windows 3.11, Windows XP needs 100 times more disk space, 10 times more RAM and 10 times more time to boot.
Compared MS to Word 5.5, MS Word 2003 if slower and bigger.
Today I wouldn't revert back to Windows 3.11 and would not choose Word 5.5. What'd be the most important features expected in a document file format? In my opinion:
1. compactness
2. openness
3. flexibility
No "access performances", though.
Because the time needed to load a document, when you do real office work, weighs by far less than the time you spend on it while working.
And when someone sends you a file written with a different version of the software or even with a different software, how much time do you spend to make that file readable and printable?
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
It's actually likely they're slightly faster for spreadsheets. For example:
* they use single-letter tag names, for the most part, to reduce parsing time
* they remove all strings and put them in a look-up table
Thing is XML was desgiend to be readable and easy to parse. If you start doing hacks like embedding tons of binary data (OpenXML has images embeded in the XML), using one letter tags and look-up tables, you've essentially a bloated binary format.
You can call it an XML, it's technically XML, but it really isn't.
It would be better that Microsoft offers an open binary format, but truly open, patent free. XML is really heavy compared to efficient binary formats. Compressing the resulting XML makes XML formats on par with binary as to size, but that's just faking it: the program will have to decompress it and parse an XML, which is tons harder that directly parsing binary offsets and bits (for a machine).
You forget the rest of the fable: When the fox realized he couldn't get the grapes, he walked off, saying to himself, "They were probably sour anyway."
This is arguably analagous to Microsoft saying (about a format they can't control, which has been approved by the ISO as their open XML hasn't yet), "We'd support it but it's too slow"
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Because "free" still means more to me than an additional 1.7 seconds.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
XML is a miserable failure on both counts. It may technically be readable, but it is excruciating. Easy to parse, it most certainly is not. About the only thing it has going for it, is that it is an extensible standard.
...and it can also be written with any program that can read and write text. Right now, today, I can generate valid OpenDocument files with standard Unix command line tools and simple "print" commands in common scripting languages. While that isn't valuable to the average user, it's extremely handy for those of us who want to generate documents dynamically with as little overhead as possible (example: sending quotes based on form input on a website).
Beyond that, XML is human readable (even if not terribly convenient). I can read well-designed XML documents with any text editor. 100 years from now, I'll still be able to glean the content of OpenDocument files with any program that understands by-then legacy encodings like ASCII. If a binary spec is lost, though, so are the documents written with it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The parent had a lot of good things to say except this comment: The idea that XML-based documents are "inherently" slow is silly.
No, the idea that XML-based documents AREN'T "inherently" slow is silly. Of course an XML-based document will be slower than a binary document. XML gives a number of niceties, in the form of maintainability and platform-independence, but it can never be made faster than a well designed binary document. That's just the trade-off.