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.'"

Comments

MS App Tweaks

[Gallenod]

This brings to mind something that Microsoft did in the mid 1990's. When MS Word was trying to wrest market share from Wordperfect, Microsoft apparently coded speed bumps into Windows that only their programmers knew how to avoid. Microsoft then claimed that MS applications were "better" becuase they were faster, though we didn't understand that it was because of intentional handicapping of their rivals' software until they'd pretty much crushed WordPerfect in the market.

It kind of makes me wonder if they'll try the same approach to make ODF look "slower," by optimizing MS apps to work with Open XML and fumble around with ODF files.

faster and smaller can be far worse

[kel-tor]

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200511251 44611543

using a text editor, would you rather try to fix a bug in an odf or ms xml file?
MS XML
<w:p>
<w:r>
  <w:t>This is a </w:t>

</w:r>
<w:r>
  <w:rPr>
   <w:b />
  </w:rPr>
  <w:t>very basic</w:t>

</w:r>
<w:r>
  <w:t> document </w:t>
</w:r>
<w:r>

  <w:rPr>
   <w:i />
  </w:rPr>
  <w:t>with some</w:t>
</w:r>

<w:r>
  <w:t> formatting, and a </w:t>
</w:r>
<w:hyperlink w:rel="rId4" w:history="1">
  <w:r>

   <w:rPr>
    <w:rStyle w:val="Hyperlink" />
   </w:rPr>
   <w:t>hyperlink</w:t>
  </w:r>

</w:hyperlink>

</w:p>
OpenDocument
<text:p text:style-name="Standard">
   This is a <text:span text:style-name="T1">

   very basic</text:span> document <text:span
   text:style-name="T2"> with some </text:span>
   formatting, and a <text:a xlink:type="simple"
   xlink:href="http://example.com">hyperlink
   </text:a>

</text:p>

algorithms for fast compression & handling of

[fph il quozientatore]

Here is a fast new algorithm to compress XML in such a way that browsing and searching the tree can be done without uncompressing it. This should make Word definitely faster when handling ODF. I really think Microsoft should start implementing some of this stuff instead of whining and complaining.

Re:I don't know about the rest of you...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about if someone with a Windows PC at hand compared the speed of opening and saving OpenDocument vs. the usual .doc to give us some real numbers.

Not very scientific, but I tried to do this test. I opened a big Word doc I have (80 pages), and re-saved it in ODT using OpenOffice 2.0. Then I opened both docs a bunch of times (did them in different orders, sometimes with OpenOffice already open, sometimes not).

End result: OpenOffice 2.0 opens ODT about twice as fast as it opens Word .DOC files (it took about 1 second to open the doc and about 0.5 seconds to open the ODT).

It is not surprising that OpenOffice opens its preferred (well-documented) format faster than it opens someone else's non-documented format.

The inverse test (opening both DOC and ODT in Word) is not possible for obvious reasons! However opening the .DOC in Word was even faster (0.3 seconds? ... hard to measure).

Conclusion: Word opening DOC is probably faster than OO2.0 opening ODT. However the difference is so small that no one should care (on modern hardware especially). Furthermore there's no reason not to believe that opening of ODT documents will get faster and smoother as time goes on, since the standard is published and algorithms for opening ODT can be improved openly with time. Not only that, but since OO2.0 is open-source, it's particular implementation can be improved.

On the flip side, just yesterday I tried using MS PowerPoint on a macintosh to open a big presentation (lots of graphs). Opening (and manipulating) the file was unbearable (took minutes to open on the Mac, even though MS PowerPoint on Windows opens it in a few seconds). Strangely Keynote opens it in a few seconds. So Microsoft even has trouble efficiently opening their own binary format! The idea that XML-based documents are "inherently" slow is silly. It has everything to do with the algorithm (which is good for MS Word, bad for MS PowerPoint for Mac, and decent for OpenOffice).

MS is claiming this for a long time

[Fedarkyn]

At tech-ed 2005 here in Brazil I saw one of MS evangelists showing a table comparing speeds for MS office (don't remember the version) and openoffices showing diferences od 20x or more...

I use both offices suites at work and at home and the speed difference is in the order of 2x at most for the first loading of the program and almost no difference after this (anything below 1 second is just "fast enougth" for me). And my computer is rather outdated.

I think ms Office a fair software, not worth the price, that's really expensive in Brasil, but they don't need to lie this way to sell it...

Re:I don't know about the rest of you...

[Bert64]

Watching microsoft's other apps (for example: publisher) open or save word files can be quite amusing, publisher's support for word files is attrocious, far worse than openoffice infact...

It's quite disturbing how microsoft can't open their own format correctly, even with access to whatever documentation exists and full source code of an existing implementation.