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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.'"
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.
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200511251 44611543
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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>
---
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.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
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.
.DOC files (it took about 1 second to open the doc and about 0.5 seconds to open the ODT).
.DOC in Word was even faster (0.3 seconds? ... hard to measure).
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
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
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).