Microsoft Claims OpenDocument is Too Slow 553
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.'"
Re:I don't know about the rest of you... (Score:3, Interesting)
However read time is not the major problem, it is how long it takes to save the document. Don't forget you have automatic saves every 10-15 mins and when that takes more then just a second or two it is a really major pain and interruption to the job.
Re:INCITS (Score:3, Interesting)
RTFA. (Score:3, Interesting)
Mr.Yates says OpenXML has been designed with performance in mind, whereas ODF is not. A binary format such as
I wouldnt know if this was actually the case; however, it would be good to investigate if the claims were true. OpenOffice could very well do with a major performance boost. A lean,well-designed XML schema cannot hurt.
MS App Tweaks (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
OpenOffice not the only option (Score:2, Interesting)
The ZDNet article wasn't comparing formats, it was comparing OO.o to MS Office 2003. If they really wanted to do it right, they would add Abiword and K Office.
In my limited, subjective testing the new version K Office is much faster than either OO.o or MS Office in reading in documents.
-Matt
Re:It's a fucking WORD PROCESSOR (Score:3, Interesting)
It can't be any slower than putting up with Word on XP. I hit save and my machine locks on me for 5-10 seconds. Hangs, basically.
vi rarely does that (on some 2 GB mail files) and LyX appears to save in the background, so I can go on editing. Whatever unix does, it seems to actually be responsive. LyX (and a lot of unix editors) keep an emergency save file, so I bet they are continuously saving so that it is not a big change when you want to update the "current" file.
I just got a new dual Xeon to use a desktop, thinking it would fix some of the sluggishness of XP. Wrong! You click on my computer, and it hangs. You try to "save as" a file and every folder hangs. What is MS doing? Why is it so hard to navigate directories without delays? These little snags drive me nuts.
I would almost rather be back on a green screen vt100 terminal, at least it did what you told it to do.
faster and smaller can be far worse (Score:4, Interesting)
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>
Re:It's a fucking WORD PROCESSOR (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. We have converted ALL of our documents to ODF.
Is it slower? To be honest, I have never noticed a difference. Nobody has mentioned it. Maybe it is slower, maybe it isn't. If it takes 5 seconds vs. 3 seconds to load/save, I'm not sure anyone cares.
OO will run on more platforms, and running slower is probably a necessary result of being portable and not hooked into the OS tightly. My tabbed third-party replacement for Notepad also takes a little longer to load. But I would not give it up because notepad is faster.
After using OO and Office for many years, I honestly can't tell much of a diffence. And I think both office suites are very fine products, but speed is probably the least of their differences, IMHO.
algorithms for fast compression & handling of (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I don't know about the rest of you... (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:What if they're the same thing at MS? (Score:3, Interesting)
The compatibility issues of course arise when you have a completely different memory layout in a later version, and basically need to replicate the one from the previous version (bug for bug) to load older files. It's insane.
MS is claiming this for a long time (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
You've got to be kidding (Score:1, Interesting)
I have been using MS software, operating systems, applications, development tools, etc. (and non-MS too) since the days of MS-DOS 1.25... IMHO MS has no, zero, zip, nada room to bash anyone or anything else as being "too slow." To me, MS bloat-ware defines slow. But consider, this is the company that gives us the hour glass, the searching flashlight, BSOD, mandatory reboots, and numerous other examples of making the user wait.
A second reason this is funny is consider the context. Sure, some people may regularly use multi-megabyte documents. A quick check of my doc directory shows that my largest one is just over 1MB at about 20 pages. But the vast majority are in the 30KB to 60KB range. Now, at work I have a fairly old Dell Optiplex with a Celeron at a blistering 1.2GHz, 512MB of memory, and already burdened with XP Pro. In other words, it isn't cutting edge, more like the backside of the knife, maybe even the handle...
So who cares? MS cares. MS found an objective measure to try to beat up on the open movement and to defend it's proprietary format with. Never mind that in my area anyway, no-one would notice or care. What I really want is an OS that boots faster. Applications that load faster or are slim enough to be left in memory. A UI that doesn't hang for 10 to 20 seconds every time I open/close an application (particularly with IE).
Yes I'm biased. I use MS products at work because I have to -- I don't control the environment. I have Linux/Firefox/Thunderbird/OpenOffice at home by *my* choice. One system at home runs OpenOffice on a Pentium-II at 450MHz, 720M of RAM, a pair of old 5400 RPM HDD, Suse 10.0... (a junker I just play with) and subjectively, it feels as fast as my work machine with more resources. A MS software load on that machine would be just about unusable.
So go ahead MS, talk it up, bash away. I never knew you had such a sense of humor. For anyone else that wants to speed up their compute experience I'd say forget document formats and look deeper - as in your choice of OS and application...
Re:If I was an MS shill. (Score:3, Interesting)
While document reliability is of paramount importance, performance (as in speed) is virtually irrelevant. In terms of the overall time required to create or edit a document, a few extra seconds on opening or saving a file is just noise.
Re:I don't know about the rest of you... (Score:2, Interesting)
All that being said, it's not as simple as M$ suggest. In fact, you can pick up a new PC these days for less money than it costs to buy M$Office. So in theory you could upgrade to a faster machine and run OpenOffice for less money than buying Microsloths shite, with the added bonus of a speed boost for everything else you do as well!!!
Re:I don't know about the rest of you... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:I don't know about the rest of you... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't know about the rest of you... (Score:3, Interesting)
They don't want to release it to the general public yet. They are offering it to the state of massachusettes first.
Yes, they are playing games with it. But I think thats a fact of life when fighting against MS. Also, I doubt that they want to release it before the next version of Office, just to give them (MS) a head start against "breaking" the plugin.
Re:I don't know about the rest of you... (Score:3, Interesting)