File size

Gust · Councilperson Joined: Oct 09, 2007 Posts: 137

In the days of OpenOffice.org 1.0 I was always very impressed by the file size of the documents when saved in the native format as compared to the MS Office formats.

During the NeoOffice 2 life cycle, file sizes got ever closer for a reason that I ignore. For most documents both file formats resulted in broadly the same file size.

Now there is NeoOffice 3, and it seems that the native format ever gets fatter, whereas the size of MS Office formatted files (binary, not xml) is often much smaller now (probably the export filter got improved). As an example: open a new text document, type 'blah' and save it in the respective file formats. The doc file will be 8KB, whereas the odt file is 20KB (note that odt is a zipped container format, it actually is a genuine achievement to produce 20KB of entropy using 'blah' as single input).

I'm not sure if this behaviour is specific to NeoOffice, it's cause seems more likely to be found in the underlying OpenOffice.org code. But I am sure that I do not appreciate the evolution.

sirloxelroy · Sentinel Joined: Nov 16, 2006 Posts: 26 Location: BFE

Strange, I am running NeoOffice 2.0 Patch 2 and "BlahBlahBlah" was 16kb in file size (16,725), and 6 Blahs was also 16KB, but 16,758 in size.

James3359 · Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 8:56 am Post subject:

FWIW the values I get are 8k (.doc) and 16k (.odt).

But I notice with larger files that similar issues arise - one, for example is 64k (.doc) 96k (.odt NeoOfice 2.2.5) and 112k (.odt NeoOffice 3 EA)

None of these include graphics.

I remember there has been some discussion of this before, and I tracked down this Trinity thread it is not entirely enlightening about why this should be.

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

Gust · Councilperson Joined: Oct 09, 2007 Posts: 137

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

James3359 · Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 9:32 am Post subject:

My 112`KB file with NO3 EA unzips to 196KB and contains the following elements of size:

content.xml - 44KB
layout-cache - 4KB
manifest.xml - 4KB
meta.xml - 4KB
mimetype - 4KB
settings.xml - 12KB
styles.xml - 20KB
thumbnail.pdf - 72KB
thumbnail.png - 32KB

so it looks as though stripping out the thumbnails would knock 100KB off the file size.

I guess that that for documents containing a full page of text/graphics or more the size of thumbnails is pretty much the same whatever the complexities of the overall document - so this probably starts to make less of a difference with larger file sizes. [Cross posted with Patrick on this - I had overlooked the impact of embedding fonts - so a multi-font first page is likely to generate larger thumbnails and larger files overall.]

But you might get an anomalous result with a document with a blank first page - yes - just checked blah.odt - 16KB blah.odt with a page break inserted before "blah" - 12KB Smile

So you might be able to do a quick and dirty file size reduction simply by adding a blank first page to your odt. document.

ovvldc · Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 1:57 pm Post subject:

Also, the thumbnail is important for small files, but doesn't make as much of a difference for larger ones, especially when you insert images after the first page.

I understand that 100kB extra can make some impact, but I would also contend that while this used to be 1/3 of a floppy disk, it is now just a minute fraction of the storage capacity of a USB flash drive..

Best wishes,
Oscar

ahneobugs · Sentinel Joined: Jan 16, 2008 Posts: 20

File size is an issue. An extra 100k may not be a big deal for a few dozen documents, but once you get into larger numbers, it does become significant.

For instance, it can mean that backing up takes significantly longer and incremental backups will require new media 5-10x as often (compared to wordperfect mac).

It would be great if this feature could be turned off. Personally, I would sacrifice the quicklook preview for space efficiency.

OPENSTEP · Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 12:54 pm Post subject:

You can get a 1.5 TB drive for less than $150. My computations may be wrong, but 100K is worth 0.000009 cents.

This functionality is beneficial for the majority of users and will not be turned off. You can always edit OpenDocument files from any application manually using the command line zip utilities.

ed

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

FYI. I have moved the posts concerning how to disable NeoOffice's Quick Look plugin in the Finder to the following new topic:

https://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=7051

Patrick