Comments on: Compressed XML based files formats in Microsoft Office 12

By: sandman

sandman — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 23:56:08 +0000

In short, life is going to be better for an average user.

By: Sunil

Sunil — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 13:45:15 +0000

Maybe they will do a lossy compression on images to reduce the file size. But even then i think, if people use the right kind of tools, like stuffIT which can “re - compress” JPG’s. I am sure that similar concepts can be extended to “re - compress” PNG’s. This way the optimizer companies can still get some amount of compression gain over Microsoft. I dont know if that gain would be worthwhile though. I seriously think the only way Microsoft can put someone out of business in this game is if it can do some flavor of embedded coding. This would give some extraordinary features to the office suite in my opinion.

-Sunil M

By: Sachin Garg

Sachin Garg — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 10:43:09 +0000

Now they have solved the issue for non-image data. For images, I think microsoft cannot automatically do lossy compression of images. That explains why they have chosen PNG. This is far better than older versions of Office where BMP images were embedded as is.

Together, it seems Microsoft is waking up to the size issues and has already reduced the advantage gained by using specialized products.

But, that is just my opinion. Others may feel that these 3rd party tools are still worth it. It wouldn’t be too surprising is MS comes with the “optimize embedded images” feature too. Microsoft is known for adding such features which put others out of business.

> But i think an open XML based standard will only
> provide more control for office file optimizers

Yes, the advantage of having open standards.

By: Sunil

Sunil — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 03:27:52 +0000

If Microsoft is not going to compress images, then how do they intend to put companies like NX Power out of business. Assuming that 70% of a ppt’s size maybe images and 30% text. Microsoft stores these images as PNG. Assuming the new zip technology will give say 50% improvement over the text, this translates to and 15% improvement on the overall size. I am sure NX Power lite can do more on the 70%. Of course it is a differnet matter if Microsoft is going to shift to JPEG/JPEG200 (microsoft will have its own flavor of JPEG2000/embedded coding called WMI, windows media imaging)as a mode of storing images.

I am not a great fan of microsoft or NX power lite. But i think an open XML based standard will only provide more control for office file optimizers because they have more control over the file format.

-Sunil M