OT: Word processing (was: Re: IBM Acquires Rational Ada)

OT: Word processing (was: Re: IBM Acquires Rational Ada)

[Anders Wirzenius]

"steve_H" <nma124@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:8db3d6c8.0212101850.51506572@posting.google.com...
> It takes more time to first learn Latex, few commands to learn, and more
> advanced commands, and one has to compile it and then view it. However,
> if one invests the time to learn Latex, and get all the commands right,
> then their final output will be so much better than the 'quick'
> MS Word can ever generate, and it is a great investment that will
> pay multiples over a life time. And actually with time, one will find the
> producing documents with Latex is faster.
>
> But most will not spend the few short days to learn Latex initially, (will
> get either frustrated quickly, or would not even try it as it 'looks' hard)
> and will insead spend their life producing ugly documents with MS Word.
>

A side note:
I made three files, one with a MS Notepad, one with MS Word, one with MS Excel. With each program I stored only the letter 'A'.
Using the current settings that are used in my company (just ordinary "Windows settings", no special) I got the following result:

File length in bytes:
text editor: 1
MS Word: 19456
MS Excel: 13824

This means over 10k of meta and formatting data in addition to the actual data.
The Excel file contained my name three times, the Word file only two times.

Anders

Re: OT: Word processing (was: Re: IBM Acquires Rational Ada)

[Grein, Christoph]

> A side note:
> I made three files, one with a MS Notepad, one with MS Word, one with MS 
Excel. With each program I stored only the letter 'A'.
> Using the current settings that are used in my company (just ordinary "Windows 
settings", no special) I got the following result:
> 
> File length in bytes:
> text editor: 1
> MS Word: 19456
> MS Excel: 13824

That's not at all astonishing. A text editor does not add any formatting 
information.

Word and Excel add paper layout, font descriptions and what else... So what?

Re: OT: Word processing (was: Re: IBM Acquires Rational Ada)

[Anders Wirzenius]

"Grein, Christoph" <christoph.grein@eurocopter.com> wrote in message news:mailman.1039598282.30657.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org...
> > A side note:
> > I made three files, one with a MS Notepad, one with MS Word, one with MS
> Excel. With each program I stored only the letter 'A'.
> > Using the current settings that are used in my company (just ordinary "Windows
> settings", no special) I got the following result:
> >
> > File length in bytes:
> > text editor: 1
> > MS Word: 19456
> > MS Excel: 13824
>
> That's not at all astonishing. A text editor does not add any formatting
> information.
>
> Word and Excel add paper layout, font descriptions and what else... So what?

My intention was just to show how much the meta data and especially formatting data requires bytes compared to the actual data.
In my files the meta data requires some 3 pages of A4 size, unformatted text, 80 letters per line, 66 lines per page. Nothing
astonishing, just a note.
:-)

Anders

Re: OT: Word processing (was: Re: IBM Acquires Rational Ada)

[AG]

"Anders Wirzenius" <anders.wirzenius@pp.qnet.fi> wrote in message
news:jeFJ9.148$j44.131@read3.inet.fi...
> "Grein, Christoph" <christoph.grein@eurocopter.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.1039598282.30657.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org...

> > > File length in bytes:
> > > text editor: 1
> > > MS Word: 19456
> > > MS Excel: 13824
> >
> > That's not at all astonishing. A text editor does not add any formatting
> > information.
> >
> > Word and Excel add paper layout, font descriptions and what else... So
what?

Perhaps you've missed the part where the files
contained the original author's name three times?
What exactly does it have to do with formatting?
Not to mention that 10k+ formatting info does
seem a bit too much for a single character file.