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Posted by Chris Thompson
Oct 17, 2007 at 03:27 PM
This is actually an interesting discussion. That Word barely can sort of handle the task by only loading portions of the document at a time is beside the point, really. The reason you’re having various degrees of speed issues using most conventional word processors to edit a document of this size is precisely because they’re not tools designed for this kind of job.
Think about it… a 1100 page document, in terms of text content, is only about 500,000 words, or about 2.3 megabytes of text. That should be nothing for a modern computer to deal with. I open text files of that size in text editors all the time, and applications dealing with orders of magnitude more data in other contexts don’t have to resort to kludges like only loading a portion of the document. That conventional word processors can’t slice through documents of this size like butter is because they’re designed for a particular task: small to medium size documents with unstructured formatting, and all the internal bloat that comes along for the ride.
Most of the long document tools use a different approach, with text being the core thing being edited, and styling and advanced features being attached through some method of tagging (as if you stripped out all the formatting stuff in Word except the styles drop down box). Whether the final layout it done by the publisher or by the user is really an orthogonal issue, though it usually gets dragged into these debates.
I personally wouldn’t mind seeing a version of Word optimized for long documents, but I doubt it will ever happen.
—Chris
Graham Rhind wrote:
>So those parts of the process are never a
>requirement - just the storing and manipulation of the text, tables and graphics.
>Word (and I’m talking about Word 2000 and its predecessor) has a clever way of opening
>large documents by opening only part of them and then opening other sections later as
>you scroll down. Other programs try to load the whole document in one go, which meant in
>my case I could have decorated my office whilst waiting.
>
>And, as I mentioned, I don’t
>find Word aggravating and I do find it reliable. Naturally it won’t suit everybody,
>but what software does?
>
Posted by Ken
Oct 17, 2007 at 03:39 PM
OK Graham, I looked at the sample pages from your book. All I can say is that I will never play Trivial Pursuit with you! ;) All in all, your work seems like a very valuable reference for anybody having interaction with people in more than one country. A very impressive data set that you have assembled.
—Ken
Posted by quant
Oct 17, 2007 at 03:57 PM
Chris Thompson wrote:
>This is actually an interesting discussion. That Word barely can sort of handle the
>task by only loading portions of the document at a time is beside the point, really. The
>reason you’re having various degrees of speed issues using most conventional word
>processors to edit a document of this size is precisely because they’re not tools
>designed for this kind of job.
>
>Think about it… a 1100 page document, in terms of
>text content, is only about 500,000 words, or about 2.3 megabytes of text. That should
>be nothing for a modern computer to deal with. I open text files of that size in text
>editors all the time, and applications dealing with orders of magnitude more data in
>other contexts don’t have to resort to kludges like only loading a portion of the
>document. That conventional word processors can’t slice through documents of this
>size like butter is because they’re designed for a particular task: small to medium
>size documents with unstructured formatting, and all the internal bloat that comes
>along for the ride.
>
>Most of the long document tools use a different approach, with
>text being the core thing being edited, and styling and advanced features being
>attached through some method of tagging (as if you stripped out all the formatting
>stuff in Word except the styles drop down box). Whether the final layout it done by the
>publisher or by the user is really an orthogonal issue, though it usually gets dragged
>into these debates.
>
>I personally wouldn’t mind seeing a version of Word optimized
>for long documents, but I doubt it will ever happen.
>
>—Chris
great reply!
I also had a look at your book, Graham. Your book actually is a database. You could maybe ask some database specialist to look at it, and they’d create a database from your book. Then you could sell it in a database format ... or you could have it online, and customers could query (for a fee) data they would require. For example someone would be interested only on Address format from any country ... others would like to see all info about certain county ... all these would be simple queries to the database with output on the website. Or maybe another tool could be address formatter ... user would input address, choose country ... and your website would return the address formatted for a given country ... and many other stuff like that ...
Posted by Graham Rhind
Oct 17, 2007 at 04:12 PM
Thank you Ken.
Quant: I am a database specialist and did weigh up whether to store the data in a traditional database form or in this text form. I asked my customers what they wanted and with one exception none wanted an online version or the “ask question and get an answer” version that you suggest. That is the reason that I use my head as the database (with a lot of help from Whizfolders), and why I maintain the data in book form.
As for tools for creating, for example, a correctly formatted address from an incorrectly formatted one, that’s precisely what the customers who buy my book do with the information :-) I myself don’t have the technical knowledge to do that online, and I think it’s wiser not to compete directly with my customers ....
quant wrote:
>I also had a look at your book, Graham. Your book actually is a
>database. You could maybe ask some database specialist to look at it, and they’d
>create a database from your book. Then you could sell it in a database format ... or you
>could have it online, and customers could query (for a fee) data they would require.
>For example someone would be interested only on Address format from any country ...
>others would like to see all info about certain county ... all these would be simple
>queries to the database with output on the website. Or maybe another tool could be
>address formatter ... user would input address, choose country ... and your website
>would return the address formatted for a given country ... and many other stuff like
>that ...
Posted by quant
Oct 17, 2007 at 05:02 PM
Graham Rhind wrote:
>Thank you Ken.
>
>Quant: I am a database specialist and did weigh up whether to store the
>data in a traditional database form or in this text form. I asked my customers what they
>wanted and with one exception none wanted an online version or the “ask question and
>get an answer” version that you suggest. That is the reason that I use my head as the
>database (with a lot of help from Whizfolders), and why I maintain the data in book
>form.
>
>As for tools for creating, for example, a correctly formatted address from an
>incorrectly formatted one, that’s precisely what the customers who buy my book do
>with the information :-) I myself don’t have the technical knowledge to do that
>online, and I think it’s wiser not to compete directly with my customers ....
maybe, your customers are too traditional, internet is the future. You could bring your data to a much wider audience, because they could get particular info they require for a smaller fee. You don’t know ... people might like it very much, and maybe one day google will buy it from you and include it in their services, and you’ll get rich :-)