John McGhie [MVP - Word]
07-09-2003, 04:40 AM
Hi Johnny:
I think that is because certain characters in a file name mark the file name
as being a "System" file. When that happens, the file disappears entirely.
So when you "Saved" your document, you were left only with the temporary
file, which does not contain the whole text. The real document cannot be
seen unless you enable Root Access.
The "smallest" file format for saving a Word document is the .doc format.
That's because it is a compressed format: Word compresses the text and
pictures on Save.
The only way to get a file smaller than .doc is to remove some information
from it. For example, a .txt file will be smaller, because it doesn't
contain any formatting. An HTML file can be compressed, and if it is, it
will be much smaller than a .doc. But that's because it is *not* a
document. When Word re-opens it, it creates a new document into which it
copies the text from the HTML file, but all the advanced features and
formatting may be missing (depending on which version of Word you have).
Same if you save the file to AppleWorks: you will get a smaller file because
the AppleWorks format does not contain enough information to describe a Word
document. When you reopen the file, Word sets all the missing information
to the default values: what you get back is not the same document.
There is an awful lot of nonsense out there on the Internet: we all get
sucked in from time to time, but one should try not to believe too much of
it. Ask yourself this question: "Microsoft has zillions of dollars and lots
of the best computer programmers in the industry. If Microsoft could have
found a way to make a file that does everything a Word document will do and
is also smaller and as reliable, don't you think they might have done so?"
Well, they did: The Word 98 and above file format introduced compression to
reduce the size of Word documents. If you save a Word document to RTF, you
will find that it's between 2 and ten times the .doc version, depending on
what is in it.
Cheers
This responds to microsoft.public.mac.office.word on 8 Jul 2003 16:10:25
-0700, jonathan_curly[at]hotmail.com (JonnyTsunami):
> A document saved with the "`" character after it (the accent character
> below the tilde) saves with less memory than the original. Will
> someone confirm my report or tell me why it happens?
>
> -JT
Please post all comments to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.
John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:john[at]mcghie-information.com.au
I think that is because certain characters in a file name mark the file name
as being a "System" file. When that happens, the file disappears entirely.
So when you "Saved" your document, you were left only with the temporary
file, which does not contain the whole text. The real document cannot be
seen unless you enable Root Access.
The "smallest" file format for saving a Word document is the .doc format.
That's because it is a compressed format: Word compresses the text and
pictures on Save.
The only way to get a file smaller than .doc is to remove some information
from it. For example, a .txt file will be smaller, because it doesn't
contain any formatting. An HTML file can be compressed, and if it is, it
will be much smaller than a .doc. But that's because it is *not* a
document. When Word re-opens it, it creates a new document into which it
copies the text from the HTML file, but all the advanced features and
formatting may be missing (depending on which version of Word you have).
Same if you save the file to AppleWorks: you will get a smaller file because
the AppleWorks format does not contain enough information to describe a Word
document. When you reopen the file, Word sets all the missing information
to the default values: what you get back is not the same document.
There is an awful lot of nonsense out there on the Internet: we all get
sucked in from time to time, but one should try not to believe too much of
it. Ask yourself this question: "Microsoft has zillions of dollars and lots
of the best computer programmers in the industry. If Microsoft could have
found a way to make a file that does everything a Word document will do and
is also smaller and as reliable, don't you think they might have done so?"
Well, they did: The Word 98 and above file format introduced compression to
reduce the size of Word documents. If you save a Word document to RTF, you
will find that it's between 2 and ten times the .doc version, depending on
what is in it.
Cheers
This responds to microsoft.public.mac.office.word on 8 Jul 2003 16:10:25
-0700, jonathan_curly[at]hotmail.com (JonnyTsunami):
> A document saved with the "`" character after it (the accent character
> below the tilde) saves with less memory than the original. Will
> someone confirm my report or tell me why it happens?
>
> -JT
Please post all comments to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.
John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:john[at]mcghie-information.com.au