Hi Andy, remember this thread? I forwarded your rant on to my supervisors and they saw the light. Our new file format is now pure XML. They've been developing it and working with it for a while now. Our senior developer just stopped by my cube to tell me how great it is to work with XML and not have the headaches of the OLE2 format. He thanked me for challenging him on the issue and asked me to thank you too.
Corey Nelson PS. Do you guys have an estimated release date for 1.5? > -----Original Message----- > From: acoliver [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 4:04 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Fast loading and saving? > > >On Mon, 4 Mar 2002 15:48:00 -0700 Corey Nelson > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote. > >I've been told that one of the benefits (perhaps the only) of using OLE2 > CD > >format is that you don't have to load or save the entire file when you > just > >want read or edit a small part of it. If you had War and Peace in a Word > >Document and you wanted to fix a typo on page 935 it wouldn't take > forever > >to open the file or save your changes. > > > >Question 1) Is this true? > > > > NO! Thats totally bogus! OLE 2 CDF is formatted as such to make this > impossible (downstream pointers to upstream things and vice versa). > > Marc, would you like to expand on that? > > >Question 2) If so, is this still true if I'm using POIFS to read and > write > >the file? > > > > Nope, we read it rather efficiently if I might say so, but the format > SUCKS > and prevents this. > > <rant> > > ALL HEAR THIS: I HEAVILY AND TOTALLY DISCOURAGE USING OLE2CDF UNLESS YOU > HAVE TO! Meaning POI seeks to make it possible to use better technology > when you have to interoperate with inferior technology such as Excel or > Word > or some MFC implemented thing. We named our implementation Poor > Obfuscation > Implementation (or the m-w.com definition of poi mish mash) for a reason. > (not to mention Horrible SpreadSheet Format, Horrible Document Format and > Horrible Property Set Format). > > Microsoft file formats offer you NO advantages WHATSOEVER over XML, gzip, > tar, or whatever the alternative you might consider in the same space. > They > SUCK, they ROYALLY and Completely SUCK. > </rant> > > OLE 2 Compound Document format is NOTHING more then a completely > convoluted > archive format. Use ZIP with no compression and you achieve the same > thing.. The only thing OLE 2 CDF buys you is that it slighly obfuscates > (poorly) the format of your file from platforms without a Java 2 JVM > (since > POI unobfuscates it ;-) )... > > So why would we put ourselves through this: Its fun! Intellectually > challenging! (It shouldn't be to just read a file format, but it IS!) And > we get to spit in the eye of closed file formats everywhere! > > >Thanks for reading. > > > > No problem.. I needed to unwind for the day ;-) > > -Andy > > PS to understand what I think of the OLE 2 Compound Document Format, XLS > format or DOC format -- count all of the times the word SUCKS appears in > this email and multiply it by 10 to the 99th power and you will have some > vague idea on what I think of the formats and the morons who designed > them. > :-) -- But unmangling them into nice object models is really fun! > (seriously we do this for the intellectual challenge because all of the > work > people pay us for is to technically easy!) > > > >Corey > >
