File sizes

[Chris]

Hello;

Why would .doc and .rtf versions of the same Word file be significantly
different sizes? 176 Kb vs 704 Kb respectively as an example.

Also why would minor text changes in a .doc document change it from 176
Kb to 252 Kb while the .rtf version of the latter remains 704 Kb?

Curious.

Chris

 

[Chris]

I think I can answer my own question.

..doc files are MSWord files and rely on the coding inherent in the
program.

..rtf files are more generic and contain code that make the file more
self-sufficient to be opened by more applications.

I think.
Chris

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Chris,

Those are good questions.

That one, I would be a little worried--having fast saves on can balloon
size, or if you are tracking changes and don't know it.

Re rtf vs. doc size, a random check of 26 two page essays that I have
suggests that the rtf are about 8kb while the Word documents are 24kb. So
smaller.

This random link suggests that .rtf is smaller unless you've got pix, etc or
other non-text elements.
http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~danielgz/rtfvsdoc.html

I think that for very long text documents that used styles, .doc may be
smaller because it is just one style definition and a bunch of single tags,
while rtf has to use multiple tags for every formatting change. Maybe.

Here's some more testing. I opened an 80kb Word doc (8 pages, all text) and
saved as RTF and it came out as 108KB. Then I opened the original word doc
in TextEdit and saved as RTF and it came out 32KB.

So a theory that Word's RTF-export is kinda as inefficient as its HTML
export--designed to round-trip back into Word? The Kind on the Word-saved
RTF is actually "MS Word RTF doc", while the TextEdit-saved is plain "Rich
Text Format". But when I opened the Word doc in TextEdit, I lost my
numbering and my SEQ fields entirely, while in the Word-saved RTF, those got
converted to plain text. I think that supports my theory.

(I know that none of the rtf documents in my sample of 26 were created in
Word, cause that's why I have them as rtf).