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February 19, 2008
Binary vs text
Binary vs text: Joel Spolsky looks at the recent documentation for Microsoft Office native file formats, and asks "Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated?" Fortunately he answers the question -- these binary file formats grew up with use of the tools, and had to solve an ongoing series of problems, and weren't designed for direct manipulation by others. Plausible, useful perspective here. Towards the end he outlines ways to solve problems by using the current functionality of the tools themselves, rather than writing new code to digest the old formats. This doesn't explain why the more recent XML formats for Microsoft Office are so remarkably complex, however... an XML format seems like it should be able to be implemented by others, particularly if it is proposed as a common standard. Efficient binary formats have different priorities than open text formats... different types of beasts.
Posted by JohnDowdell at February 19, 2008 09:41 AM
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