Test of word processors
Below is a test of word and text processors and their files. The links go to the files themselves.
The point of view is the one of a user who needs to process texts that meet the following requirements:
- Unicode rendering through milennia — the files must correctly render texts written throughout the last 2000 years in Europe, including Greek and Old Church Slavonic;
- Low file size — to take the documents with him on a storage medium like a flash memory stick;
- Contain metadata to deal with copyright issues and easen searches of the word processor or other programs, such as the Find file of the operating system;
- Enable general style control through stylesheets or other kinds of markup whereby the typography of headings is defined only once.
The sample text is The Lord's Prayer in Modern English, Latin, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, and Old Church Slavic, using Unified Text Format (Unicode) UTF-8. Not all programs are able to reproduce the data correctly. To be frank, the sample texts were created through copying-and-pasting from the Nvu version and then adding up the necessary markup and metadata.
| Program | File type (default or exported) | Extension | Size | Unicode | Mark-up | Metadata |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AppleWorks | AppleWorks 6 (default) | .clw | 27K | No | OK | OK |
| Nvu | XHTML 1.0 Strict (default). utf-8 | .html | 6.0K | OK | OK | OK |
| Nvu | XHTML 1.0 Strict (default). iso-8859-1 | .html | 7.9K | OK | OK | OK |
| NeoOffice | Open Office Document (default) | .odt | 9.0K | OK | OK | OK |
| NeoOffice | Aportis Document (Palm) | .pdb | 2.1K | OK | OK | No |
| NeoOffice | DocBook XML | .xml | 3.9K | OK | OK | No |
| NeoOffice | HTML document | .html | 7.8K | OK | OK | OK |
| NeoOffice | Pocket Word | .psw | 6.0K | OK | No | No |
| NeoOffice | Rich Text Format | .rtf | 36K | OK | OK | OK |
| NeoOffice | StarWriter 3 | .sdw | 13K | No | OK | OK |
| NeoOffice | StarWriter 4 | .sdw | 18K | No | OK | OK |
| NeoOffice | StarWriter 5 | .sdw | 19K | No | OK | OK |
| NeoOffice | Text | .txt | 4.8K | OK | No | No |
| NeoOffice | Text — encoded | .txt | 4.8K | OK | No | No |
| NeoOffice | NeoOffice 1.0 Text Document | .sxw | 8.9K | OK | OK | OK |
| NeoOffice | Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP | .doc | 15K | OK | OK | OK |
| NeoOffice | Microsoft Word 95 | .doc | 13K | OK | OK | OK |
| NeoOffice | Microsoft Word 6 (Macintosh) | .doc | 13K | OK | OK | OK |
| NeoOffice | Microsoft Word 2003 XML | .xml | 15K | OK | OK | OK |
| NeoOffice | Portable Document Format | 110K | OK | OK | OK | |
| Nisus | Rich Text Format (RTF) (Preferred) | .rtf | 25K | OK | OK | No |
| Nisus | AbiWord Format | .abw | 40K | OK | OK | No |
| Nisus | HTML | .html | 18K | OK | OK | No *) |
| Nisus | Microsoft Word Document | .doc | 25K | OK | OK | No |
| Nisus | 82K | OK | OK | No | ||
| Nisus | Rich Text Format Directory ***) | .rtfd | 26k | OK | OK | No |
| Nisus | Text | .txt | 4.8K | OK ****) | No | No |
| Pages | Pages (default) ***) | .pages | 30k | OK | OK | No |
| Pages | HTML | .html | 11K **) | OK | OK | No *) |
| Pages | Word | .doc | 19K | OK | OK | No |
| Pages | Plain Text | .txt | 4.5K | OK | No | No |
| Pages | Rich Text Format | .rtf | 9.5K | OK | OK | No |
| TextEdit | Rich Text Format (default) | .rtf | 7.7K | OK | No | No |
| TextEdit | HTML | .html | 6.9K | OK | No | No *) |
| TextEdit | Word format | .doc | 23K | OK | No | No |
| TextEdit | Word XML 2003 | .xml | 21K | OK | No | No *) |
| Word 2004 | Word Document(default) | .doc | 29K | OK | OK | OK |
| Word 2004 | Rich Text Format | .rtf | 29K | OK | OK | OK |
| Word 2004 | Text Only | .txt | 2.0K | No | No | No |
| Word 2004 | Text Only (MS-DOS) | .txt | 2.0K | No | No | No |
| Word 2004 | Text Only with Line Breaks | .txt | 2.0K | No | No | No |
| Word 2004 | Text Only with Line Breaks (MS-DOS) | .txt | 2.0K | No | No | No |
| Word 2004 | Unicode Text (UTF-16) | .txt | 4.6K | OK | No | No |
| Word 2004 | Web page | .htm | 21K | OK | OK | OK |
| Word 2004 | Word 4.0-6.0/95 Compatible (RTF) | .rtf | 21K | OK | OK | OK |
Notes to table File sizes
*) HTML metadata can be added later by hand through another program, e.g., Macromedia Dreamweaver (Adobe Dreamweaver).
**) Additional files, e.g., stylesheet, not included
***) Due to the peculiar file format that Nisus or Pages use in this case, this file cannot be accessed with a link. Try out for yourself at:
http://www.thau-knudsen.dk/sw/tests/lords_prayer/nisus_rtf_directory.rtfd
http://www.thau-knudsen.dk/sw/tests/lords_prayer/pages_default.pages
****) If you experience problems viewing the Greek and Slavic passages, open the document in a web browser and select the encoding UTF-8.
Text processors: Names and startup time
Startup time of the application programs is another factor influencing the writers choice of text processor. Why wait for almost a minute to write a note, when 2 seconds from the moment of clicking the application icon till the moment you can write? The below measurements were executed under the following circumstances:
- Computer: Macintosh Power PC G4, 750 MHz, 640 MB SDRAM
- Operating system: Mac OS X Version 10.4.8
- Other open programs: Finder
- Date: 2006-10-18
- Cold start
- Start-up the first time you use the program in a computer session
| Name | Full title and version | Cold startup time (s) | Manufacturer | Last update |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AppleWorks | AppleWorks 6.2.4 | 15 | Apple Computer, Inc. | 2004-12-14 |
| Nisus | Nisus Writer Express 2.7 | Nisus Software, Inc. | 2006-06-08 | |
| Nvu | Nvu 1.0 | 12 | Contributors / Mozilla Foundation | 2005-06-24 |
| NeoOffice | NeoOffice 2.0 Aqua Beta Patch 3 | 48 | OpenOffice.org | 2006-08-31 |
| Pages | iWork Pages 1.0.2 | 07 | Apple Computer, Inc. | 2005-07-11 |
| TextEdit | Text Edit 1.4 | 02 | Apple Computer, Inc. | 2005-08-21 |
| Word 2004 | Microsoft Word 2004 (11.2.3) | 11 | Microsoft | 2006-02-02 |
Note
This page will be updated as long as I have word processors to test.
Erik Thau-Knudsen
