Superb-feature request: auto-filecompression

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JohnWasilewski
Posts: 380
Joined: Sun Jan 13, 2008 1:06 am
Location: UK

Superb-feature request: auto-filecompression

Post by JohnWasilewski »

When I was still using Windows, Word and Outlook, I had found a really excellent little add-on to Outlook that enabled be to send huge attachments without any additional steps. I needed it because many of my M$Word documents were very large. I write long and complex reports, often with many diagrams, tables, long appendices and, often, a lot of photographs, for which it is always necessary to have c.300dpi resolution to make sure they would not only be good on the screen but would also be very clear when printed. This is only what I do but but I expect that many other users also generate very large documents sometimes, of other kinds, such as illustrated manuals, prospectuses, brochures, professional proposals, reference books etc..

As a result, the documents I prepare are nearly always at least 20MB, and they sometimes reach 100MB. This can cause huge difficulties when sending them by email. With Windows, Word and Outlook, I have had to resort to such strategies as (a) using file splitter software, (b) stripping out all photos and sending them separately, for recipients to paste back in, (c) preparing each chapter as a separate document, (d) sending them with 96dpi photos, and sending 300dpi printed copies by post, (e) sending .PDF versions only, with file compression, (f) saving the v long .doc or .docx files, then compressing them with self-extracting archiver software, etc..

ALL this was always a real pain in the a--e, until, FINALLY, I found a brilliant better way.

I found two add-ons, one for M$Word, and one for M$Outlook. They both did the same thing, so I only needed one or the other, but they were both brilliant. I cannot remember the name of either of them because I've been a Linux-only user for the last 5 years, but here is what the two add-ons both did: The M$Word add-on automatically cut-in whenever I saved a very large document, to offer an option to COMPRESS it. The M$Outlook add-on automatically cut-in whenever I attached a very large document, with an option to COMPRESS it. In both cases, the compressed version of the document was a self-extracting archive. The filename remained the same. The file was often massively reduced.

When saving the incoming email attachment its size stayed the same - as reduced. But when opening it, using M$Word or a Word viewer, the archive-file 'self-extracted' to its original size in memory. In other words, the process was equally invisible, both to the file creator-saver-sender, and to the file receiver-saver-opener.

How large the reduction in size was varied, of course, but not by much, because, though I'm unsure of this, I think M$Word stored photos as uncompressed bitmaps and then compressed them a bit but not by very much, so even a .JPG photo took up a LOT of space, and even when photos embedded in a document had already been compressed (as .JPGs, for example), these two add-ons were still able to compress the resulting document by A LOT! Almost ANY document, whether it was 25MB or 85MB, I could nearly always send by email, with no additional effort, because these add-ons could always get them down to under 20MB and usually to under 10MB.

SO HERE's MY FEATURE REQUEST:
Provide this as a built-in feature of TextMaker.
AFAIK, no other Wordprocessor has this feature built in. Do it, SoftMaker, and extend your lead!!
---
John
Jossi
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Re: Superb-feature request: auto-filecompression

Post by Jossi »

Such an extension would be nice to have, but I'm a bit sceptical. In my experience the main reason for bulky word processor documents are large embedded images, so the main task of such an extension would be to compress images, and AFAIK image processing is not SoftMaker's central competence area. Moreover, the options for minimizing image size are limited: compress uncompressed images, choose a better compression algorithm, deteriorate quality or reduce resolution. So if you need 300 dpi images in a decent quality and they are already existing as jpegs, further compression will work no wonders (or you might end up with compression artefacts or coarse resolution).
SuperTech
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Re: Superb-feature request: auto-filecompression

Post by SuperTech »

Thanks for your suggestion. I have forwarded this feature request to our development team.
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