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It's an undocumented binary format rather than a documented XML one. The format seems to have been designed with low RAM / CPU usage (ie: iOS) in mind. But see
by fredoralive 13y ago
It's an undocumented binary format rather than a documented XML one. The format seems to have been designed with low RAM / CPU usage (ie: iOS) in mind.
But seeing as nobody else seems to have bothered to actually add support for the old iWork formats despite them being documented XML, the situation is basically unchanged in reality.
- lazerwalker 13y agoThe difference is in a hypothetical future where Apple no longer supports iWork but you need to access old documents. If it's a documented XML format, you can theoretically write your own code pretty easily to get your data out of it. Undocumented binary? Good luck with that.
- Samuel_Michon 13y agoAccording to John Siracusa, Apple made the new iWork file formats so that changes could sync better with iCloud. The idea being that it’s more economical to sync lots of small packages instead of sending one XML file. Apparently, the new file formats use a Google technology called ‘Protocol Buffers’[1]. According to Google, Protocol Buffers have some advantages over XML: they’re simpler, smaller, faster, less ambiguous, and generate data access classes that are easier to use programmatically. Here are some more details on the new file formats: http://pxlnv.com/blog/exploring-the-new-iwork-for-mac-file-formats/ http://pxlnv.com/blog/exploring-the-new-iwork-for-mac-file-f... [1] https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/overview?csw=1 https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/overview...