There's a Joel on Software article that discusses this. See http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.

There's a Joel on Software article that discusses this. See http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html Historically Office file formats have grown from in-memory structures serialized to disk which helps in part to explain the complexity of them.