[13:56] <daftykins> hmm, fascinating situation on a client system once again - i might well have shared how i had worked to batch convert scanned documents at one place to reduce the size on disk by a huge margin
[13:57] <daftykins> this time, i found a practice where half the data size of an application was taken up with 6,600 KB .RTF files representing just tiny word processed documents
[13:57] <daftykins> seems to be something nutty about a typical RTF wherein it's all raw ASCII with no compression - and tonnes of tags for formatting, making up the overall size
[13:58] <daftykins> i just fed January 2012's 189 .RTF files into LibreOffice batch conversion... input size: 1.25 GB - output size: 92 MB ; 7.17 % of original
[13:58] <zxmpi> i've had situations like that and compressing works for 99% of the documents fine but there's 1% that when you compress them they become unreadable blurs
[13:59] <daftykins> heh, yeah the added challenge in this case is that i needed them to keep the original file name *and* pretend to be .RTF still so that they'd open from the program in MS Word, thankfully it works fine and doesn't care they're not really RTFs
[14:00] <daftykins> the only quirk is it puts spelling error squiggles under loads of normal words, some kind of additions must have been made that make it go squirrely
[14:00] <zxmpi> yeah, windows hates file extensions and can ignore them for some apps
[15:52] <penguin42> daftykins: Sorry, I'm unclear; are you resaving them as rtf or plain txt?
[15:52] <daftykins> ah i did neglect that part yes, well since i need to preserve their opening, they're noew .docx *but* named .RTF :D
[15:52] <daftykins> *now
[15:53] <daftykins> developer refuses to offer any assistance in editing the database to reflect a file extension change
[15:53] <daftykins> they seem to write into a flat file format with pairs of files named .FS5 and .IDX
[15:53] <penguin42> had you tried just resaving them back as rtf?
[15:53] <daftykins> (in case you've ever heard of those)
[15:54] <penguin42> i.e. whether LO's RTF writer is any more concise?
[15:54] <daftykins> yeah that drops them to a smaller size, but still 3x larger than .docx
[15:54] <penguin42> yeh, docx is gzip'd or is it zip)
[15:55] <daftykins> mm zip xml aiui
[15:55] <daftykins> so 6,958 KB RTF, 500 KB .docx, 1,462 KB .RTF resaved
[15:56] <penguin42> I ownder if you can tell LO to change the language in the docx so it doesn't try and spell check
[15:57] <daftykins> it's an odd one, normal words come up as bad and yet i see English UK at the bottom just fine
[15:58] <daftykins> with LO that is, didn't spend much time in MS Word on their end
[15:58] <daftykins> i lose all the create/modified dates as well of course due to processing
[16:03] <penguin42> restamp those?
[16:03] <daftykins> i don't know a viable method for that off hand
[16:04]  * penguin42 wishes Toolstations order system didn't blatantly lie and say it could process an order in 5mins
[16:33] <daftykins> https://www.twitch.tv/nasa
[16:33] <daftykins> eclipse over in New Mexico
[16:43] <zxmpi> the cosmic ballet goes on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmoW-gNjjXA
[17:13]  * penguin42 just walked 3x3m length of trunking home from Toolstation
[17:33] <daftykins> arms like jelly now?
[17:33] <penguin42> one, yes :-)
[17:34] <penguin42> didn't even get too many odd looks either :-)
[17:34] <daftykins> if anyone glances for too long at whatever i'm carrying, i like to say i'm taking it for a walk