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IN SUITE PURSUIT
Posted Date: 22 Mar 2008 Resource Type: Articles/Knowledge Sharing Category: Computer & Technology
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Posted By: arunkumar Member Level: Gold
Rating:  Points: 5
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Office productivity applications
have an importance that simply
can’t be ignored. It wouldn’t
be an overstatement to say
that offices can’t survive without a decent
set of these applications. And the
moment you think of office suites, the
one that comes to mind is Microsoft
Office—the undisputed market leader.
Heavy price tag, and frequent upgrade
cycles have prompted MS Office users to
look at alternatives. Their major concern
is the compatibility of these alternatives
with the native MS Office file formats of
.doc, .ppt, and .xls.
There have always been arguments
as to why other office suites should have
MS Office compatibility built into them.
And while different people have different
opinions on this, it’s reasonable for
organisations and individuals to expect
a fair amount of compatibility from
these suites. The reason for this is that
even if the native file formats of these
applications are superior to those of MS
Office, people still have to be able to
work with existing office documents,
which will, without a doubt, be in MS
Office formats.
Our purpose here is to evaluate the
level of compatibility offered by various
alternative suites with MS Office XP files.
The office suites we picked for this
test were the best alternatives to be
found currently across multiple operating
systems—Windows or Linux, to be
precise. A few years ago, this test would
not include any Linux office software,
because of their rudimentary support for
MS Office file formats. But now, with
products such as StarOffice and OpenOffice.
org coming up on Linux, this is no
longer the case. A brief introduction to
all the contenders follows:
StarOffice 7: StarOffice 7 is based on
the OpenOffice.org project. In the Word
documents test, it performed similar to
OpenOffice.org; it had the good as well
as the bad features. For one, it takes ages
to load and keeps on popping up extra
untitled documents each time a new
document is opened.
OpenOffice.org 1.1.0: OpenOffice.org
1.1, a free downloadable (www.openoffice.
org), is a major improvement over previous
versions. The current version
incorporates several features from StarOffice
7. The results, therefore, were quite
similar to what we got with StarOffice 7.
Ability Office: Ability is an office software
suite which includes packages that
help increase productivity. The saidCompatibility among applications can be
judged on two grounds: functional and procedural.
Functional compatibility is the ability
of the software to emulate the functional
capabilities of other software. Procedural
compatibility is the software’s ability to
enable one to do the same job, using similar
steps. Functional compatibility is
required to ensure that the software works
with the existing application. Procedural
compatibility, on the other hand, reduces
the time required to re-train oneself when
migrating to the new application. Here, we
only tested the functional compatibility of
the alternative suites with MS Office. Hence,
the testing concentrated on the ability of
the alternative suites to open existing Word,
Excel and PowerPoint files, make changes to
them, save them and finally, let them open
again in MS Office. The files were created to
take into consideration the limitations that
vendors face while ensuring MS Office compatibility.
We therefore included only a bare
minimum of the set of features that MS
Office offers, compatibility with which is
essential in any office environment. The
more advanced of features were left out.
The test documents came under two categories:
ones that were created by us, and
ones that were downloaded from the Internet.
The ones downloaded from the Internet
contained a lot of graphical diagrams and
mathematical equations. The mathematical
equations range from very simple ones to
highly complex nested equations.
Each document that opened without
any errors scored five points; those with
minor errors scored three points; those
with major errors, but which were still
operable got one point; while documents
which were unopenable scored
zero for the suite.
Word Processors: In the case
of word processors, text formatting
is very important. So,
the main test document consisted
of text written in a variety
of fonts, with varying font sizes
and formatting. In certain places, the background
and foreground colours were
reversed. Almost all the other test documents
had images, screenshots and diagrams,
and the ability of the word
processor to display these was tested. In
total we tested each suite with 10 documents.
Some screenshots had callouts
describing the various components, and
the ability of the applications to render
these was also tested. In total, there we’re
Spreadsheets: Here, correct reproduction of
formulas and embedded graphs was given
top priority. We used nine documents to test
this category. Many of the test documents
were designed to test the ability of the applications
to open multiple worksheets in a single
spreadsheet. These had formulas
referencing multiple worksheets, and also
used graphs that were cross-referenced to
other worksheets. One test spreadsheet had
complex functions and
basic Windows widgets
(simple controls such as
buttons) embedded. We
didn’t expect it to work on
Linux-based applications—
they were specifically
meant for Windows.
Presentations: The PowerPoint presentation
files were used to check the ability of the
alternative presentation tools to correctly
display the content of the slides. Both the
quality, as well as the precision of the displayed
slides, was evaluated. We used 12
presentations to test this category, one of
which was designed to check the ability of
the software to reproduce colours and transition
effects. Another presentation tested
graph capabilities. This presentation consisted
of various types of graphs. It starts off
with simple bar graphs, and proceeds
towards more complex graphs. In each
graph type, both a 2D as well as a 3D version
of the same graph was used. Several
slides had embedded foreground and background
images, along with text displayed
using sliding effects, and the correct reproduction
of these was given weightage.
Classification of errors: Errors in documents
were classified as fine, minor, major and
unusable. Documents displayed with hardly
any errors were listed as ‘fine’; those with
very few mistakes were listed as ‘minor’.
Slightly more complex errors that spoilt the
user experience were classified as ‘major’.
‘Unusable’ errors were ones that rendered
the document unusable.
For example, in the case of presentations, if
the background image was not displayed in
the same way as in the original, the error
was considered as ‘major’, since the purpose
of putting a background image in a presentation
is to reduce its prominence, and to
give a subtle effect.
In the case of Word documents, the rules
were slightly different. If, for example, an
image was slightly misplaced, the error was
classified as ‘minor’. But if it was completely
misplaced and, say, overlapped with the
text, it was considered ‘unusable’. However,
in documents where the images were simple
but highly relevant to the text, the absence
of even a single image was considered an
‘unusable’ error.
In the case of spreadsheets, the ability of
the software to correctly understand formulae
and display embedded graphs was given
more importance than minor formatting
errors. But certain places where formatting
was more relevant, such as cells merged to
indicate common data under a single heading,
were given high importance.
packages include Write, Spreadsheet,
Database and Photopaint. Except for the
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