.KEYWORD docs2go
.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Have your Documents To Go
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY The ability to view Word and Excel documents on a Palm device has been an evolving quest, dating way back to 1997 when Rich Bram introduced the early viewing tool, MakeDoc. Here, Michael Compeau provides a brief history of the technology before offering his review of the latest text-viewing application from DataViz called Documents To Go.
.AUTHOR Michael Compeau
It’s hard to review an intriguing offering like the newest version of Documents To Go from DataViz without doing some comparisons to the other solutions available for getting our Word and Excel information squeezed into our Palm OS devices. So forgive me, but I must be a little nostalgic for a moment to put things in perspective.
.H1 The long march: putting Word and Excel in our Palm devices
When Rich Bram released his text-viewing application DOC back in 1997, early tools like MakeDOC soon led to the ground swell of interest in e-text and ebook reading on PalmPilots. PalmPilot owners suddenly had a means (twisted and convoluted though it was-remember DOS?) to convert ASCII text to a compressed readable form on their devices.
With a rather pathetic fondness, I remember the clumsy process of saving my word processing files as simple text, running MakeDOC in a DOS window, and entering the magical command line which would give birth to my data in the treasured *.PDB form, ready for installation on my PalmPilot. The excellent PalmDOC came later, enabling the conversion directly from within Microsoft Word for use in DOC+, SmartDOC, QED, or the other DOC-format viewers and editors that arrived to finally bring full text editing capability to the DOC format.
On the spreadsheet front, about the time Bram was fine-tuning the early DOC application, Jeff Musa was hard at work coding QuickSheet, the first-and still most popular-spreadsheet for the PalmPilot. Over time, Musa added further integration with the Windows desktop and the Excel application, enabling full synchronization with files in users’ desktop folders and even with linked server data. Other Palm OS spreadsheets, such as TinySheet and MiniCalc, have followed, all working to put our primary PC’s Excel data in our hot little hands.
It seems that in the past year, the various spreadsheets available for the Palm OS have been racing to become the perfect pocket Excel for the Palm OS. We’ve all reaped the benefits as feature after feature has been added-even charting!
There was plenty of early skepticism from some critics about the usefulness of reading documents or manipulating spreadsheets on the Palm OS platform. In spite of this, the vision of folks like Bram and Musa has been vindicated recently in Microsoft’s move to integrate Pocket Word and Pocket Excel into their newest handheld operating system, the Pocket PC.
All existing Palm OS licensees seem to have passed on the incorporation of such applications, and Palm itself has apparently rejected the notion in the interest of supporting third party developers. Whether this is a strategic boon or blunder remains to be seen.
.H1 Documents To Go
Having tried most of the DOC file readers, editors, and spreadsheet applications for my Palm and Handspring devices, I was intrigued by the integration Documents To Go promised. With all the requisite Palm-groupie anticipation, I installed the Documents To Go Windows desktop. I then installed the corresponding handheld device applications, totaling about 256K of memory, onto my Palm device. Installation was a breeze. An icon appeared on my Windows desktop which, when selected, opened the well-designed file management window pictured in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A The desktop application provides information about your files.
I could then drag and drop Word, Excel (or even Lotus, WordPerfect, WordPro, QuattroPro, etc.) files onto the desktop icon or onto the Documents To Go Desktop window. After a quick HotSync, the documents were transferred to my Palm device, and I was ready to go.
.H1 A document viewer in four parts
There are actually four applications DataViz will squeeze into your device RAM. The main application is called Documents. The remaining applications are WordView, WordView+, and SheetView. The Documents To Go screen is shown in Figure B.
.FIG B Documents To Go loads four associated applications onto your device.
WordView provides support for the DOC format, while WordView+ lets you see enhanced formatting. Fortunately, after installation, the only application you ever need to really worry about is Documents, since it serves as the interface for file opening. The remaining three applications can be tucked away in your Utilities folder to avoid confusing the cramped Launcher screen.
Documents To Go handsomely delivers Word and Excel files on the Palm OS devices, with WordView+ capabilities that provide support for tables, bold and italic text, bulleted lists, underlining, and margin indentations. You can see examples of stylized text in Figure C.
.FIG C Much of the formatting from your desktop PC files is preserved in WordView+.
The readability in WordViewer+ is impressive due to the well-implemented document formatting support. Also, the promise of opening my bevy of standard DOC format e-texts is a great bonus. SheetView, meanwhile, features bonuses like re-sizeable column widths and snazzy customizable bookmarks. It makes finding those elusive "Total" rows a cinch in large multi-sheet spreadsheets like the one pictured in Figure D.
.FIG D SheetView offers a peek at your spreadsheet info.
.H1 Accessing files
To access your files on the device, you select the Documents icon. A list of available documents shows up in alphabetical order, named as they were on the desktop. The size of the files is also visible for reference. See Figure E for an example.
.FIG E The list of available files for viewing is accessed using the Documents application on your handheld.
.H1 Storing, sorting, and filtering
The files can be categorized either on the desktop before HotSync or on the Palm device. I found this useful for keeping track of project-based work. The files can also be listed in order of size or most recent viewing date. Figure F shows the Display Options screen.
.FIG F Your files can be filtered and sorted to make finding what you’re looking for easy.
I found that the ability to filter the list to show only DOC files, WordView, or SheetView files also came in handy at times. The list also displays the files in boldface text until first viewing, whereupon they toggle to the normal font. Tapping a document quickly opens the viewer, though WordView documents seemed to take somewhat longer than SheetView to load if they had tables or a lot of specially formatted text.
.H1 SheetView
Moving on to spreadsheets, SheetView is a quick, functional way to see your spreadsheets if you think you only need to reference the information. It boasts some features I’d love to see in other Palm OS spreadsheets, such as the ability to turn on a full screen view by eliminating menus at the top and bottom of the screen and bookmarks for finding specific information you need to get to quickly. It also offers the essential ability to freeze columns or the top row in order to keep headings in view on the small screen.
To navigate around the sheet, I simply had to drag my stylus across the screen in the direction I wanted to move or use the tiny on-screen arrows. Unfortunately, SheetView offers no bold, italic, or other formatting to help clarify the presentation.
.H1 Attachments To Go
DataViz offers an added bonus for those of you who depend on email as I do. A special Palm OS Mail plug-in application called Attachments To Go is available as a free download. It allows you to synchronize all the word processing and spreadsheet files sent to you as email attachments.
I found this to be a tremendously useful feature. I’ve begun using the time while waiting for a meeting to start for reviewing all my email messages with attachments. The only enhancement I’d ask from DataViz is some sort of hyperlink from within the mail message I’m reading to the associated Documents To Go file. This feature is implemented in the Documents To Go plug-in for the excellent MultiMail Pro III application recently acquired by Palm.
.H1 A few last pros and cons
Advanced as this software may be, there’s one major shortcoming–no editing ability. Nada, zip, zilch. Documents To Go left me tapping away at the screen in frustration as I tried to change a sales volume entry in the SheetView or edit a limp sentence in WordView. It’s a serious drawback in my estimation, given the current state of DOC reader/editors and Palm OS spreadsheets out there. I hope adding full editing capability is on the list of future enhancements.
Another weakness? For some reason I’ve experienced inconsistent ability to access my DOC files. Sometimes they showed up and could be selected and viewed, and sometimes not. Hmmm.
On the plus side, one extremely useful aspect I found was the ability to link files directly to Documents To Go without actually copying them from the folders where I had them stored on my PC. When adding the files to the desktop version, I simply chose the "link file" option. This tells the desktop application to look for changes to linked files during HotSync operations. The program will then update the documents on the Palm device with every HotSync. What a great boon for usability!
An additional bonus in a corporate environment is the ability to beam any WordView or SheetView document you are viewing, along with the associated Viewer, to another Palm OS device. This is a great way for DataViz to spread the Word, so to speak, about their functionality. It really works well.
.H1 Summary
At $39.95 for a single user license, the price for Documents To Go is quite palatable given its functionality. If you’re already using a fully edit-ready set of applications such as the SmartDOC/QuickSheet duo (about $59), you may have no need to spend an additional wad of cash. For those who’ve not yet taken the plunge into taking their office desktop files with them, Documents To Go offers a competitive price-point.
If you’ve wished there were one seamless "PalmOffice" solution for viewing and editing on your Palm device, you’ll have to go on waiting. However, if you’re looking for a good excuse to leave that laptop with the tired battery at the office while you venture out into the world, DataViz offers a well-crafted answer.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Documents To Go by DataViz, visit http://www.dataviz.com/products/documentstogo/.
.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO Michael Compeau is a New Product Development Manager using his Palm device to climb the corporate ladder at Werner Ladder in western Pennsylvania.
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.ee6e4a3
