Online Document Viewer Analysis

1.       Adeptol On Premise - http://www.ajaxdocumentviewer.com/

•How does transformation take place (serverside, clientside, API)

                Serverside

•What would be the rough steps (impact) to implement the product into our Portal environment. e.g. how does it integrate with WCM? Do we need additional storage? What about documents coming from Domino?

                Document can be manually uploaded into server or just url of document which is accessible to the adeptol server. I am not sure about how converted document will be visible to the client, whether it will directly write response to http or provide url to access the converted document. The same storage information is not available on the website.

•Pros and Cons like: browser dependencies, manual steps, looks, speed etc.

                Support for more than 300 Document Types including Microsoft Office 2007 documents (docx, xlsx, pptx), Office 2000 (doc, xls, ppt), Open Office (odt, sxw, ods, sxc. odp, sxi, odg), Images (jpg, bmp, png, gif, tiff), Adobe PDF etc. AJAX Document Viewer allows an unlimited number of users to convert any format of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents to PDF & SWF on a server. Quick and easy conversion of most of the document to an Adobe ® Flash ® (SWF). AJAX Document Viewer is based on Multiple Tenancy Concept resulting in faster conversion rates and performance as multiple users can access the server at the same time and get various documents converted simultaneously. Professional Edition Viewer is a light weight flash control. They are many options/control available in flash viewer like (thumbnail of each pages in left, Viewer with Custom Skin Color, Viewer with Navigation Turned Off, Viewer with custom buttons, Localize viewer to any language)

•What would roughly be the cost for licensing. Per server, per user

                Need to inquiry with sales.

2.       JODConverter  - http://www.artofsolving.com/opensource/jodconverter

Java OpenDocument Converter opensource, converts documents between different office formats and the transformation will take place on server side.

It leverages OpenOffice.org, which provides arguably the best import/export filters for OpenDocument. To work with this api the open-office must be installed in websphere server.

We can write a Servlet that will take document or document url as input and produce pdf binary data, this way we don't need additional storage to store document on server.

Once converted into pdf we can use iframe or embed tag to show pdf document in a browser. Here pdf plugins is required in a browser.

Conversion time depends on the size of the documents.

If we want to escape pdf pluings dependency then once documents are converted into pdf we can again convert pdf document to swf files by (openoffice api or through swftools http://www.swftools.org/). Here additional temporary storage is required to convert document from pdf to swf. After conversion of pdf to swf we can use flash player to view in a webpage (http://flexpaper.devaldi.com/). Flexpaper is free to use but it is not hundred percent reliable.

3.       ImageMAKER Development - http://www.conversionserver.com/

The Document Conversion software controls file conversion to TIFF, TXT and JPEG by first launching the file owner application (e.g. Word, Excel, Netscape), then instructing the owner application to print the document using Windows shell commands.

Doesn't support UNIX and LINUX.

Modules provided: Server Based Document Rendering Engine
   NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 fax print driver with support software.
   ImageMAKER Cover Page Generator.

4.       RasterMaster  - http://www.snowbound.com/imaging_sdk/rastermaster_overview.html

RasterMaster® for the Java™ Platform is the premier Java Imaging and Conversion SDK, toolkit, and library in the industry.

Provides true cross-platform compatibility and web support - written entirely in Java

Price: $2500 and up + Distribution Licensing 

5.       FlashPaper - http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flashpaper/

Macromedia FlashPaper 2 lets you easily convert any printable document (such as a Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, or Excel document) to a FlashPaper SWF file or a Portable Document Format (PDF) file.

Conversion will take place on server side. Extra storage is required into server.

Adobe stopped promoting this product, so there is very less product information available and I guess integration with java is not available.

Scribd ipaper - http://www.scribd.com/ipaper?phpsessid=42c47e75419baa0e5e493bbbe5cf86ae

iPaper is a rich document format built for the web. Built with Adobe Flash, iPaper will display documents in the same way regardless of whether you're using Windows, MacOS, or Linux.