Introduction

There are a number of solutions available for viewing documents on Symbian OS devices falling broadly into two categories, native format viewers or viewers which display a single file format into which documents can be converted.

Viewers designed to display native file formats have two main disadvantages; both stem from the fact that most file formats have been designed for use on a PC. As a result file sizes tend to be large and the file formats assume a desktop level of processing capacity to display complex formatting and graphics.

The alternative of using a portable file format specifically designed for mobile devices therefore has much appeal, the main disadvantages of these solutions is that the software to create portable files is usually expensive, some solutions cost over $100 US which for individual use on a mobile device is prohibitive.

Cerience Corporation believes it has the answer in the form of RepliGo. Cerience retails the RepliGo converter for $24.95 US (for the Smartphone versions $29.95 US for the PDA versions) and provides all the viewers for free. While this makes RepliGo very appealing it is only a useful tool if it lives up to the claim of providing easy access to full documents on the go.

RepliGo Converter

The RepliGo solution starts with the desktop based converter. It employs two methods to create RepliGo documents. The first is a converter specifically designed for converting Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents as well as web pages displayed in Internet Explorer. RepliGo documents created this way preserves document hyperlinks and bookmarks in addition to providing full search and copy of the text. For Word documents bookmarks are actually based on the Word Document Map, which attempts to identify heading within a document even if they have not been bookmarked or formatted with the heading style.

The converter is easily accessible through a RepliGo toolbar added to each application.

The RepliGo Converter toolbar is added to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Internet Explorer.

The second method is the RepliGo printer which allows any printable document to be converted, however the conversion is more limited as it generally does not preserve native bookmarks and hyperlinks, although it does retain bookmarks from PDF files where the source file security allows it to do so.

Both the converter and printer provide options to output the RepliGo document to a file either in a folder or as an attachment to an email. There is also an option to save a copy of the file to a second location thus keeping a record locally.

Converted output can be sent to file or email.

Once a RepliGo document has been created it can be viewed on either a PC or mobile device, with viewers available for UIQ and Series 60 as well as other portable device platforms.

The UIQ Viewer

Launching the RepliGo viewer in UIQ opens a list of all the RepliGo documents that are stored in the phones memory, files that have been received by email or beamed over to the phone need to be saved before they can be viewed in the viewer.

Opening RepliGo provides a list of available documents.

Selecting a document opens it in a full page view. This full page view is one of three views provided by RepliGo, the full page view, zoom view with scaling from 10 to 300%, and a flowed or wrapped mode with 5 available font sizes.

RepliGo provides both “original” and wrapped text views of the document.

In addition to the obvious formatting difference the flowed mode does not display images. It is possible to jump back to the full format view to find any images, but the in-line inclusion of the image (or link to the image) would be a useful improvement.

The viewer provides several ways to navigate through the document, including moving backwards or forwards a page, selecting a specific page or navigating views (in a similar way to the backwards and forwards feature on a web browser). The view can also be adjusted by using the hand tool which allows the window to be drag over the page using the stylus, in the flowed mode this is limited to scrolling the flowed page up or down. Also in the formatted page view a zoom tool allows a portion of the screen to be selected with the stylus and then zoomed to.

Toolbars

Most of the main RepliGo features can be accessed with the toolbars. The toolbar is split in two, the lower, and permanently displayed, bar provides all the functions to switch views, select tools and navigate pages. The second bar, which can be hidden, provides access to the find tools, bookmark editor, notes editor and functions to rotate the document and provide a full screen mode.

Most RepliGo functions are accessed via the toolbars.

Notes

Although a document in RepliGo format can not be edited the viewer allows the reader to add additional information to the document in the form of notes. Two types of note are supported, one associated with specific text, the other with a page. Text notes are created by using the highlighter tool to select text, a note is automatically created using the highlighted text by default, once created note text can be edited. A page note is added simply by using the create note toolbar button.

Highlighting text add a text note.

The process of adding notes is not entirely intuitive, mainly because there are slightly different approaches taken to editing each type of note. The note created by highlighting text is edited by opening the notes list, finding the note and editing it. Page notes automatically open a note editor as they are created. These alternative approaches might be initially confusing but most users should get to grips with it quickly.

From the notes list screen it is also possible to select a note and go to its position in the document, in addition to being able to edit or delete notes.

Bookmarks

While notes can be used to add information to a RepliGo document bookmarks provide a method for indexing sections of the document. Two types of bookmark are supported by RepliGo, document and personal bookmarks. If the document was created by converting a Word, Excel, PowerPoint or PDF file that contained bookmarks these are carried into the RepliGo document as document bookmarks. Personal bookmarks can then be added to a RepliGo document as it is viewed. If text is selected then the bookmark added is given the selected text as a default title.

The user can add their own bookmarks.

Feature selection, add, rename, delete and go to is done from the RepliGo menu. However it is perhaps disappointing that the simplicity (one tap access) of the toolbar in the document view has not been implemented in this, or the notes list, screen.

Other Features

There are several other features worth mentioning, these include the ability to rotate the document, for both flowed and formatted views, which is useful for viewing landscape format presentations. A “full” screen view is also povided.

Documents can be rotated and displayed on a full screen.

A find features is provided, as well as a Send capability for sharing RepliGo documents.

The find option can be refined to match whole words and letter case.

Series 60 Viewer

Coming to the Series 60 viewer second is perhaps a little disappointing as it is the more basic of the two. It is truly a viewer with neither the ability to add bookmarks or notes. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that it also was missing the ability to navigate documents with bookmarks.

These limitations aside the Series 60 RepliGo viewer is similar to the UIQ version and has been implemented well for Series 60. An example of this is that all the view and navigation functions plus find and send options have keyboard shortcuts which makes document navigation quick and easy.

As with the UIQ viewer there are three basic views, the full formatted page, zoomed view of a formatted page and a flowed mode.

The Series 60 viewer offers the same views as UIQ.

The only difference in navigation capability is that there is no quick option to move the zoomed view forward or backwards a page, rather the go to page option needs to be used and the next or last page number explicitly entered.

The Series 60 viewer also includes full screen mode and document rotation options, as well as a find capability and send options.

Series 60 offers full screen and rotation features.

Desktop Viewer

While the primary purpose of this review is to look at the RepliGo smartphone viewers it is worth noting that there is also a desktop version. This provides a number of additional viewing features, including two page view and document thumbnails, although the flowed version is not implemented.

The desktop viewer offers page thumbnails and extra views

The desktop viewer also allows images to be selected and copied, can print documents and includes an undo function.

Performance

The true test of RepliGo comes with its performance, the viewers are well specified but if the document size and rendering performance are no better than existing desktop standards it will simply be more convenience to stick with existing solutions. The three important performance attribute are:

• reproduction of the original document.
• size of the document created.
• speed of rendering.

While the testing undertaken for this review could not claim to be exhaustive the results were certainly encouraging. A range of Word, Excel and PowerPoint files were converted along with web pages and some files which were created using the RepliGo printer. In all cases the RepliGo document was an exact facsimile of the original. The display performance was also always good with no obvious delays even on pages with rich graphics. Finally the ability to reduce file sizes was impressive, although obviously varied depending on the nature of the document. As an example one PowerPoint file which in its original form was 452 Kb when converted to RepliGo reduced to 78Kb. The same file converted to PDF was around 300Kb with comparable image quality.

Conclusion

Overall RepliGo lives up to the claims the developer, Cerience, makes for the product and file format. The file format is compact and lightweight and conversion of documents simple. The viewers are functional, the notes feature is a significant benefit over other viewer products, and perform very well, rendering even apparently complex document content swiftly.

The fact that the viewers are free and the conversion software costs $24.95 US, for Symbian OS versions, also makes RepliGo very good value for money.

The only real disadvantage of RepliGo is that content in RepliGo format is not widely available and is usually created by the user or perhaps as part of a work project. It will be interesting to see if this changes as Cerience has plans to deliver technology to seamlessly deliver documents to wireless user.

Trial versions of the RepliGo software can be downloaded for the RepliGo web site (www.repligo.com) or for Series 60 or UIQ from Handango.

There is also a RepliGo version of this review available for download here.