In evaluating office tools, the standard approach is to do so in relation to how well they would fare in performing those tasks required daily within the standard office environment. This approach would look at all the ways in which documentation might be produced by those employees of any standard company who are responsible for the exchange of management, finance, and human resources communications both within the organization and between the organization and outside entities. Thus, it looks at the tool's functionality in the areas of producing letters and memos, the mainstays of organizational communications, as well as areas like mail merges, and spell and grammar checking. However, this approach is not able to evaluate how well those tools might applied to other operations that might be required of them within an organization.

Take for example a small company that produces custom PC hardware peripherals on a contract basis, and which employs an outside agency to take care of any and all of its standard secretarial requirements. Its Word Processing requirements do not fall under the scope of those operations that this type of office tool would normally be evaluated for. Instead, the Word Processing needs of this company dictate that the tool they should be using should have the functionality to aid them in the performance of the following operations:

(1) Preparing Rich Text Format files for compilation into Windows Help System files;

(2) Preparing HTML pages for WWW publication; and,

(3) Preparing short (one page or less) documents for paper-based publication.

As this is a small company, it is likely looking for an application that can provide them with full functionality at the lowest price. However, it will likely not tolerate a long-term loss of productivity due to the adoption of an application that is not flexible or functional enough to meet their needs just to save some money up front. As well, they will likely not want to divert a large amount of their resources to becoming expert users of the tool that they decide to use, so other considerations will be the learning curve associated with the application, how easy the application is to use, and what built-in or add-on features are available for the application that can help make their use of the application to complete their desired tasks as easy and automatic as possible.

This exposition is a look at three Word Processing tools and an evaluation of their functionality in relation to the above-outlined requirements that this company has for its internal production operations. We compare the functionality of each of these tools in comparison to each other to get an overview of their relative capabilities. We then go on to determine which of these tools is best able to perform those functions that are required of the company outlined above. Issues beyond those of functionality and performance are then discussed, like the applications' learning curves, automation capabilities, and other useful extra features that they possess. We end the discussion with our recommendation of which tool would be the best under various circumstances and depending on which values the company espouses as its most important.

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The small company outlined above has special needs in the area of Word Processing tools. As it employs an outside agency to perform its secretarial duties, and wishes to use a Word Processing tool for it internal production operations, it does not necessarily need to employ a Word Processing application that has been designed primarily for the office environment, like Word or WordPerfect. However, it may be that the special needs that they do have can indeed best be filled by one of these applications, and the employment of a lower-end application like Breeze may restrict their productivity to the point where the initial cost savings of the purchase of the application are outweighed by their lost work volume.

The most effective way in which to determine which of the above cases is most accurate would be to outline those tasks this company requires of a Word Processing tool in some detail, and then to take an overview of the various candidate tools to see which has the best "fit" of features to required functions. Thus, to that end, the following three operation have been identified as critical to the needs of the company we are looking to advise.

(1) Preparing Rich Text Format files for compilation into Windows Help System files

As this company produces custom PC hardware peripherals, they need to be able to provide their end-users with effective and flexible documentation to aid in the configuration, use, and troubleshooting of those devices. At the same time, in order to keep costs low and maintain price competitiveness, it is advantageous for them to keep the amount of paper-based documentation that they produce to an absolute minimum. To this end, they have decided to produce on-line Windows Help System files and ASCII text files for inclusion with their products for use by their clients as the manual for the devices.

As Windows Help System files are created as Rich Text Format files and then compiled into their final format, the Word Processing tool that this company requires must be able to effectively store, manipulate, and retrieve documents stored in the Rich Text Format. As well, since these Help System files are able to utilize in-line graphics, the tool will also need to be able to manipulate and store documents with embedded graphics. Lastly, a Word Processing tool that is able to handle embedded sound files in these documents would be seen as an advantage.

For those clients that do not use the Windows operating system, the company will provide the text of the help system in a standard ASCII format file which can be viewed by any standard text editor on any platform. Thus, the tool they require must be able to store, manipulate, and retrieve documents stored in the ASCII format as well. Lastly, it would also be preferable for this tool to be able to import from various other Word Processing file formats, proprietary and otherwise, as this would allow for flexibility in importing documents provided by clients and other outside sources.

(2) Preparing HTML pages for WWW publication

As this is a relatively small company that competes in a specialized niche market, it would be advantageous for them as a company to be able to take advantage of the World Wide Web for marketing purposes. As well, the World Wide Web is also an excellent medium through which they can maintain contact with their end-users for the purpose of providing after-sales support and for providing technical information to the public at large about their products.

Since World Wide Web pages are authored using the HTML language, and as such can be produced on any text editor by an individual that is familiar with the markup language, almost any Word Processing application would suffice for this requirement. However, with the company's need for a tool that will allow them to become proficient in the production of HTML documents without having to expend a great deal of resources, any additional functionality that a Word Processing application might have in this area would be seen as an advantage. Thus, to this end, an ideal Word Processing tool for them to use would be one with functionality in areas that aid in the authoring of HTML documents.

(3) Preparing short (one page or less) documents for paper-based publication.

The last major area of internal Word Processing operations that the company will require of their tool will be the ability to help them produce short documents of one typewritten page or less for paper-based publication. As they produce PC hardware peripherals, this requires that they provide printed installation guidelines in their packaging for the end-user to refer to when the power on their PC will likely be disconnected and, thus, referring to electronically-stored manual information will not be an option.

These documents will likely include both text and graphics, and will also require the ability to format and place those elements in juxtaposition to each other. As well, typestyle considerations will likely come to the fore in this application of a Word Processing tool, as font styles and sizes can often impact on the readability and appeal of printed material. Thus, the Word Processing tool that the company will use will need to be able to utilize various font styles easily, and will also need to be able to store and manipulate in-line graphics efficiently.

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The intended end-users of the documentation that will be produced by the company will fall into two categories: those that have purchased a peripheral device from the company, and those that browse the World Wide Web pages that the company has produced. However, that is not to say that there won't be any overlap between these two categories. It is likely that an individual that has purchased a product from the company will also refer to the World Wide Web pages for additional information on the products the company offers. It is equally as likely that an individual who has learned about the company's product offering on the World Wide Web will in turn purchase a peripheral device from them.

Those individuals that have purchased peripheral devices will use the printed installation guides and the on-line Windows Help Systems, or, alternatively, the ASCII Format files containing the text of the Help Systems. For those whose contact with the company is initially via the World Wide Web, they will naturally be utilizing the HTML documentation that the company produces. Thus, the tool will need to be one that allows or, preferably aids the employees of the company in their production of documentation so that their end products are ones that will appeal to and be easily understood by the intended readers. As well, it should be one that will allow them to produce professional looking documents.

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The Word Processing tool will be used by the company in a rather casual office environment. As the company is small and relatively unstructured, the use of the Word Processing tool will also likely not be structured. That is, the documentation will likely be begun and completed by the same individual, with other individuals only providing input in the form of critiques at various stages of the process and to verify its authenticity at the end of the production cycle. Thus, issues like file locking, functionality for annotating documents, and other second party editing features will not be important.

The hardware that the Word Processing tool will be used on will consist of high-end Personal Computers utilizing Pentium processors running the Windows operating system. Thus, the complexity and power requirements of the Word Processing tool should not be a consideration as the final choice of tool is made, as none of the applications that we are evaluating will be able to tax the capabilities of such hardware. In fact, the greatest common denominator of hardware requirements for the three applications we evaluated are a 386 processor on a computer capable of running the Windows 3.1+ Operating System with a minimum of 6Mb of RAM and 21Mb of free hard drive space.

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In approaching the task of determining what functionality would be required of the Word Processing application, we spoke directly with the company's employees. This was done to be able to get a firsthand understanding of what they would be using the application for. As well, it allowed us to gauge the values that those employees had in regard to the amount of resources they were willing to devote to learning new applications. The results of these discussions are seen in the "Overview of the Problem" section above.

In determining which applications we would evaluate, we spoke with users of large market-share Word Processing applications. From them we were able to get an idea of the functionality and capabilities that those packages possessed.

These discussions, along with our personal use of the applications, allowed us to decide upon Word for Windows Version 6.0 (special introductory price: $339.00), and WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS (cost: $355.00) as representative commercial applications from the Windows and DOS-based environments. Both of these applications respectively hold a large share of the Word Processing market and also require considerable capital outlay for their purchase, but are marketed on the strength of the exhaustiveness of their functionality in the office environment. In this evaluation, we look to see if the office functionality makes them effective tools for this company.

The third tool that is evaluated is a Windows-based shareware application named Breeze (cost: $35.00). It was obtained from a reputable shareware distribution site on the Internet. This application is admittedly not as powerful as the other two applications being evaluated. However, it is included as a low-cost alternative application in an effort to see if an application of this scope might be able to provide this company with all of the functionality that it needs without forcing them to make a large capital outlay for the tool.

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Our first criteria tested was the interface of the applications. We found that all of them had good mouse handling and logical menu structures. They all supported Tool Bars, but Word for Windows allowed for the customization of its tool bars, while those in the other applications were static. In the area of display quality, we found Word for Windows and Breeze to both have the best WYSIWYG and dialogue box usage. The problem with WordPerfect was that its native display format was ASCII text, making it difficult for the user to visualize the final document. Lastly, the file management portion of the applications' interfaces were all good, with WordPerfect using its own proprietary system, and Word and Breeze utilizing built-in Windows DLL functionality.

Overall in the area of interfaces, Word for Windows had the best interface, Breeze was our second choice, and WordPerfect was third.

The second criteria that we tested was the text editing capabilities of the applications. We looked at the Search and Replace capabilities, and all three packages supported this function well. However, in the area of Drag and Drop editing, we found that Word and WordPerfect both supported it, while Breeze did not. Lastly, both Word and WordPerfect allow the user to place special characters into the text of their documents, but Breeze, did not support this function.

Overall for text editing, we found Word for Windows to be best, WordPerfect to be second, and Breeze to be third.

The third criteria that we tested was the applications' support for layout and formatting. All of the applications supported the function of selecting a section of the document and then applying formatting to that selected section. WordPerfect provided the best built-in font support, and can use many third-party font packages. Word and Breeze also have good font support via the built-in Windows font capabilities. Each of these supported the functionality of multiple columns, page breaks, headers and footers, and page numbering, although Breeze was weak in many of these areas.

In the overall rating for layout and formatting functionality, we found WordPerfect to be best, Word for Windows to be second, and Breeze to be last.

The fourth functionality criteria that we tested was in-line graphics support and handling. Each of the applications handles graphics in some form or another. Both Word and WordPerfect support multiple graphic types, while Breeze is only able to import the BMP format. Word has its own built-in drawing tools, and is also able to utilize any tools from within Windows via OLE. Breeze also imports graphics via Windows OLE, but has no built-in tools. WordPerfect is the weakest in this area, with no built-in tools and no OLE importing capabilities. Both Word and WordPerfect support the scaling, cropping, and resizing of graphic images, while Breeze only allows for resizing of them. WordPerfect leads the pack in its ability to place captions with graphics. Word has limited functionality with captions, and Breeze does not support captions at all.

In the overall rating for graphics support, we found Word to be best, WordPerfect to be second, and Breeze to be last.

The fifth functionality that we tested was that of file and data sharing between the applications and other external applications. Here we found that both Word and Breeze are able to take advantage of the Windows OLE calls, while WordPerfect, a DOS application, cannot. Word is unique in that it supports Dynamic Data Exchange between itself and other Windows applications that support it, while neither Breeze nor WordPerfect can support this function. Both Word and WordPerfect are able to import files from a wide range of proprietary and standard file formats, but Breeze is limited to supporting text-based and its own proprietary file formats only. All of the applications support embedded objects like sound, hypertext, faxes, spreadsheet and database data types either natively or through external third-party add-ons.

In the overall rating for file and data sharing, we found Word to be best, Breeze to be second, and WordPerfect to be last.

The sixth functionality that we tested was that of the applications' ability to be customized and automated. Word and WordPerfect both support user-defined macros, and also include macros from the manufacturer. Breeze, however, has no provision for macro support. Similarly, Word and WordPerfect both allow for the use of user-defined and built-in templates. Again, Breeze does not support this function.

In the overall rating for automation and customization, we found Word to be best, WordPerfect to be second, and Breeze to be last.

The seventh functionality that we tested was the handling of those functions that are critical to Rich Text Format documents, hypertext, and future HTML authoring. WordPerfect handled footnotes and endnotes best, with Word coming second, and Breeze being distant third as it only support manual foot and endnote embedding. Search and replace performance was best in Word, second best in WordPerfect, and poorest in Breeze. Both Word and WordPerfect support Table of Contents and Indexing tools equally well, but Breeze does not support those at all.

In the overall rating for Rich Text Format Document handling, we found WordPerfect to be best, Word to be second, and Breeze to be last.

The eighth area that we tested was document proofing and referencing tools. All three of these applications supported Spellchecking and a Thesaurus. However, Breeze did not support these functions as well as the other two. In the case of grammar and style checking, WordPerfect and Word both have this feature, but Breeze does not support it at all.

In the overall rating for Proofing and Reference Tools, we found Word to be best, WordPerfect to be second, and Breeze to be last.

The ninth area that we researched regarding the functionality of these applications was that of Internet Support Tools. Currently, Microsoft provides the Internet Assistant HTML editor as an add-on for Word which can also be used as a WWW browser. WordPerfect is set to release a similar tool in the near future. Breeze would also be capable of being used to author HTML documents, but only by manually inserting the tags.

In the overall rating for Internet Support, we found Word to be best, WordPerfect to be second, and Breeze to be last.

The tenth area that we researched regarding the functionality of these applications was that of the help, tutorials and technical support they have. Each of the three applications supported context-sensitive help systems that followed industry standards for organization and presentation. However, only WordPerfect and Word provide the end-user with paper-based documentation if it is required. Likewise, only WordPerfect and Word provide on-line tutorials for users. For external support, WordPerfect provides the best phone support through a 1-800 number, while Word uses a toll call for its support line, and Breeze has no phone support whatsoever. Rather, the only end-user support that one can get for Breeze is via e-mail to the application's author in Australia.

In the overall rating for Help, Tutorials and Technical Support, we found Word to be best, WordPerfect to be second, and Breeze to be last.

The last item that we researched in relation to these applications was the availability of training for these applications. Training is available for both WordPerfect and Word from various sources, both commercial and academic. Courses vary in catering to experience levels from the beginner to the expert and range in cost from $99.00 for a one day seminar at SAIT through to $295.00 for a 20-class course at the University of Calgary. Or, if one wishes to learn on their own, there are many self-training books and manual available for both of these applications. There are no training seminars, courses, or books currently available for Breeze, but due to its simplicity and relatively shallow learning curve, they may not be required.

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Features Comparison Table

(on a rating of 1 = best, 3 = worst)

	Word for Windows	WordPerfect	Breeze
Interface:
Logical Menus	1	1	1
Mouse Handling	1	1	1
Keyboard Handling	1	1	1
Toolbars	1	2	3
Display Quality	1	2	1
File Management	1	1	1
Overall:	1	2	3
Text Editing:
Search and Replace	1	1	2
Drag and Drop	1	1	3
Special Characters	1	1	3
Overall:	1	1	2
Layout and Formatting:
Automatic Formatting Tools	1	1	1
Font Support	2	1	2
Multiple Column Tools	1	1	2
Page Break Tools	1	1	1
Header and Footers	1	1	2
Page Numbering	1	1	2
Overall:	2	1	3
Graphics:
File Import	1	1	3
Drawing Tools	1	3	2
Scaling and Cropping	1	2	3
Captioning	2	1	3
Overall:	1	2	3
File and Data Sharing:
OLE	1	3	1
DDE	1	3	3
File Importing	1	1	3
Overall:	1	2	3
Automation and Customizing:
Footnotes / Endnotes	2	1	3
Search and Replace	1	2	3
Table of Contents / Index	1	1	3
Overall:	2	1	3
Proofing and Reference:
SpellChecker	1	1	1
Thesaurus	1	1	2
Grammar and Style	1	1	3
Overall:	1	1	3
Help and Tutorial:
Tutorial Tools	1	2	3
Documentation	1	1	3
On-Line Help	1	1	1
Phone Support	2	1	3
Overall:	1	1	3
Internet Support:	1	2	3

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Based on the testing that we have done, we have concluded that Word for Windows 6.0 is the application that best fulfills the requirements of the company. This is because the capabilities and functionality that it possesses best meets the document production needs of the three main tasks outlined above.

As it has the best WYSIWYG, customizable interface of all the applications evaluated, it will provide the employees of the company with a user-friendly platform. Word also provides the best text editing capabilities, proofing and reference tools which will make it easier to maintain the documents for those users who are new to the application. Further, as it has extremely good in-line graphics support as well as built-in drawing tools, it will make the addition of graphics to documents extremely simple while still allowing for great flexibility. This fact will be of extreme importance for the technical manuals they will be producing, as these will require the inclusion of detailed technical drawings, graphs, charts, and other visual data types.

As Word has logical menu systems in addition to user-configurable tool bars, the employees will be able to customize the application to allow for increased efficiencies as they become more proficient in their use of it. This proficiency will not take long either, due to the fact that Word has the best on-line help system of all three of the applications evaluated, which is coupled with an on-line Tutorial system. This fact, along with the amount of commercial and academic training that is available will allow the employees to be able to devote as much or as few resources to learning the application on their own as they see fit. And, although Word does not rate the highest in terms of technical support, the stability of the application should serve to render this consideration unnecessary.

The fact that Word supports templates, macros, and other automation tools will allow the company to ensure that all of the documents they produce will be consistent in appearance. As well, the grammar and style checking features will ensure the documents produced will be readable and appealing to any and all of their intended audience. OLE support through the Windows operating system will also allow for the establishment of automatic update links between documents which will further reduce the amount of work required for maintaining their documents.

As the company moves toward the production of multimedia documents, both for inclusion with their products and for publication on the WWW, Word for Windows will already be capable of performing all of the required functions. This is because it is a product that is constantly being refined to meet the changing needs of the market, since Microsoft is always trying to maintain a technical advantage with its products. This can be seen in the fact that Microsoft is currently providing the HTML editor add-on free of charge to all Word users.

Thus, our recommendation to the company is that they adopt Word for Windows 6.0 as the Word Processing tool to be used for their internal production needs.

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