07-30-2004, 05:00 PM
|
|
Ponderer
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 108
|
|
Repligo v2.0 Reviewed
Product Category: Document viewer
Manufacturer: Cerience
Where to Buy: Download from Handango (affiliate link)
Price: $29.95 USD (or $14.95 upgrade from v1.0)
System Requirements: Desktop: Windows 98 SE, Me, 2000 or XP with 12.5 MB disk space required for all components; Device: any ARM-based Pocket PC running Pocket PC 2002 or later with 510KB of available space
Pros:- Still fast, slick and powerful;
- Some essential new features and enhancements;
- Lower price.
Cons:- Images and Word tables still not shown in flowed view;
- Still difficult to manage large number of Repligo files;
- Expensive upgrade.
Summary:
We looked at Repligo v1.0 early last year, and whilst there were several limitations this was clearly an excellent piece of software, albeit coming in at a fairly hefty price. There have been a few point releases since then (most notably adding landscape support), but the recently released version 2.0 comes with a multitude of major new features and improvements. Do these make it worth the upgrade, or is it more a case of unnecessary feature-bloat?
Read on for the full review!
What Is It?
Repligo is a universal document viewer along the lines of Acrobat, i.e. convert any source document to the Repligo format and then view it in read-only mode on any device that has the viewer application installed.
Figure 1: Here's a Word document converted to Repligo format and displayed in full-page view.
Rather than re-iterate the basics of document conversion and viewing with Repligo, in this article I'm going to focus on what's new in version 2.0 - and what isn't.
Text Searching
At long last you can now perform text searches within Repligo documents. This includes the usual options such as case-sensitivity and partial/whole word matching, but not the more advanced filtering options such as wildcards and sounds like.
Figure 2: The new Find screen.
Bookmarks
Another important new feature is the ability to create bookmarks, enabling you to quickly return to a previous location within a document. These bookmarks can be saved within the Repligo file, together with the view selected at the time the bookmark was created. Even better, default bookmarks are automatically created for you based on headings or sections within the source document itself.
Figure 3: Default 'document' bookmarks. Select one and tap 'Go To'.
Figure 4: Creating a user-defined or 'personal' bookmark.
Figure 5: New bookmark now included in list.
Comments and Text Highlighting
Related to bookmarks, comments are free-form notes which you can now create within Repligo documents.
Figure 6: Creating a comment.
Comments created manually like this are only linked to a particular page, rather than a section or specific point within the page, so can only be used for general notes as they only take you to the start of the page they were created on. However, Repligo now also gives you the ability to highlight text (in a variety of colours), and comments are automatically created for these highlights.
Figure 7: Selecting the highlighter.
Figure 8: Highlighting the text.
Figure 9: The highlighted text now included as a comment (together with the available highlight colours).
The advantage of these highlight-generated comments is that they take you directly to the highlighted text rather than just the page, so are much more useful that manual comments. In addition you can edit them to add additional notes to the comment.
Figure 10: Editing a text highlight comment.
Like bookmarks, comments and highlighting are stored within the document - you're prompted to save the document when closing it if you've added any of these items.
Enhanced Internet Explorer Integration
Converting Web pages is now easier thanks to additional options which give you more control over how the page should be formatted during the conversion, such as scaling to fit. However this only works with Internet Explorer 5.5 and above, and only if you install Repligo with the IE integration option.
Figure 11: Internet Explorer conversion setup options.
The new preview window gives you the chance to see how this will work before committing to the actual conversion, and to fine tune the settings accordingly.
Figure 12: Internet Explorer conversion preview window.
Figure 13: The resulting converted Web page shown in Repligo.
Live Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks in source documents are now preserved, and can be tapped in the converted document to access the corresponding Web site (or mailto: address). However this only works if you convert using the integrated toolbar button in Word, Excel or Powerpoint.
Figure 14: Following a hyperlink in the converted Repligo document.
Direct Copy to Storage Card
You can now bypass ActiveSync when converting a document and directly save it to any folder on your device including a storage card, and whilst the conversion works well enough the file browser inside Repligo itself won't list the file unless it's in My Documents (or a sub-folder thereof). You can however launch Repligo from the file itself using File Explorer.
Figure 15: ActiveSync bypass conversion selected.
New Desktop Viewer
A brand new application for version 2.0, the Repligo Desktop Viewer provides all the functionality of the Pocket PC version so you can now see all your Repligo documents on your PC without having to open your device.
Figure 16: The desktop viewer.
Obviously in order to do that you need to make sure the option to save a local copy of converted documents is selected.
Figure 17: Document conversion options.
Other Enhancements
In addition to the above major new features, there are are a couple of other enhancements in Repligo version 2.0 worth mentioning. Text can now be selected and copied to the clipboard; and there is support for conversion of 24-bit colour images rather than these being limited to 8-bit colour.
Conclusions
Many of the limitations of the previous version - no bookmarks, no comments or highlighting, no text search, no desktop viewer - have been addressed, and Repligo is still a fast, slick and professionally-written application. But for me there are still a few key problems that haven't been fixed.
Firstly, the on-going inability to see pictures or Word tables along with the text in flowed view is a major drawback for the kind of documents I use day-to-day, which are full of tables. I am thus forced to use the standard zoomed mode which results in a lot of painful scrolling around, or alternatively constantly switch between views.
Secondly, almost as a result of its own success, Repligo files quickly build up into a large collection which can easily get out of hand. The file browser seems ripe for improvement, as it doesn't show the original file type, long filenames get truncated, you can't sort files in descending date order and there's no facility to filter or search for specific files. There really needs to be a better way of cataloguing all your Repligo files.
Finally, you can only have one document open at a time, so switching between documents quickly becomes painful. It's crying out for a set of document tabs (which ironically you do get on the desktop viewer). In addition it would help if the title of the currently open document was shown in the window bar.
Having said all that, Repligo is now much cheaper than when originally launched, coming in at a much more reasonable $29.95, although this is still at the upper end of the Pocket PC software price range. Those upgrading from version 1 will be charged half of this though, and whilst you can open version 1 files in version 2 you'll need to reconvert all your documents to take advantage of most of the new features.
Overall then, Repligo v2.0 is still an excellent piece of software and is heartily recommended. But it's value is questionable for existing users given the high upgrade cost, although the new features really are must-haves that you'll probably find you can't live without.
|
| |
|
|
|
07-30-2004, 08:26 PM
|
|
Thinker
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 368
|
|
Great review. No question Repligo is a killer app. I use it since 1.0 version and use it everyday. One thing PocketPC version is lacking compared to PalmOS counterpart though is a category feature. On the Palm version, documents can be easily organized by category. On PocketPC, it needs to be done using folder structures.
|
| |
|
|
|
07-30-2004, 08:39 PM
|
|
Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,221
|
|
I have a $5 Handango gift certificate that expires tomorrow and I've considered applying it toward the purchase of Repligo. While I really enjoy what it does, I'm still having a hard time convincing myself it's worth $25.
|
| |
|
|
|
07-30-2004, 10:48 PM
|
|
Editorial Contributor
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 5,411
|
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by pmradio
I have a $5 Handango gift certificate that expires tomorrow and I've considered applying it toward the purchase of Repligo. While I really enjoy what it does, I'm still having a hard time convincing myself it's worth $25.
|
Well quit waffling. If you ever need to be able to carry some document with you to reference that is not in a format that any PPC app can read, this is the way to go. You could get a full copy of Adobe Acrobat and make pdfs, or even Win2pdf for a reasonable price, but the files generated are bigger and so is the reader.
I have a 4 page 11x17 technical drawing in Visio. It is 6M. I converted to 4 seperate .jpgs to send to folks that don't have Visio. Over one meg combined. It comes to a 277K repligo file, and it is as legible as the .jpgs on the desktop and the PPC, and has reflow and find capabilities.
The other day I took a big pdf (600 page tech manual) and ran it through Repligo. Cut the file size to 47% of the pdf.
Only thing I'd like to see on the PPC viewer is a little inset picture to show where you are on the page when zoomed in.
__________________
Sometimes you are the anteater, sometimes you are the ant.
|
| |
|
|
|
07-30-2004, 11:21 PM
|
|
Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,221
|
|
True...It's very handy for that and I don't particularily enjoy reading PDF's on my PPC. But, still. 
|
| |
|
|
|
07-30-2004, 11:27 PM
|
|
Pontificator
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,079
|
|
Tim,
This is a little OT, except that it belongs to your screen shots:
What's this utility that displays the raised X with the white arrow? I don't know this app but it looks like it's a close/minimize utility, right?!
If it's so this is exactly what is sought after in this discussion.
|
| |
|
|
|
07-31-2004, 01:36 AM
|
|
Ponderer
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 77
|
|
One missing feature is ability to link Repligo documents as URLs on the Windows Mobile version. You can do that in the Windows version viewer.
|
| |
|
|
|
08-02-2004, 03:06 PM
|
|
Ponderer
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 108
|
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by jlp
Tim,
This is a little OT, except that it belongs to your screen shots:
What's this utility that displays the raised X with the white arrow? I don't know this app but it looks like it's a close/minimize utility, right?!
If it's so this is exactly what is sought after in this discussion. |
Sorry for the delay in replying - but in fact Jeff Rutledge has already correctly answered for me in the thread you mention.
|
| |
|
|
|
08-03-2004, 05:31 PM
|
|
Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,221
|
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Sven
Well quit waffling.
|
OK, Sven. Made my decision. Picked on a copy on Saturday. Now to have some fun printing!
|
| |
|
|
|
08-05-2004, 03:03 PM
|
|
Thinker
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 481
|
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by pmradio
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Sven
Well quit waffling.
|
OK, Sven. Made my decision. Picked on a copy on Saturday. Now to have some fun printing! |
Good move! Sorry I didn't see this thread until now but better late than never. (IMHO)Repligo is a great piece of quality software. What Sven said about size reduction is true and is one of the main reasons I started using it. At first I thought why should I have another reader but I think that the file size made me at least try it but then the quality of the software made me a convert to the rgo format.
The price is steep for an upgrade and I personally think that for current owners and users of the product the price should have been less But using the reader since it came out I would purchase it even if it cost more. I don’t know where that fine line is where I would pass up the upgrade but I use the format on both my desktops and all of my PDA’s. You have to remember that the reader is free and Adobe also gives their reader away for free but also charges a lot more money for the privilege of making a pdf.
One con that is a problem for me is those of us who work in both worlds (Linux and Windows) there is no Linux viewer that I know of. So you’ll have to hold on to the original pdf (or other format) until some person hacks out a viewer for Linux or Cerience makes one. So even though there are readers for PDA’s, phones, Win desktops and Palms it’s still not a complete solution for those of us who work on Linux and those numbers are increasing. Where the server is a Linux box and the desktop is either Windows or a combination I would really want only one set of documents.
Jeff - 8)
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Linear Mode
