About Crick Software
WriteOnline was developed as an online literacy tool from Crick Software, a leading software supplier to the education market. In 2008, WriteOnline won the Java Duke’s award for Education and the ESU President’s Award and was a finalist for the 2009 BETT Awards.
Perfect for students of all abilities, WriteOnline has been used by learners from the age of 9 to adult. The program took the basic functions of a word processor but provided additional literacy support such as; a word bar, that provided a bank of words, phrases and web addresses at the bottom of the screen. It also included integrated word prediction and realistic high-quality speech that can read out any text written in the document or in the panels of vocabulary.
WriteOnline also included many other features including a number of unique features for teachers and lecturers allowing them to see how a document was constructed and helping them to spot plagiarism.
Requirements Scenario
We needed WriteOnline to be able to open and save documents from the most common Word Processors in use. The Application shall allow customers to import their existing documents into WriteOnline and then export documents for use in other applications.
Support for Microsoft Word .doc and .docx format has been essential. Open Document Format support was also desired. WriteOnline was delivered as an online solution needed to have a small payload, without a lot of dependencies. Reliability and robustness were also key requirements.
Solution Implementation
Crick Software chose the Aspose.Words for Java library from Aspose. It offered import and export of Microsoft Word .doc and .docx files and export of Open Document Format files became available using a common API.
Compared to other solutions that we investigated, Aspose was a clear winner. An inhouse solution would have taken many months to implement. Other solutions were incomplete, they required other dependencies or only supported a small subset of the file formats we required.
Benefits
We were impressed with the robustness and accuracy of Aspose.Words for Java. The automated unit testing that Aspose employs means that we can be confident that our customers will be able to import documents into WriteOnline reliably and with ease.
Using a single library to implement import and export of multiple formats has helped reduce development time and gave WriteOnline a smaller download payload compared to other solutions we might have chosen.
Conclusion
Aspose.Words for Java have saved us a lot of time, effort and money. It’ gave our customers good reliable import/export functionality so they can open their old documents in WriteOnline.
We have been very happy with Aspose.Words for Java and will be checking other components Aspose has developed in the coming months and years.
