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Does anyone know of a good Aspose.Word alternative (or similar) product?
Can you mention any pro/con for using either?
I am currently evaluating Aspose.Word, and although it works like a charm, it's missing some of the functionalities that I require.
UPDATE: We ended up writing our own DOCX generator. We are still using Aspose.Word to convert to DOC/HTML when needed.
Our team is using Docentric Toolkit Professional Edition. One of the most important reasons for our decision was also it's relatively affordable price for teams of up to 5 developers.
The toolkit works nice with MS Office 2007/2010/2013. In our scenario, reports are produced centrally on the server, using our custom developed reporting engine, which uses Docentric api calls. Because Docentric uses OpenXML, no Word installation is needed on the server.
We have several hundreds different templates, which are ordinary Word documents, enhanced with placeholders which Docentric recognizes and fills with data at runtime during report creation.
Other features which we are using extensively are tables (included nested ones), images, graphs, conditional content and Header/Footer dynamic content.
I don't know if it's suited for your purpose but you might want to have a look at the b2xtranslator project on SourceForge:
http://b2xtranslator.sourceforge.net/
TX Text Control has an express version, but it doesn't have all the features the full version has. The express is free, and I've used it, and if your sole purpose is to create a word processor, it will not provide all of the features. Like Aspose.Words, buying the full version is REALLY expensive ($2,398.00!), and in my opinion, a ripoff.
The pros and cons are evaluating the free version
Cons:
No spell check in the free version
Cannot read .docx or .doc in the free version
No headers, footers, or dragable textboxes (like there are in Word) in the free version
Pros:
Free
Page breaks
Basic Document editing features
Our company used it for a bit, but got sick of the lack of features, and ended up just ditching it.
If Java is an option (or a preference), you could try docx4j
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My team is tasked with implementing Unicode in our software, which is well over a million lines of code. We support an MFC Client and a Server on Windows, AIX or Solaris with an Oracle or SQL Server database. ICU looks like a very helpful tool. What are the pros and cons of using ICU? Does ICU work as advertised without major bugs?
A data point: Our (yes, that's a disclaimer) list of users and bugs is all on our project site.
IMBO (biased):
Pros:
works as advertised, comprehensive.
Mature: 10+ years now, with a good stability policy and very active development.
Uses latest Unicode+CLDR+BCP47+other standards.
Compiles basically everywhere. C/C++/J and called by/implements python,perl,php,…
Open source, with an increasing diversity of contributors.
Comes with all needed data for the above (see below, under cons), yet customizable. (can add custom data)
Cons:
Needs better documentation (we try- anyone want to help?).
Lots of APIs- "it's too big #1" hard to know which one to use, even if it does what you want.
Used by lots of types of programs, from embedded devices, smartphones through major desktop apps through databases and operating systems and enterprise apps: So, there may be multiple ways to do something.
Comes with all needed data for the above! "it's too big #2" (see above, under pros), yet customizable. (can be trimmed down to size)
ICU is terrible: avoid if at all possible.
Despite its age, basic things in it are broken, for example in this question: Fixing regex to work around ICU/RegexKitLite bug
Time handling is broken as times are underspecified: you can't distinguish a DST from a non-DST time in a reliable way in many APIs.
It's freaking huge.
The documentation needs a lot of work. Less-used features are often unusable because there's no way to figure out the right way to use them. I spent days trying to get transliteration to work as explained and eventually gave up.
It likes to work in UTF-16, the worst of all possible worlds.
Support is unresponsive to problems.
In my experience, it's not until you're most of the way through a project that you begin to discover the insidious flaws that will take 90% of your time.
For many people, there is no alternative so you're stuck with it.
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In a content management system, moderators have to approve changes to existing articles. Currently the system shows the old and the revised version of the text in plain text. It is a pain to find the actual differences.
In GoogleDocs, there is a 'Compare revisions' feature which highlights the differences between two documents.
If there a free component out there that does the same thing?
If not, would you write such a component in JavaScript or on the server side?
All the usual diff tools are desktop applications.
John Resig wrote one in JavaScript that looks interesting.
Here it is.
Try Pretty Diff tool. It is based upon jsdifflib, but is enhanced to highlight per character differences and rebuilt for speed. It also compares minified code to unminified code. It is entirely written in JavaScript and supports JavaScript, CSS, and XML/XHTML input.
http://prettydiff.com/
jsdifflib looks like an interesting javascript-based client side library. I would lean strongly toward a client-side implementation if it provided the features that you needed. Why tax your servers on presentation logic when you're already handing the client the data anyway?
The Diff, Match and Patch Library is available with an identical API in JavaScript, Java, C#, Python, and other languages. (It seems to have been and may still be the one used in Google Docs.)
There is an online demo of the HTML output of the diff'ing options.
Given the identical API available on both client- and server-side languages, it should be easier to make a switch between them should you decide you want to...
If you're working with PHP, you may find SimpleDIFF to be helpful.
Check out the JavaScript diff library wikEd diff. It is used on Wikipedia in the gadget wikEdDiff for exactly the asked purpose to compare revisions of articles. The free (public domain) library can detect and highlight block moves, works on the word/character level, and spits out a nicely formatted text with insertions, deletions, moved blocks, and their original positions marked up. See the online demo to play with settings.
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I want to convert a website to use a Content Management System for updating a large number of content pages for a website. The current website is mostly ASP.NET, but I am considering converting to PHP if it means I will have better integration with the "CMS of choice" in the market. I have heard of Joomla! and other CMS' but I would like some answers to which ones are considered better. Features that I need to support are custom sidebar and tab menus (with expandable javascript drop downs for example). Can anyone tell me of a good solution?
You should look at opensourcecms.com. It's a site that hosts demos for the majority of open source CMS's out there in both PHP and ASP.NET. You can try each one out and read the features and reviews. It's a good way to find one that meets your needs without actually installing them.
Joomla and Drupal are your most common and popular PHP based CMS solutions.
On the .NET side I would suggest only DotNetNuke. The amount of development that goes on in that CMS is second to none and there is a huge marketplace for content, modules, themes, etc. There is pretty much everything available in DNN to meet your potential needs.
The "best" CMS really, really depends on your requirements.
I will say that Joomla is pretty much typical PHP spaghetti, and I hate it, but it might work for you.
Kentico (a .NET CMS) is a pretty decent one that I've deployed a few times. Microsoft CMS is supposed to be decent, I haven't tried it though.
Without knowing specifically your requirements, I find it impossible to give a solid recommendation, though.
I didn't work with these applications yet, but AFAIK TYPO3 and ezPublish (both PHP) are considered much more professional than e.g. Joomla.
Drupal has a long history, proven track record of success (many high profile use cases, including the Obama campaign, Mozilla Firefox, and MTV in the UK), and a boatload of free modules and themes so you can start somewhere good. Drupal is also highly customizable in terms of how data is stored in terms of content types. Drupal has excellent consulting and contracting help.
Joomla is a strong second, but a quick look at Joomla criticism on wikipedia, and I think the choice gets much clearer. Two out of the three criticisms of Drupal on wikipedia are that it's too complicated, which is really a subjective matter as compared to the shortcomings of Joomla.
If web development is a hobby for you, then use an open source CMS such as those mentioned. If it is your profession, consider working towards writing your own that meets your needs. The first few will likely be a little rough, but in the long run it can prove very fulfilling and must more customizable than anything off the shelf.
Writing your own also forces you to consistently expand your skills and learn the intricacies of the programming language.
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If you have worked with DotNetNuke, what are advantages and disadvantages that you have come across? What are alternative Content Management Systems that you have used that you find are better or worst. I'm trying to get a feel of what Content Management System Frameworks people are using and the advantages and disadvantages of them.
Thanks,
XaiSoft
This post may help as it has covered some of this info!
DotNetNuke works well, and has a wide variety of addins that are available for purchase from various vendors. It is also open source which is nice, as it allows you to troubleshoot issues to a deeper level then if it was closed source.
We didn't spend a lot of time researching CMS systems but this past summer we couldn't find anything with the functionality of DotNetNuke which targets the .net framework. If your not tied to .net then there are a ton of options available.
DNN is very very dynamic in terms of functionality, features and security. There's is nothing like it. However there are a few drawbacks that i felt while using it.
The biggest drawback in my opinion is the response time of a DNN using sites. The code itself is very obsolete and you need to lock yourself and scour on each and every coding details before using DNN. One more is the URL dependency, if you need to change your domain name to another your old database will be of no use.
There are a lot of new promising CMS extension in Dot NET market and Sageframe, in my opinion, is the best of them. I have been using this extension for quite a time now and I am quite fascinated by its features though still in beta.
DotNetNuke is quite powerful. It's biggest advantage is the inline editing of site content, in my opinion. It's biggest disadvantage is that it is pretty resource intensive compared to other CMS systems.
Here's a comparison I wrote last month:
http://www.logicalvue.com/blog/2009/01/cms-shootout-dotnetnuke-vs-joomla-vs-wordpress/
The biggest disadvantage is the missing support for multiple languages.
Yes, you can install multiple languages but you can't write seperate content for each installed language...
It's not hard to write such a module yourself but the other problem is the URLs.
You can use the 'Human Friendly' option but yet again, this does not support multiple languages.
For instance /Products/tabid/57/language/en-US/Default.aspx becomes products.aspx but there isn't a possibility to include the language like this /en-US/products.aspx
I know there are 3th party tools like UrlMaster which covers this up but still I think this should be available in such a framework.
The biggest advantage is the ease of developing your own modules! If a functionality isn't available, you can write your own module without any problems!
.Net Nuke is not good for developing projects.
Microsoft is releasing lot of versiond and including lot of lauguages.
So how developers will learn all the things...
This is very bad for developers.....
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There are a number of framework out there that provide the skeleton for building applications such as CSLA, XAF, SCSF, ...
Do you use one yourself or do you build from scratch?
.NET is my favorite framework.
The applications I work on are usually too complex to fit into a "skeleton". However when working on Winforms, I like to take advantage of CAB for the UI. I wouldn't say this is the skeleton, but more or less the ground work for which the skeleton can be built, then the meat can be built upon it. I also like using a MVC for connecting the UI to the Data Layer. The Data Layer is typically LLBLGen or nHibernate.
For generating your skeleton for web applications, the ASP.NET Dynamic Data framework looks really promising.
I just use my own class library, which handles things like SQL (differences between different engines), provides lots of custom data structures and types, IoC/Dependency injection, etc.
I have been using the XPO-library from DevExpress before but after having some rather largish performance problems with it I'm back to plain SQL.
I have never used a bigger framework like those you mention. Earlier experience with those have always led me to believe they're powerful, but also restricting. You usually end up combating the way they do things to implement more complex features.
I used CSLA.NET to build an large LOB Windows application (title insurance) in 2007, basically it is a framework that you build your business objects based on. The business objects are generated from database tables with predefined templates. SPs are mostly utilized for data access. Personally I've not liked it because there are lots of code and template need to maintain, I prefer ORM to template based approach.
I've been using XAF to build another Windows based HR application, it can help you create a complete application just in 15 minutes with nice UI and lots of cool stuffs such at localization, customization, skinable and so on. But the big problems with XAF are limitation of the underlying XPO, and not so good performance.