APSE/Star Office Evaluation Criteria
User friendliness
- Intuitive for people who use popular productivity tools
- Intuitive for completely novice users
- Easy upgrade/migration path for users
- Limited config space required in home directories
- platform independent config files in home directories
- Easy for power users to configure to taste
Stability and reliability
- Should not crash
- Should not require expert intervention in normal operation
(unlike Star Office 5.1)
Supportability
- Active vendor support
- Access to source code
- Fits into (and is customizable for) Athena infrastructure with minimum of hacking
- Fits into Athena infrastructure with minimum of hacking
- Ability to remove broken/undesired-for-Athena menu options
- Acceptable licensing and license management scheme
Availability
- Will the project be mature enough at the expected release date?
- Will it be available for platforms we plan to support (Sun, Linux)?
Performance
- Acceptable performance on low-end machines (a subjective metric if ever there was one)
Interoperability
With regard to interoperability, we would need to establish a list of
products and formats we want to be compatible with. The more the
merrier, of course, but very popular systems should be weighted more
heavily. This list depends on the project scope quite a bit, but for
starters, I can think of:
- Microsoft Word
- Powerpoint
- Excel
- WordPerfect?
- GNOME Office
- MSIE
- Netscape
- Existing Athena software in relevant areas (HoTMetaL, Xess,
CorelDRAW, Netscape, Lynx, mail readers)
Application-specific functionality (unknown at this time)
[original from beland, wdc 20jun2000, modifications since by amb]