Net-It Software Corp. uses Java to turn PC documents into interactive Web pages
On September 30, start-up Net-It Software Corp. announced two technologies based on the Java programming language: jDoc, which is enabling software for displaying, distributing, and interacting with live Web pages; and Net-It Now, a software application built on jDoc that lets users transform desktop documents such as Microsoft Word text files and Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets into Web pages that are significantly smaller than the originals while maintaining the originals’ format. Net-It Now includes tools for adding animation, pop-ups, and other interactive features to standard documents.
From its inception in June 1995, San Francisco, CA-based Net-It Software has employed Java as the language upon which to build its technologies. Dennis Ryan, president and CEO of Net-It Software, said the company chose Java due to three key attributes of the language: universality (platform portability), instantaneity (real-time distribution of applications), and interactivity.
jDoc
The enabling software, jDoc, was built as an extension to Sun’s Java platform. With it, users can publish cross-platform, interactive content that can be viewed instantly. Client-side interactivity and vector-driven graphics display are supported by jDoc. jDoc provides support for automatic streaming. jDoc-based Web pages render on Windows, Macintosh, Unix, and network computers.
jDoc documents, the jDoc player, and the jDoc application programming interface (API) make up the jDoc architecture.
jDoc documents, or objects, can be thought of as miniature software programs. They contain all the attributes found in a desktop document (such as a formatted word-processor document or spreadsheet), including text, graphics, sound, animation, and interactive controls. Through jDoc, a desktop document gets cast as a composite object, containing all of the document’s distinct elements, including tables, bar charts, and graphics. jDoc documents can be embedded as objects within standard HTML documents and are therefore immediately accessible to users viewing content via a Java-enabled Web browser. Furthermore, jDoc documents are small in size — usually less than half the size of the original file — and thus can move more quickly over the Internet and intranets.
The jDoc player is a software “machine” implemented as an extension to Java; its purpose is to execute jDoc documents. The player is compact in size (approximately 34 kilobytes), ensuring fast performance.
The jDoc API is a software interface that takes formatted documents and converts them into the jDoc format. The API allows applications to save in the jDoc format files and objects that are then executed by the jDoc player. Net-It Software expects to make the jDoc API available to other software developers later this fall.
How is jDoc relevant to Java developers?
“There will be a certain set [of programmers] who are not very interested at all,” said William Cook, Net-It Software’s vice president of engineering and founder of the company. “But what we are trying to do, especially in bringing out the APIs, is to raise Java from a level of having to get in there and program up every single dialog box and every single piece of text you draw on the screen. It’s a very tedious process right now.”
Net-It Software focuses “on a domain that’s content-rich in addition to being behavior-rich,” Cook said. “When you think about Java, you write these incredibly complicated programs that do a lot of computation, but they don’t have much interface to them. In our framework, it’s the other way around: There’s a lot of data, a lot of content — graphics and links — and a certain amount of behavior that you want to plug into it — a bit like HTML, which is a framework for dumping out tons of data … We’re taking what’s essentially a programming language and building, in jDoc, a content framework for Java….We’re trying to open up the whole area of content-handling with Java.”
“I think that we’re going to end up driving the maturation of Java runtimes, like the Netscape Java or the Internet Explorer Java,” Cook said. “We expose bugs in those programs that no one else has exposed before because we’re a pretty serious application.” In fact, one JavaWorld editor could not fully view jDoc Web pages on Net-It Software’s own Web site using Netscape Navigator 3.0 for Solaris 2.0 running on a SPARCstation 5 clone workstation.
Concerning the specifics of the jDoc API, Cook explained that there are two levels. One makes use of jDoc’s “facility for taking in formatted, printed materials, essentially as documents, and converting them into the jDoc format.” The other level would allow users to build sophisticated structures out of objects. At this level, “tool developers or more sophisticated programmers could leverage the jDoc format rather than having to rewrite all that low-level data handling and interaction handling.”
Net-It Now
Net-It Now, a software application for Windows 95 users, is the first application to use the jDoc API. Basically a Web publishing system, it uses jDoc to seamlessly convert standard word processor and spreadsheet documents into small files that are displayed on Web pages. These pages retain the formatting contained in the original desktop documents.
With the push of a button, desktop applications can be published to any Web server — either as single documents or as a group of documents from several Windows applications. The resulting jDoc files can be viewed by any standard Java-enabled Web browser (unlike alternatives such as Adobe Acrobat documents, which require the use of plug-ins, or ActiveX components, which work only on Windows platforms). At this time, however, Net-It Now does not support documents created in Aldus PageMaker and Quark Xpress. Also, thus far, users cannot print out jDoc pages, and the text within jDoc files cannot be selected or searched like HTML text.
Net-It Now includes tools designed to let users easily add hyperlinks, buttons, pop-up windows, interactive effects, and prebuilt animation styles to their converted jDoc documents. Built-in FTP lets users easily publish pages on the Web, and these pages are instantly viewable on Java-enabled Web browsers. To ensure instant publishing and viewing and prevent slow-downs, fonts are not drawn or downloaded but are based on those supported in Java.
“Our goal with Net-It Now is to take anything you’ve got on your desktop, assemble it using Net-It Now, and convert that out into Web form,” said Cook. “If you’ve got applets lying around, if you’ve got Word documents, we want to pull all those together. The assembly process of putting pieces together is actually something we would expect anybody to be able to do.”
Net-It Now provides a framework for importing documents to the Web that differs from the HTML or ActiveX models and should have wide appeal in the Internet and Java community.
Asked whether Net-It Now would be useful to Java developers, Cook was quick to point out that it is not a Java development environment but is more on the order of a Visual Basic, in which basic functionality can be achieved relatively quickly and easily. “Our current product has not really been opened up for developers at this point,” said Cook. “Our strategy is to get a highly usable end-user tool out. Once we’ve got that, we can easily open up the framework.”
Look for Net-It Software to release high-end tools in the coming months. As a level up from Net-It Now’s use of prebuilt components, future products will give users greater control over component creation and assembly.
Web publishing requirements for Net-It Now include Windows 95 with at least 8 megabytes of RAM, 5 megabytes of hard-disk space, Netscape Navigator 2.0 or later or Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 or later, and access to any Web server or Web hosting service. Net-It Now is available for downloading from Net-It Software’s Web site for an introductory price of 9. After October 31, the list price will be 49 for single-user license. Site-license pricing options are also available.
