A multiplatform tool for document interoperability testing
We will present a platform and application independent tool for interoperability testing of office applications, together with results obtained by testing odt and docx documents in the LibreOffice 4.0 and 4.1, Apache OpenOffice 3.4 and 4.0 and Microsoft Office 2013 office suites.
Details of the Talk
Interoperability of office applications, i.e., the possibility to view and modify a document in an arbitrary office application without layout and content modifications, is important for a user and thus also important for success of office applications which do not dominate the market – which is the situation of LibreOffice. To improve the interoperability it is necessary to know the current situation. Therefore, we developed a platform, application and file format independent tool which, based on a set of test documents, enables to identify interoperability problems by side-by-side or overlay viewing of document renderings obtained in various office applications. The side-by-side mode can be used to assess differences on a less detailed level from the point of view of a user, while the overlay view can serve a developer to assess even the tiniest differences on the pixel level.
The tool was tested in the GNU/Linux and MS Windows environments with various versions of the LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice, Google Docs and Microsoft Office office suits using documents in the odt, rtf, docx and doc formats. Tests are run in a batch mode and can be easily performed on any operating system running the bash program and by any office application with the command line interface for format conversion and pdf printing.
In the presentation we will show results obtained by testing odt and docx documents in the LibreOffice 4.0 and 4.1, Apache OpenOffice 3.4 and 4.0 and Microsoft Office 2013 office suits.