Product Reviews

The fact that the modern office revolves around the network has lent increasing importance to the rapid exchange of information. However, the habit of software manufacturers to render documents created in the latest release of their software unreadable by older versions has caused havoc in large corporations that operate staggered upgrade plans. And what of the single user who can't open a file because they don't own its creating program? It's a common situation on an internal network, and almost inevitable over the Internet.

Verity's KeyView Pro, a document-viewing and conversion utility, has long battled against unreadable files. It allows you to view files, in as close to their original form as possible, without recourse to the application that created them. Now Windows 98-compatible, it supports the viewing of more than 225 file formats, including Corel Office Suite, Lotus Word Pro and upcoming versions of Office 2000 and Applixware Office Suite.

KeyView incorporates three major tools. The basic, even spartan, standalone Viewer is launched from the Start menu and allows you to view any supported file with a surprising degree of fidelity. It can then save it in three flavours of text - RTF, plain text or HTML - or a range of image formats. This isn't particularly impressive with text files, but it can also handle PowerPoint slides, Excel spreadsheets or a variety of graphics formats. Powerful compression and encoding facilities are also on tap. Viewing your target file can be as simple as dragging it onto the program's Desktop icon. If you only want file conversion, you can circumvent the main program using the Batch Conversion tool, which lets you convert any number of text or image files quickly by dropping them onto the tool's open window. You simply specify the target conversion and directory, and KeyView does the rest.

QuickView can also be used as an integrated component of other apps, including Windows Explorer, Eudora and Lotus Notes. You can choose to integrate with any or all of these apps on first installing the program, or you can add them later via the program's Integration Manager. KeyView's integration abilities are without doubt its most compelling feature. Right-clicking on a selected file's icon anywhere

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on the Windows Desktop lets you view, compress or encode it. It's equally seamless within the designated supported apps. In Eudora, for example, a 'View attachments with KeyView Pro' option is added to the Tools menu bar. Selecting this takes you to Eudora's attachments folder and presents you with a list of files to view.

KeyView's natural constituency is obviously the Internet. As well as operating as a plug-in to Netscape Navigator, version Pro 6.5 includes ActiveX support to allow the direct viewing of documents in your preferred browser's window. Another neat feature is on-the-fly HTML conversion from text documents. Used in conjunction with the batch-processing feature, it's a simple task to quickly create a series of basic Web pages. While KeyView's rudimentary HTML display can't compete with the power of established browsers, it does at least support live links, which means you can click on a link inside any KeyView file and your default browser will be automatically launched.

The intranet hasn't been ignored either. The scriptable network installer allows you to deploy the program quickly and easily over a large network - handy for harassed systems administrators who regularly have to wrestle with file compatibility problems.

With Apple's resurgence, KeyView's cross-platform capabilities are useful even if they don't provide the complete solution offered by rivals such as DataViz's Conversions Plus. As well as supporting files compressed in Tar, z and gz formats, KeyView lets you expand Macintosh binhexed files. This, coupled with support for Mac Microsoft Office and WordPerfect documents, means that most electronically transmitted files should be a snap to convert. Unfortunately, KeyView can't open Mac-formatted disks, ClarisWorks documents or files compressed with StuffIt, the Mac's most prevalent compression utility.

In the end, KeyView's sound performance and accurate translation of text and graphics files can't disguise a few shortcomings. Perhaps most notable is the surprising absence of support for any database formats. The limited output formats supported by the text conversion facilities may also inhibit the program's appeal. And while single right-click compression utilities are available at any time, file conversion is far more tortuous. You must either use the batch conversion application, even if you only have one file to convert, or open the document in the Viewer and save it in the required format. Also, the lack of customisation for image conversions means you can't tweak the contents of an EPS export, for example.

That aside, the ability to instantly view and convert most major file formats, coupled with the program's seamless integration with commonly used Internet applications, makes KeyView Pro a powerful tool for the single user and large corporation alike.