Most organizations require a series of applications that can fulfill the basic requirements of word processing, spreadsheet, presentation graphics and database. (Witness the explosion in the Windows environment for Microsoft Office, Lotus SmartSuite and Novell (WordPerfect) PerfectOffice, to name but three). Studies have shown that 95 percent of users actually only exercise about 20 percent of the functionality in an application. If you take even 50 percent of the functionality from the four disciplines and meld them into a true object-oriented application, you would have a remarkable product.
Culture wars are not uncommon when it comes to productivity suites. Some feel that you must have separate tools for each requirement: a spreadsheet, database, word processor, drawing tool, etc. Others subscribe to the philosophy that a single, well-balanced application will be sufficient for 95 percent of the users if it combines the "best of breed" for each of the disciplines. In this arena, good conversion tools will make or break a product.
There are the two traditional document preparation heavyweights: FrameMaker and Interleaf. These are fine if you are producing very large and extremely complex documents. But they are overkill if you are writing letters, creating memos or producing a table for inclusion in a report. As in the Intel space, there are also several "all-encompassing" packages. Three of the more successful have been Rapport from Clarity Software, Applix from Applixware and the Island Series (Write, Paint, Draw).
Rapport from Clarity Software is billed as "extraordinary software for ordinary tasks." Quite simply put, it is. Users of DOS-based products (such as Microsoft Office) will appreciate being able to do many things in a single compound document: rich text, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics and images. Instead of having to import each of these from many applications, they are all resident in one. Applix, by comparison, is modularized, and as a result, you have to continually open/close/link files.
System requirements for Rapport: Sun Sparc; Sun OS 4.1.1 or later; Motif 1.1 or later, or Open Windows 3.0 or later; or Sun Sparc, Solaris 2.3 or later. Other supported platforms include Hewlett Packard 9000 Series 700, Silicon Graphics workstations, Digital Equipment Corp. and NEC workstations. General requirements are: 55Mb of disk space for Rapport itself, 24Mb of memory recommended and 18Mb of SWAP (above current usage) per Rapport user.
Configurations Tested
Installation
I encountered no glitches when installing in either environment tested. A nice touch is the fact that you can have the license server, address book server and the application all installed on different machines if they are all NFS connected. This is very useful for administrators trying to balance network loads.
Rlogin is accepted from X terminals or X-emulation machines such as Windows, NT or other Unix machines.
Support
Support is excellent. The support person pointed me to the right things and as a backup, there are references in the online manual pages.
Telephone response is faster than e-mail if a support representative is available, and your calls are answered quickly. Call back is good.
Support contracts are available at a very reasonable rate, and in varying forms. These people are confident of their product and their staff.
In the incremental release from 2.3.8 to 2.4, I noticed considerable speedups in the way a lot of things happen. Screen draws are much faster, and all aspects seem to have more "snap" to them.
Documentation
Documentation is in two small manuals: a Planning and Installation Guide, and a Rapport Pro Tutorial -- light, but a good "up and running" tutorial for the first-time user. Extensive online documentation is available. A few times I had to sit back and think about what they were eluding to, but in the end, it all worked as documented.
Ease of Use
The user interface is quite intuitive and there are no problems running in a mixed operating system environment. Multiple windows in the screen (even in virtual screens) make cut and paste between documents easy.
Don't be fooled into thinking that image support is lightweight; It's not. Postscript, Sun raster, SGI .rgb are the regulars and you can use the screen capture to bring in bitmap representation of anything you can see on your screen, even from other applications. This is very useful for document preparation or user guides. I tested converting images from Corel Draw on a PC, saved in WordPerfect .wpg format and placed them in spreadsheets and documents. As another experiment, an image scanned at one location was forwarded by mail to the second site, read with Rapport Mail, and then cut and pasted into another document.
The spreadsheet is "nearly" virtual. Click Cntrl-Tab and you open a layered sheet underneath the one you have. Click Cntrl-Shift-Tab to back up through the sheets. I built a relatively large spreadsheet for Annual Income/Expenses with layered sheets for each month, and a summary on top. This was combined with an income statement sheet to provide running totals. With the use of standard Lotus style formulas, it was quite easy to configure.
I almost immediately thought of many ways to "automate" an office environment. Without a lot of effort you could create a paperless office. One large Clarity customer has more than a thousand licenses in daily use for document management and workflow.
With Release 2.4, many new features have been added, including the ability to build on the forms concept. Widgets (option menus, text fields, check-boxes) can be used within spreadsheets, documents or slides to create forms. All of the form widgets can be initialized and their values retrieved via macros.
Enhancements in Rapport 2.4
Several new conversion filters have been added including WordPerfect 6.0 incoming and outgoing, Interleaf raster graphics incoming and several FrameMaker text improvements that work very well. An improvement I like is the dialog box to save the current document into another format, with "sticky" output format choices.
In the graphics and slides area, you can now mix portrait and landscape slides in one slide set. A touch I like is that when you change page orientation, height/width change automatically. New pull-right cascading menus make life easier and the mouse tracking is now shown in the status line, which makes precise placement much easier.
E-mail now supports .signature files, and Reply with message/forward inserts carets next to old message for better formatting. There is MIME support for both incoming and outgoing mail.
Spreadsheets have added two new functions: round and ceiling. Also, FLEX has some new macro commands for forms. Fax can now be licensed by client, and the Print dialog box has scrolling list of printers (great for a network install).
There are several international configuration options that are much appreciated by non-U.S. residents, such as the British English hyphenation/spelling. Also, having the metric dimensions is very useful for people working with non-"standard" dimensions.
Summary
There are heavy duty applications for each facet of Rapport. Yes, Frame or Interleaf is going to give you everything you could ever ask for in document preparation, and applications exist with more spreadsheet or presentation functionality, but the cost of buying each would far exceed the price of Rapport. And, you wouldn't be able to do it all (graphics, text, spreadsheet, voice) all in one document.
Think of Rapport as a Ukrainian doll. Each time you lift a cover, there is more complex functionality underneath. Rapport is a product that encourages -- and rewards -- investigation into how each part functions. Your imagination is the only thing that slows you down.
For most users, this is an excellent environment. Fax, WP, mail -- it's all there.
If you are running an older version of Rapport, upgrade now. If it's been a while since you took a look at Rapport, then this is an excellent time to renew your acquaintance. You'll be impressed with the improvements and additions.
Be sure to order a set of the documentation, particularly for the administrators. If you plan (and you should) to do any programming with FLEX (Facility for Linkage and Extension), you should order the FLEX Programmer's Guide as well.
Training is available, either at Clarity or your site. A fax option is also available that competes very well with other verticals, such as Xpressfax. Integrating it into Rapport seamlessly is an added bonus. Only two modems are mentioned, but I'm told that nearly any Class 2 should work.
Pricing
Upgrades from previous versions are $195 per right-to-use and Rapport Pro is $895 for Motif and Solaris 2.x. For information, call 800-235-6736 or e-mail info@clarity.com
Roger Harmston is with Strategic Unix Network Corp. in Victoria, British Columbia. He can be reached at roger.harmston@strategic.Victoria.BC.Canada.