"Competing" programs

Because ZDOCj is freeware, its goal is not to "beat" other programs.  There is a narrow range of applications where ZDOCj does best.  (The reason I started ZDOCj was because I wanted to work on a short story.)  For most things, you can have fast (performance), cheap (free), or good (powerful).  Pick any two.  If you were wondering, ZDOCj is fast and cheap.  For everything else, here are my opinions for the best alternatives.

ZDOCj is BEST when

Your budget is limited, but your conscience is not.  This freeware can be used without guilt.  SiEd, TexT, and ZDOCm are also free, by the way.  QED is free as a reader, and is fully functional as a shareware demo for writing.

You need to make small edits.  If you must do lots of editing, and must do it on your Palm, you need a full-blown editor such as QED or SiEd (and perhaps a portable keyboard, too).  Bear in mind that the worst desktop computer is likely still better than any PDA for heavy editing.

You have an older Palm.  The minimum requirement is Palm OS 2.0, which means ZDOCj should run on a Palm Pilot Pro or Handspring Visor.

You are short on RAM.  ZDOCj requires only about 22k of read-write memory.  This is generally not an issue on contemporary PDAs.

The file you must edit is huge.  I have not been able to test a document larger than the King James Bible*, which is about 4 MB.  However, theoretically, ZDOCj should work with any file following the DOC format - that is, up to just shy of 256 MB.  If you only want to edit a medium-size file, say, 40k, then SiEd is a much better choice.  If you have a huge file, but do not need to edit it at all, I suggest one of the many fine, free readers, such as PalmReader.

You are compelled to edit a compressed file.  Nothing beats working with uncompressed text for speed, but ZDOCj performs reasonably ok with compressed files.  (Note to techies: I benchmarked the time to compress and write a 4k record at about 50 mS.  This doesn't mean it can write at 20 records per second, though.)
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ZDOCj is WORST when

You need to go back and forth between two files.  SiEd lets you open a dual-pane window on the screen, and is thus ideal for this kind of thing.  QED and even ZDOCm allow a quick switch to another file.  ZDOCj only works on one file at a time.

You're editing source code, html, or other text where line breaks and indents are important.  ZDOCj gives no choice other than wrapping long lines.  Try QED.

You need to search something large.  Although ZDOCj will handle large files, the search algorithm is unsophisticated and slow.  If you're going to be doing a lot of searching, use something else.  Also, the replace functionality is weak; in ZDOCj you need to approve each replacement.  If you wanted a searchable Bible on your Palm ("concordance"), better to get a commercial program that indexes the text, such as MyBible.

You're using any kind of 16-bit characters, such as Japanese or Chinese.  Zdocj was not written with these in mind, although it does seem to work.  The search and replace would probably fail in some cases.

You need localization other than English.  The messages and documentation are hard-coded in English.  A volunteer could probably modify the source to make it easily localizable.

You need precise control over the underlying record structure of your DOC file.  To my knowledge, short of using a hex editor, only ZDOCm gives this kind of control.

You primarily want to read.  ZDOCj can be used as a reader, but programs such as PalmReader provide auto-scrolling, which saves you from having to punch the page down button all the time.  Also ZDOCj does not do bookmarks (the single editing "mark" notwithstanding), and neither does it do annotations.

You need to work with tags.  Try ZDOCm.

You are authoring an e-book or something similar, and need bold, italics, and/or graphics.  For this sort of thing, you'll need to spend a few dollars on an authoring program.  I like Documents to Go, which lets me display and edit Word, Excel, and Powerpoint directly on the PDA.  Truthfully, I would never have spent the money to buy this program, but it came free with my Clie, and now that I've used it, I love it.  If I had this program earlier, Zdocj would never have been written.

You really want a file manager.  Many other editors have this functionality.  All you can do with Zdocj is rename or delete the presently open file.

You must have maximal file compression.  If your PDA is low on memory space, this might be a consideration.  ZDOCj normally uses a weak compression scheme that is only a subset of standard DOC compression.  As such, the compression ratio is terrible, and sometimes even results in a file being larger than if it were not compressed.  If ZDOCj fails at the limited compression, it will revert to full, standard compression, but the performance in writing out a file will be horrible (about 27 seconds per 4000 characters).

You need to edit a plain text file on a memory card.  Zdocj includes a rudimentary import and export from Virtual File Systems.  However, there are other freewares better suited for this, such as SiEd, TexT, and cardTXT.
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* If you are contemplating editing the Bible, please note the last book, chapter 22:18-19.
