Review: MacLinkPlus Deluxe 14

Product Name/Version: MacLinkPlus Deluxe 14
OS 9/OS X ?: Both
Company: DataViz
URL: http://www.dataviz.com
Category: File conversion utility
Price: US$79.95 / Upgrade $39.95
Requirements: Mac OS 9.1 or higher / Mac OS 10.2 or higher
Date of Review: 9/26/03
Rating: Overall: 2 bounces - Lack-luster

It was a long time coming… but a new major upgrade of file conversion veteran utility MacLinkPlus Deluxe is finally here. After being one of the first Mac software companies to make the move to Mac OS X with the release of MacLinkPlus Deluxe 13 back in July 2001, for more than two years, inexplicably, DataViz didn’t release any updates.

Worse still, people who bought the product later on received a version numbered “13.002”, instead of the original “13.0” — but the “.002” update was never made available to owners of the original 13.0 via the DataViz web site as a downloadable patch. If you go to the site's page for MacLinkPlus Deluxe patches and updates, you'll see that the list stops at version 12.002. In fact, if you have version 13.0 and want to obtain version 13.002, you actually have to go to the "Redownload" page and enter your registration number and activation key. This is not the right way to do things. Such minor updates should be freely available on the "Patches/Updates" page.

To DataViz’s credit, however, MLPD 13 (both version 13.0 and version 13.002) continued to work through several significant Mac system upgrades, including the transition to Mac OS X 10.1, then Jaguar (10.2) and all the subsequent incremental updates. It didn’t require any updates to fix compatibility problems with the system, which indicates an application that’s consistent with the developing standards established by Apple.

Yet MLPD 13 was not without its problems. As two years of experience with the product have enabled me to determine, there is a significant number of PC files that MLPD 13 chokes on — by “unexpectedly quitting” on you — whereas the previous version of the product, i.e. MacLinkPlus Deluxe 12, a Mac OS 9–only application that runs fine in the Classic environment in Mac OS X, has no problems with the same files.

As well, in my review of MLPD 13 two years ago I indicated that some features were missing (such as support for accessing MLPD’s functionality through contextual menus in the Finder) compared to the classic versions running under Mac OS 9.

Finally, while DataViz deserved to be praised, a couple of years ago, for making their application Mac OS X-friendly while maintaining a high level of familiarity in the interface for existing users of the Mac OS 9 versions of the product, this also meant that there was little effort made in MLPD 13 to try and embrace Mac OS X’s new interface and make the product benefit from its many advantages.

In this article, I will therefore review the new version based on these three aspects: the problems with certain files, the missing features, and the interface.

Problems with Certain Files

When I started experiencing problems with certain Windows files, which would simply cause MacLinkPlus Deluxe 13 to crash, I contacted DataViz’s tech support, and they invited me to send a sample file. I promptly did, and they claimed that they were “unable to reproduce” the problem — which sounds rather strange to me, given that it’s very easy to reproduce by just dragging the file to MacLinkPlus Deluxe and asking it to try and translate it.

I tried to press further, but never got beyond the “unable to reproduce” line. Out of curiosity, I fired up my old copy of MacLinkPlus Deluxe 11 for Mac OS 9 under Classic, and tried to translate the same file. I didn’t experience any problems.

It was a WordPerfect 9 for Windows file and, when I looked at the end result produced by the MLPD 11 translation, I could see quite clearly what the problem was: the original PC file contained a header with a logo and some text that MacLinkPlus was obviously unable to translate correctly. However, instead of crashing, MLPD 11 simply left garbled text in that section and promptly translated the rest of the document just fine, which was the most important thing to me.

I don’t know what causes MLPD 13 to choke and crash on the same Windows file while MLPD 11 has no problems with it other than being unable to translate a small portion of it and producing garbled text in its place instead. Maybe the WordPerfect filters used by MLPD 13 are different from the ones used by MLPD 11. But it’s not my job as an end user, or even as a product reviewer, to isolate the bug. I’ve identified a problem file that causes problems with MLPD 13 that can be reproduced 100% reliably. It’s DataViz’s job to try and determine what the problem is.

For some reason, they were never able to do so with MLPD 13. So when I first got MLPD 14, one of the first things I tried was to translate one of the exact same files that MLPD 13 had problems with when MLPD 11 worked just fine. At least, I hoped, they never got back to me about this problem, but they managed to fix it internally and just didn’t bother to let me know.

The trouble is, they didn’t fix it. I tried the exact same file in MLPD 11 (under Classic), MLPD 13 (on my laptop) and MLPD 14 (on my desktop computer). It’s one of these WordPerfect 9 files with the problem header. MLPD 11 completes the translation without any problems. MLPD 13 crashes. MLPD 14 crashes. Same file, same problem. Nothing has been fixed.

It is very disappointing. However, after I submitted a first draft of this review to DataViz, the lead developer of the MacLinkPlus project did contact me to confirm that he was now able to reproduce the problem, and that he was also able to determine why the classic versions of MacLinkPlus Deluxe were able to complete the conversion of the problematic file without crashing. (In a nutshell, Mac OS X is much less tolerant of memory-related issues in applications, and the classic versions of MLPD are able to get away with accessing invalid memory when the Mac OS X versions are not.)

I am hopeful, therefore, that a patch will soon be released that fixes this particular problem. But it's still disappointing that it took two years and my writing a review of the product to get things going. DataViz has apologized for this and said that they will make sure that customer reports are routed to the developers properly from now on.

Until a patch is available, I guess I’ll have to continue using MLPD 11 under Classic for the problematic files. I hope I won't have to do this for much longer. (Like most Mac OS X users, I suspect, I'd like to be "Classic-free".)

The Missing Features

As I indicated in my review of MLPD 13, the early Mac OS X version of the software was missing a number of features that were available in the classic versions of the product. Mac OS X was very much a work in progress at the time (and it still is, although to a lesser extent), and it was understandable that restoring certain features would take time because of architectural, under-the-hood changes in Mac OS X itself.

DataViz has now had two years to catch up and use the functionality available in the Mac OS X architecture. And they have done so, to a certain extent. MLPD 14 now supports contextual menus in the Mac OS X Finder, meaning that, when you control-click on a file in the Finder, the contextual popup menu contains a menu item titled “MacLinkPlus Deluxe” which gives you access to a submenu consisting of several choices:

Contextual menu item in Finder

I personally have never really used this approach — but I am sure that there are a number of Mac OS users who prefer it to the other ways of using MLPD, and, for them, the return of this feature is welcome.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of other core aspects of Mac OS X integration. The most glaring omission in MLPD 14 is that the application still does not support long file names, i.e. file names that are longer than 31 characters, which used to be the limit in Mac OS 9 and still is in Carbon applications that have not been properly updated. (Microsoft Office X is another guilty party.)

Yet there are so many files coming from the Windows world whose file names are longer than 31 characters! It really represents a significant loss in productivity when you constantly have to deal with abbreviated names such as “Accreditation discuss#3AB9B.wpd”.

Long file names not supported

As the picture above indicates, for some reason MacLinkPlus Deluxe 14 does display the full file name in its main window area. But it is unable to go beyond that. If you try to view the contents of the file in a separate window, or to translate the file, the file name used is the abbreviated, Mac OS 9-friendly one.

I must admit that this is a huge disappointment. Long file names are no longer a luxury. In a world where we are constantly exchanging files with PC users, and where many of these PC users are able to use very long file names in Windows, feature parity is pretty much required. The abbreviation scheme used to make Mac OS 9-friendly file names is fine as a temporary measure — but DataViz has had over two years to embrace long Mac OS X file names.

To DataViz's credit, they did get back to me on this issue as well after reading the first draft of my review, and indicated that a great part of the problem was that supporting long Unicode file names would represent an enormous amount of work, because the translation system on which MacLinkPlus Deluxe is based is fairly old now. They also said that, based on their customer feedback, support for long file names was not very high on the list of priority issues to address in the new version — which I find a bit harder to believe myself.

DataViz does advertise the fact that they have embraced other aspects of Mac OS X, such as Address Book integration — but these are minor benefits that do not outweigh the loss in productivity caused by the lack of support for long file names. I don't know if the enormous difficulties that, according to DataViz, this improvement represents will prevent MacLinkPlus Deluxe from ever providing such support, but I certainly hope not.

For now, however, we are stuck with abbreviated file names ending with strings such as "#1034F". Granted, there are still other major software titles that don't support long file names, such as Microsoft Office. But sooner or later, something will need to be done about this, so that long file names are supported everywhere in Mac OS X.

The New Interface

DataViz has also revamped the user interface for the MacLinkPlus Deluxe application itself:

New interface

As you can see in the screen shot above, clutter and interface confusion has been reduced. The core functionality is now available through a toolbar at the top of the window. It should be noted, however, that this is not a “real” Mac OS X toolbar. It cannot be customized by the user. It cannot be temporarily hidden by using the button on the right-hand side of the title bar. (There is no such button.) And the font size for the button labels is smaller than the standard size used for Mac OS X toolbar buttons.

In addition, as this screen shot also clearly demonstrates, MLPD 14 doesn’t really support Mac OS X’s font anti-aliasing properly. There are huge spills of whitish pixels around the edges of the characters, and due to the small font size (not adjustable) used for file names in this window, this makes some of the file names almost impossible to read!

Illegible file name

Yes, you can turn off font-smoothing for sizes below 10 (in the “General” preference pane in System Preferences), and that will make the text somewhat more readable, as this other screen shot shows:

Without font smoothing

(But note the “Original File:” text string in the bottom-left. Not pretty!)

Here again, however, DataViz has had two years to revamp their application so that it can take full advantage of Mac OS X’s features, including proper font smoothing for small font sizes. There are many other places in Mac OS X and third-party applications where small font sizes are used with font smoothing on and there are no such ugly visual artifacts. Even Microsoft Word X is able to display highlighted text in a small font size without the smearing:

Same font in Word X

After reading the first draft of this review, DataViz acknowledged the problem as a bug. Here's hoping that it will be fixed in a future patch.

Other “improvements” in the user interface are not particularly impressive either. In MLPD 13 and previous versions, we had this standard Aqua “Open” button that could be used to open the Destination Folder (i.e. the one where MLPD puts its translated files):

Button in MLPD 13

Now, instead of this, in MLPD 14 the user is expected to guess that the two lines of blue text that appear at the bottom of the window and indicate the full paths to the original file and to the translations folder can be clicked on in order to open the corresponding location:

Blue links

How intuitive is this? Since when does plain blue text qualify as a button control in Aqua/Mac OS X? There is no visual indication that this text can be clicked on (the cursor doesn't change to a hand, for example), and I personally discovered that it could be used for this purpose by accident.

Conclusion

MacLinkPlus Deluxe 14 comes with the usual “new translators” for file formats introduced since the last version. It restores some of the functionality that was missing in the first Mac OS X-friendly version of the product, i.e. MacLinkPlus Deluxe 13, released over two years ago.

Its new interface is somewhat cleaner and less of a carbon copy of the old interface of the Mac OS 9 version of the product. You can also store translation settings for various situations, which helps avoid repetitive configuration tasks from one session to the next.

But there are several aspects of MacLinkPlus Deluxe 14 that are disappointing, including the failure to address the crashing problems with certain WordPerfect files, and the lack of support for long file names or proper font smoothing.

Based on the feedback that I have received from DataViz about these issues, there is hope that some of them will be addressed soon, making the new version a more acceptable product and an upgrade more worthy of the additional expense.

At this point, however, I can only give a "Lack-Luster" rating to the product and invite MacLinkPlus Deluxe users who feel that support for long file names is an important issue to make their feelings know to DataViz through their Customer Service web page.

- Pierre Igot

Visit Pierre's Blog.

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