Currently, Aspose.Words Documentation includes a description of all the exciting Aspose.Words feature in a single table. This is historical. Aspose.Words 1.0 was released in 2003 with a pretty small set of features and using a simple table to describe it all was sufficient. After that, due to rapidly rising popularity we’ve been so busy on Aspose.Words development that some essential areas such as marketing documentation (for example Feature Overview) suffered from the lack of our attention.

We are currently working to update Aspose.Words marketing documentation and thought it would be a good idea to publish new topics as they become available. If you are a potential or existing customer, please feel free to comment or ask questions.

This is the first topic in the series of updates that will later become the new Aspose.Words Feature Overview.

Supported Platforms

Aspose.Words for .NET and Aspose.Words for Java are “twin brothers” products and together cover most of the popular development environments and deployment platforms.

Feature

Description

.NET Framework

Use Aspose.Words for .NET to build ASP.NET, Web Services, WinForms or any other type of application in .NET Framework 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0. Full support for 32-bit and 64-bit.

Java

Aspose.Words for Java is available for Java 1.4 or 1.5 and will run in any place where Java is installed.

COM

Not recommended as a mainstream approach, but can be a lifesaver if you have to develop using pre- .NET technologies.

Mono

Since variety is the spice of life, you can even use Aspose.Words for .NET to build applications with Mono.

.NET Framework

You can confidently use Aspose.Words for .NET to build any type of a 32-bit or 64-bit .NET application including, but not limited to ASP.NET, Web Services, WinForms. Aspose.Words for .NET is easy to deploy because it is just a class library without any dependencies (except on the .NET Framework itself).

Aspose.Words for .NET supports the following versions of Microsoft .NET:

· .NET Framework 1.0

· .NET Framework 1.1

· .NET Framework 2.0 x86 (32-bit)

· .NET Framework 2.0 x64 (64-bit)

Aspose.Words for .NET consists of a single .NET assembly Aspose.Words.dll, which is CLS compliant, written entirely in C# and contains only safe managed code. Two versions of Aspose.Words.dll are included in the download package:

· Bin\net1.1\Aspose.Words.dll - for Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1

· Bin\net2.0\Aspose.Words.dll - for Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0

A single MSI installer is provided that caters both for 32-bit and 64-bit environments. The installer contains the following items:

· Aspose.Words.dll builds for .NET 1.1 and 2.0

· Demo projects for ASP.NET and WinForms in C# and VB.NET

· Aspose.Words Documentation in Microsoft Help format

Developing a .NET application with Aspose.Words for .NET.

Java

Aspose.Words for Java supports the following Java versions:

· J2SE 1.4.x

· J2SE 5.0 (1.5.0)

Aspose.Words for Java is written entirely in Java, depends only on the standard Java libraries and can be used in any Java application on any platform supported by Java.

Aspose.Words for Java is provided as a ZIP download and contains the following:

· Aspose.Words.jar builds for Java 1.4 and 1.5

· Demo projects

· Aspose.Words for Java API Reference in HTML format

Developing a Java application with Aspose.Words for Java.

COM

Aspose.Words for .NET can be used as a COM object to develop applications in pre- .NET development envorinments such as ASP, VBScript, JScript, Delphi, C++ and so on.

Although using Aspose.Words for .NET via COM interfaces is possible, it is not recommended. Aspose.Words relies fully on the .NET Framework for COM interoperability. Some classes and methods might not be available to COM applications.

For more information see Utilize Aspose.Words from COM Clients (ASP, VB, VBScript).

Developing an ASP or VBScript application with Aspose.Words for .NET.

Mono

Aspose.Words for .NET can be used with Mono 1.2.

Mono is a project led by Novell (formerly by Ximian) to create an ECMA standard compliant .NET compatible set of tools, including among others a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime. Mono can be run on Linux, FreeBSD, UNIX, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows operating systems (for more info see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(software)).

About Aspose.Words

Aspose.Words enables .NET and Java applications to read, modify and write Word® documents without utilizing Microsoft Word®. Aspose.Words supports a wide array of features including document creation, content and formatting manipulation, powerful mail merge abilities, exporting to DOC, HTML, WordprocessingML, RTF and PDF (requires Aspose.Pdf). Aspose.Words is truly the most affordable, fastest and feature rich Word component on the market.

About Aspose

Aspose Pty Ltd was founded in March 2002 in Sydney, Australia. The corporate portal http://www.aspose.com was firstly launched in October 2002. Aspose strives to be the biggest .NET component vendor in the world to provide the richest choices for global .NET programmers. Thousands of organizations worldwide have acquired Aspose products, including Microsoft, IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, DuPont, Hilton Hotels, Reader’s Digest, Bank of America, Boeing, Siemens, etc.