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WordPerfect Office 2000 - Now Shipping
Corel has announced that Corel WordPerfectOffice 2000 for Linux is now shipping. You can find all the details about what each version includes at the URL above. Here is a link with a review of Wordperfect 2000 for Linux. Oh, they also include in the package this little cute bean-filled penguin. I read the review and I'm not sure if this shipping date isn't a bit too early though.
Speaking as a beta-tester, this product is nowhere near ready to ship. Basic summary is that it's just WP2K for WinNT compiled against WINE.
Yep, that's right. Those of you who've used WINE know what that means.
If I were doing quality control for Corel, I would have done at least 2 more beta rounds. I've currently got 20 open bug reports with them that haven't been fixed, for example, and the regression between beta rounds has been atrocious (files which opened in Beta 1 would crash Beta 2, for example).
I guess the person who wrote the review meant hard disk space usage. A memory footprint of >400 MB would blow away most machines, especially the one the tester used (with 96 MB of RAM), swapping them to death :)
I doubt Corel ported it themselves. Much more likely is that they just used the usb backport by Vojtech Pavlik:
usb backport to 2.2Another useful URL:
Linux USB projectWhen I downloaded the free version of WP8 for Linux earlier this year (last year? damn time moves fast), I noticed that WordPerfect used their own font directory and 'fonts.dir' system for the application. The free version apparently doesn't let you add fonts, so I can't use any of the umpteen megabytes of fonts that are served up by xfs (including TrueType fonts). Has this been rectified in WP9?
Is Corel even going to release a version of WP9 free for educational and non-commercial use in support of the community?
Is there a trial version of the Corel Office for Linux? I an not a free-software zealot and I wouldn't mind paying for Corel Office. If it's a good product that is. But I cannot justify spending even a penny for something that just barely runs. And that's why I want a trial version.
Corel WP8 for Linux was a complete joke. I could not believe they were actually trying to sell the thing. Corel Linux is also a joke. I used it for about 2 days and that was enough for me. Once again, I could not believe somebody would actually pay money for this garbage. And now, several posters have said that the long-awaited Corel Office for Linux is nothing more than the win32 version linked against WINE with little or no testing done. So, is there a trial version? I want to see for myself. Also, please reply with your experience using Corel Office. (But don't bother to reply if you've never used it before).
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
The bitstream font server gives access to font outlines and additional metrics, which WPO2k needs. (As do other WPs... I hear that Applix is using it too?)
It's not going away until X gives access to much more font info than it does now.
Sounds like Wine is getting to the point where it could be ready for end-users. At least, ready for end-users who need to run a particular application and don't mind if it breaks occasionally.
Dosemu was at this stage for a long while before 1.0 came out, and distributions like RedHat included it. Are there any mainstream distributions that include Wine ready-to-run? Ideally, a Windows application would just appear on the programs menu like any other. You could run it using the binfmt_misc kernel module to start wine automatically.
Or even cooler, the installation program could scan your Windows partition, see what apps you have on your Start Menu, and set them up to run from Wine.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I totally agree with you. I love LyX, LaTeX, GIMP, XV, ImageMagick, NEdit, etc. I prefer to make my presentations in png and html, I don't use spreadsheets much, if I did, I'd use Gnumeric, and gnome-pim is as good or better as any, the KDE versions are equally excellent.
However, there comes times when one must open, edit and save MS files, like Word and Powerpoint. So one must have something that can do conversions.
Take it from me, as I've tried everything on all platforms. Applixware on FreeBSD is absolutely the fastest, most stable, most excellent office suite available. It amazingly seems to use no memory when you fire it up. Anyone who thinks StarOffice is fast and stable has way more money for hardware than anyone I know, everyone I've talked to who've used WP8 for Linux thinks that the font rendering is so shitty as to render it useless at times.
I personally anticipate the release of KDE2 and KOffice. These are going to rock the office software world for sure. Then, the GNOME guys will just make it all look prettier and that's what I'll use. Until then, it's FreeBSD on my laptop, and Linux on my workstation (paradoxically) because I like to use VMware and run Dreamweaver, and VMware just sucks on FreeBSD.
Don't believe the hype. FreeBSD kicks ass on the desktop. Everything acts and feels much snappier and more stable than linux. And with softupdates to the filesystem, you get the next best thing to journaled filesystems. When you run a lot of desktop software, the occasional X freezes are inevitable, so it's nice to have the security of an uncorruptable filesystem.
My recommendations: 1) if you need a lot of software you used to use on Windows, or you need the best multimedia on Unix/ latest greatest hardware driver, then go with Linux. 2) If you are a vet and know exactly what software you use and can use them well AND these are solid Unix apps, like GIMP, XV, ImageMagic, TeX, LaTeX, xpdf, gv, etc., etc., then try FreeBSD and Applix (for compat w/ the MS world out there). You will not only not be disappointed, you will be amazed, and the 4.0-STABLE is an awesome upgrade.
My system: Dell Inspiron 3000, P200, 144M RAM, 3G HDD. WindowMaker + GNOME; Netscape, XFMail, GnuPG, GIMP, EEyes, NEdit. To the amazement of my Windows friends, I usually have 30 apps open at once and never have a hiccup. Load avg, is 0.15, 0.14, 0.10, uptime 30 days (for my laptop), and of 144M of RAM, I have 644K free. I love this system.
Don't get me wrong, I use Linux daily (debian being my choice as it's the most BSDish) (OpenBSD for firewalls), I run it for VMware and FrameMaker, and because my sound hardware works best in Linux. I like my MP3s. Other than those, I feel I must anticipate the inevitable improvements (i.e., catchups) Linux must make against the BSDs in terms of stability and security. However, FreeBSD could learn a lot from debian's ease in upgradability. No /usr/ports and /usr/src is not comparably simple. Upgrading your whole system, user apps, system apps and all with one command is a Big Plus(TM). Upgrading it with no breaks is even bigger.
Nate's dream world of UNIX: FreeBSD-strength with a dpkg and apt-get --like package management system + a world of the Universal Source Package such that it would be truly trivial to port an app or driver from one *NIX/Linux to another. I actually believe such a day will come. And we will call it Debian GNU/HURD.
Evidence of this, please?
Did you buy it? I didn't even know one single person who had until somebody gave me a copy of Corel Linux last week (it comes with WP8; don't even get me started -- can you say "No shadow passwords?" I knew you could). I tend to doubt your "lot of people" statement, although some evidence could sway me.
Hey, no offense to you personally, but who said anything about idealism? The conventional wisdom behind Linux users not buying software (Linux or otherwise) has nothing to do with idealism, and all to do with cheapness.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I feel like I am feeding trolls here, but...
That is a pretty silly reason to avoid a product. Like the penguin mascot or not, it is a symbol that people recognize. You can't blame companies for recognizing that and taking advantage of it. You could just as easily be critical of Microsoft using their little warped windowpane logo and all of the companies that use it. It is pretty unfair to assume that the motivation of every company that uses the Penguin logo is doing it just to seem 'l33t and kewl'. It sounds more like you are the one trying to pose an image by being critical of companies which don't fit some preconceived image. And you acuse me of being on crack? Eh, whatever. As for you not buying the product, how much money do you really plan to spend on software in the next year? How much software do you specify, recommend or approve at your job in a year? Are you really that big of a loss?
It may be fair to a certain extent to be critical of companies that are jumping on the bandwagon late, but I don't think that this is a fair criticism of Corel, as they've been flirting with the Linux market for quite a while. The current WordPerfect 8 for Linux under their own label isn't the first version. I was using WordPerfect 6 years ago, which was a colaborative effort with Caldera.
I would prefer to judge companies on how good their products are, and how well they live up to their promises on product delivery. So far I think Corel stacks up fairly reasonably. I've used WordPerfect 8, and it seems to work fine for me. I've heard both good and bad reports about Corel's Linux distribution, but it is after all, their first real attempt at a distribution, and it will probably get better as it matures. I don't know of any distribution of anything that doesn't have some people complain about it anyway, not Windows, not MacOS, not Solaris, not Red Hat. So time will tell if Corel's distro is a long term player. As for Corel Office 2000, they have at least lived up to their promise to ship it. I hope to get it pretty soon and see how well it works. That will be the real test. I am also waiting for Corel Draw. If they deliver that for Linux, they will have lived up to most if not all of their promises to the Linux community, and that is a pretty good track record for anyone.
I rarely ever do anything complex with footnotes, but they are a big issue for some people, especially lawyers. WordPerfect's superior handling of footnotes is one of the things that is often listed as a reason why law firms are still a bastion of support for WordPerfect. That and the fact that most of them have huge template libraries that are in WordPerfect format (which unlike MS-Word hasn't changed gratuitously for every version. Another reason is that so many of them have automation systems using WordPerfect's scripting language (it had scripting way before the VBA stuff was added to MS-Office) that would be a lot of work to rewrite.
Tables: nope. Columns: yep. Bulleted lists: nope. WordPerfect is better with columns. Word is better at tables and bullted lists,
.xml file. As cool as XML is, I need to be able to save as .xls.
.xls files, and then only very occasionally.
Well, I would tend to disagree, especially about bulleted lists. While I was able to eventually figure out how to make MS-Word do what I wanted with both of those things, it was much easier to figure out in WordPerfect, and less cumbersome to do once figured out than it was in MS-Word.
however there is a learning curve. It is not initially intuitive,
Uh, but the thing that MS-fans are always harping about is supposedly easier and more intuitive user interfaces in Microsoft's products. With the case of table editing and bulleted lists, that certainly is backwards, in that WordPerfect seemed a lot more intuitive and generally simpler. Also Microsoft's online help was next to useless in trying to figure out those options. I can't say anything one way or the other about WordPerfect's online help, as I've been able to figure out everything I wanted to do without needing to look at it. Not something I can say about MS-Word.
but once learned, it is a very useful tool.
MS-Word isn't totally unusable (except perhaps for multicolumn layouts), but I will stand by my opinion that WordPerfect works much better for me than MS-Word.
Odd, I think most people liked WP5.1 and started to dislike it when they poorly attempted the GUI.
Poorly attempted? 6.0 wasn't that bad, at least it wasn't any worse than Microsoft's GUI for MS-Word of that era. If you want to see a really bad GUI design, look at the first version of WP for the Mac. Woof, what a dog. It had all of the 40 f-key commands of the 4.2 DOS version stuck in a single drop-down menu. Blech.
WP lost out to MS-Word mainly because they were slow to do a Windows version at all, as they fell for Microsoft's fake-out with OS/2 and spent a lot of effort supporting it while Microsoft was secretly working on undercutting OS/2 with Windows and plotting to take over the applications markets from Lotus and WordPerfect.
WP5.1 was incredibly useful and fast (although there was a nasty learning curve with all the ctrl-alt-shift-Fx crap)
The horror. That was what I hated about the MS-DOS versions of WordPerfect. I was never actually an MS-DOS user. I didn't buy an x86 machine until '93, and that was put together specifically to run *nix. I had intended to run 386BSD, but could never get it to work with the cobbled together junk parts I had at the time, so I tried Linux, and it worked, and I have been using it every since.
MS sent me a nice, free copy of O2K and it is the thing that really keeps me out of linux.
MS doesn't send me free stuff (only fair since I don't buy or recommend any of their stuff). Frankly, I'm always skeptical when they are giving away anything for free, as it often has strings attached in the long run. That isn't just Microsoft either, I am always a little skeptical of 'free lunches'... Not to say I won't take them, but I like to know if there is a fish hook in the bait before I bite in.
If you're like me, you have to do documents and spreadsheets, and you can't just send someone a damn
I almost never need to do anything with spreadsheets other than open up spreadsheets other people send me. So I really only need to be able to read
I'd agree that I don't care for the 'desktop' integration in newer versions of StarOffice. I'd prefer to be able to split the applications. However, I'd rather deal with that than have to go find a machine to install MS-Office on, especially since I'd have to install MS-Windows on it first, and I don't have a copy of MS-Windows or MS-Office, or a spare machine that has enough horsepower to run those effectively. I only use MS-Office at work, and only because I am basically stuck with it there. That and Outhouse^h^h^u^e^hlook are just about the only reasons I ever touch the PC on my desk there -- I do most of my work there on Solaris. That will be changing soon as I am changing jobs to a place that is much more UNIX/Linux centric and I will be able to control the images on my local workstations.
Unless they have backtracked from WordPerfect 8, I can definitely say you are incorrect. WordPerfect 8 is a native Linux executable. I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't do the same thing for WordPerfect 2000.
It is probably not as much what you said, but how you said it. You shouldn't get moderated down for saying something that is an unpopular opinion, but you should get moderated down for saying it in a way that would fit into flamebait or trolling. If you have been moderated down unfairly, one would hope that the moderator who did so got slapped when it came time for meta moderation. Also, you would probably find that you would be less likely to get moderated down if you were posting from a real account instead of as Anonymous Coward.
I rarely ever agree with Zico, but at least his posts are generally mostly civil and not personal attacks.
Evidence of this, please?
Evidence to the contrary please?
Did you buy it?
Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.
I didn't even know one single person who had until somebody gave me a copy of Corel Linux last week (it comes with WP8; don't even get me started -- can you say "No shadow passwords?" I knew you could). I tend to doubt your "lot of people" statement, although some evidence could sway me.
Without conducting a scientific poll of Slashdot users, it would be difficult (even then it would be difficult) to get any solid evidence one way or the other. I do know that I live out in the middle of nowhere, and the local CompUSA and Best Buy stores carry WordPerfect 8 and a number of other Linux titles on the shelf. If they weren't selling, they wouldn't be there. I know that most of the people in the local Linux user group read Slashdot, and several of them have purchased WordPerfect 8 for Linux and/or several other commercial titles for Linux.
Hey, no offense to you personally, but who said anything about idealism? The conventional wisdom behind Linux users not buying software (Linux or otherwise) has nothing to do with idealism, and all to do with cheapness.
I don't think there are that many more cheapskates in the Linux world than there are in the Windows world. A lot (close to, if not most) of the people I know in the Windows world just pirate everything. I could very easily have just pirated WordPerfect 8 for Windows, but I didn't.
I could easily afford to buy Windows and commercial software if I wanted to, I make decent money. The 'conventional wisdom' that Linux users are all broke college students is a load of crap as far as I can tell. I use Linux because I like it, and it works well for what I want to do. I don't use Windows because I don't like it, and it doesn't work well. The fact that Linux is less expensive than Windows is just a pleasant bonus. For that matter, if I wanted to, I could just pirate Windows and every commercial title around (I've got access to the CDs here at work, and I have a CD burner). Windows just doesn't interest me. Its not just a matter of cheapness when it comes to software, since if you are willing to pirate (which most people are), then everything is free as in 'free beer'.
And neither will any other Slashdot readers.
That is a load of crap. A lot of Slashdot readers buy Linux software. I'm sure a lot of people out there have bought WordPerfect 8 for Linux for example. While a lot of us believe in open source and free software, we are not all totally idealistic about it.
I don't know for sure that you can't, but if you can't, that would be a good thing, no? :-) The fact that macro viruses aren't as common for WordPerfect as for Microsoft products is another good reason for me to use WordPerfect even if Microsoft was to do a version of MS-Office for Linux.
Wouldn't a better sign of selling power be if they were disappearing from the shelves, rather than occupying them?
:)
Hard to say they aren't selling, since neither of us have access to CompUSA or Best Buy's inventory system. But I believe that those chains aren't stupid, and products that aren't selling don't stay on their inventory lists for long.
Now, if you're saying that they must be doing well to even have been on the shelf in the first place, I have to note that Microsoft BOB (!) and OS/2 Warp 4 used to be found on store shelves as well.
Those products disappeared from shelves for a different reason, they didn't sell, so they got pulled. Even though they came from large and influential vendors who can afford to pay for shelf space if necessary they disappeared. Linux products don't generally have those advantages, as they typically come from smaller vendors without the kind of huge pocketbooks and influence that IBM and Microsoft have. The number of Linux titles on the shelf at the local stores is increasing, not decreasing. I would guess that this would not be happening if the titles that are there weren't selling.
I agree with you that there aren't as many cheapskates in the Linux world as in the Windows world, but that's because Windows users make up around 95% of the users. In percentage terms, though, I'd peg the percentage of Linux cheapskates as substantially higher than that for WIndows.
I'd have to disagree.
There are no doubt loads of warez kiddies on the Windows side,
It's not just warez-kiddies either, it is a large portion of the home Windows user market, even older, 'churchgoing-godfearing' types I know engage in a fair amount of piracy.
but they end up accounting for a small portion of the total users.
As I said, I don't think warez-kiddies are more than the tip of the iceberg in the Windows piracy world. The difference is that the Microsoft world is currently enough larger that it can bear a lot more losses to piracy than the Linux world can.
On the other hand, you've got to admit that the stereotype of the Linux user isn't all that far from the demeanor of your average warez kiddie.
Oh please. I have to admit nothing of the kind. For one thing, putting significance to stereotypes is a pretty stupid thing to do to begin with. For another thing, most of the Linux users I know are in their late 20's to mid 30's, and are not at all representative of that stereotype. A large portion of the Linux users I know are computer professionals.
I'm of the opinion that there's a good-sized overlap. (Note that I'm not referring to someone who might engage in an offhand license abuse -- the percentages of those are probably high in both camps -- but the type unwilling to pay for anything.
I would believe that there is a small overlap, but I think you are way off base in your judgement of the Linux community. The antics of a overly noisy bunch (that being the warez-kiddies and zealots on both sides) seems to have clouded your judgement, or you are trying to bend reality to fit your pre-formed opinion of how the world is.
While I don't think WordPerfect Office does e-mail, Magellan does most of the things you describe. It's still in development, but it's going to be very cool :)
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Just search for "corel office linux" and you can preorder the puppy. Get in line today!
www.cdw.com
I would no more install WordPerfect on my Linux box than I would Microsoft Office 2000. Am I the only one who feels this way?
I just don't understand the fascination people have with tools that don't work and/or aren't flexible. Do one thing and do it well.
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
This release is not only a good product, but it has features integrated that give it a lower price point than the features MS Office2K + Adobe Acrobat for Windows + Crystal Reports provide.
Right now, they are shipping a word processor and tools that allow export to PDF, a database with reporting capabilities that allow export to word processing documents, web pages, and PDF through an intermediate step, as well as pretty complete Office 2000 compatibility.
The cost of this when you add up Office 2000 Professional, Crystal Reports, and Adobe Acrobat for Windows will run you $1000 per user if you don't have discounts. Throw in a Windows 98 license, and it goes up to $1100, or a Win2K Pro license, which makes it roughly $1300.
Buying this and Corel Linux Deluxe costs about $450. A machine to run this on decently (Pentium II/300 or better) that is a major corporate brand can be found for $600 through the large mailorder resellers. For about the same cost as just the software for a MS system, you can buy a decent business system that won't crash as easily.
This is a good deal. It can read those nasty Office document formats, and it has a more complete spreadsheet (I have hit the 256 column limit in Excel before with a client). I'm going to recommend these fully loaded Corel Linux boxes to people who don't have $1000 to spend on just software. Most people use their computers for applications such as this, so that's not a bad idea.
They aren't shipping the Beta!
Obviously, the fact they're shipping indicatates they have resolved all (within reason) the bugs identified in the beta releases.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Customers can also purchase a CD-ROM of Corel LINUX OS download version with the latest enhancements from Corel Customer Service for US $4.95 + $10 shipping and handling by calling 1-800-772-6735.
Ten dollars to ship a CD-ROM? I hope it comes with a printed manual, or something.
Also, it looks like the review link has been /.ed already. Does anybody hae a mirror?
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Corel draw (full package) does include some bitmap editor. Corel is a sweet package deal (everything under the sun) and a decent piece of software. The problem comes when you want to output it to a service bureaus (hi-res postscript imagesetter) for professional printing. You'll pay more, because it's such a pain in the (*&#(
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Did you ever try to program in Qt and in gtk?
Most people who used both will agree with me that Qt is easier to handle and maintain.
Besides, they didn't use Qt, they used (yuck!) wine. I'd prefer both Qt and gtk over that...
(Nothing against the wine project, but the API it's emulating sucks.)
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
they ported the USB support to 2.2.14, I'm running it.
Talk about proving your ignorance; Corel has had WordPerfect for Linux out for YEARS- I remember using it back in 1996!
Moreover, having used both WordPerfect and various competing products (M$ Word, Lotus WordPro, etc.)- WordPerfect is far and away the easiest to use.
These so-called "usability" tests were made by either M$-Owned labs (And THAT makes for an objective review), or magazines that have always favored M$ programs over anything else. As for having an "ugly" interface - When was the last time you have seen the WP interface?!? WP5.1?!? The interface is hands-down the easiest word-processor that I've ever used.
So don't scoff at Corel's *continuing* support of Linux. They don't need Linux to save the company - their Windoze sales aremore than adequate, as is their market share. Corel is working to advance the Linux platform! There is nothing wrong with that. Not to mention that the Linux interface for WP2000 is very attractive. It's not "themable GTK" as some purists would complain- but then again, it's Still a nice interface!
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
they ported the USB support to 2.2.14, I'm running it.
Oh geez...   Now your gonna make me go download the sources and compile me a kernel for my Mandrake (kernel 2.2.13-4mdk).
Straying offtopic but how well does it work?   I have support for it on my NetBSD already (although haven't tried it yet) but I also have 2 machines at home with USB ports dying to be used.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
I recall Corel indicating that they would probably ship this with their newer boxed versions of CorelLinux and it's interesting that they pushed this out the door so quickly (hopefully it ain't buggy), but I'm curious as to their press release claim of "USB support", having indicated that WP2000 would come with their OS running the 2.2.14 kernel.
Wasn't USB support (at least from the last I've read) enabled in or at least "somewhat working" in the 2.3.x+ kernel branch??   Are they doing some kind of wild kluge here or what?   Maybe I'm wrong and there is something that can be enabled in the newer 2.2.x....
Just curious.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Actually Corel Draw is a vector based drawing package, and Photoshop is for manipulating bitmap images. Not really comparable at all, as they are for totally different purposes.
Gimp is probably the closest competitor to Photoshop on Linux. Gimp is pretty good, and fairly comparable overall to Photoshop, and getting better all the time. From what I've read the two areas that Photoshop still has over Gimp are mainly in printing support and support for color seperations. If you aren't doing high end work, especially if you are doing mainly work for web images, Gimp is probably already good enough for what you need to do.
I don't know what usability you are talking about, but I haven't seen anything useful that Word 97 at least can do that WordPerfect 8 can't. And some of the things that I do just plain work a lot better in WordPerfect 8. Table editing, for example, has always driven me batty in MS-Word, WordPerfect isn't totally perfect there either, but better than MS-Word. Multicolumn layouts, maddening in MS-Word (no matter how I try to drag them around, they never space out the way I want), also better in WordPerfect. Multilevel bulleted lists, absoluetely horrific in MS-Word, works the way I would expect things to work in WordPerfect. I actually often do mulicolumn layouts with multilevel bulleted lists. I'd go insane if I had to do that with MS-Word, but I can get WordPerfect to do what I want without a lot of problem.
For my money, even if I had to use Windows at home, I'd pick WordPerfect over MS-Word, and I personally hated WordPerfect prior to WordPerfect 6. I've used both 6 and 8 and been quite happy with them.
There is no significant performance penalty for using the PE (.EXE) binary loader vs using winelib - the *only* difference is that WINE is doing the work of loading the binaries instead of ld.so.
.so libraries directly within our apps, rather than indirectly via WINE.
In fact, the binary loader can be *faster* than using g++ compiled native ELF code, for a couple of reasons:
1) code produced by g++ isn't generally quite as optimized as code generated by MSVC. Things are evening up with the new intel backend on gcc, but it hasn't been in an official release of gcc yet as far as I know.
2) Inter-DLL calls in PE binaries are generally just direct branches. The only work the loader has to perform most of the time is mmaping the binary into memory. In ELF, by comparison, all the symbols have to be looked up by name, and calls are made through indirection tables.
These are both really minor speed impediments, but they server to demonstrate the sillyness of declaring something 'native' or not based on what binary format it uses.
That said, we do plan on moving to g++ compiled binaries as soon as possible, since it will give us somewhat more flexibility for using
-Gav
After playing with the latest builds of WINE over the weekend, I'm not surprised Corel was able to ship so quickly. Now, with an install of WINE with access to a real Windows system directory and a Truetype font server, I not only got Excel 97 working pretty decently(!), but I also got IE 5 to load a few pages. Properly. WIth DHTML working.
These are interesting times. Native apps are always best, but it's clear x86 Linux is heading to a place where you'll soon also be able to run most Windows software cleanly. Not a Terrible Thing for desktop penetration.
I suspect Corel WP Office 2000 doesn't suck, or at least doesn't suck any more than StarOffice 5.1a does. Corel can't market its way out of a paper bag, though. At least they pushed the WINE project ahead nicely.
The first version of WPO at least is a specially modified Windows .EXE that runs on a modified WINE (the WINE mods eliminate windoze drive letters and make the widgets look like KDE/Qt). They had planned to make it a WineLib application, but g++ has some problems with large C++ apps (you've heard them before - no precompiled headers, no incremental linking) that made going the .EXE+WINE route much more painless.
(if there's other reasons that Gav or Zygo or any other Corel/Macadamian dudes want to correct me on, feel free.)