Whatever Happened To Textmode WordPerfect?

wedonneednoSTEEKINGguis asks: "After an hour of Google searching that turned up empty, I turn to the next best thing, Slashdot's hordes of trained monkeys. Does anyone know whatever happened to the console-mode (character-based, text-mode, whatever you want to call it) Word Perfect for Linux 5.1? I'm -positive- I recall it being included with the full GUI package in some Linux version or another, but naturally all traces of it have disappeared from Corel's FTP site, and I can't even find any references except for people talking about using emulation to run MS-DOS binaries. Word Perfect continues to be the WP of choice in our office (as well as many legal firms, so I've heard), and we don't need the features or want the overhead of a graphical version. Does anyone know where this beast might currently be located, or has it become unofficial abandonware?" Ah, I remember quite a few teenage summers where I worked in jobs that used the text version of WordPerfect. Of course, I never could remember keyboard command for "bold"...Alt-F5, or was it F6?

Comments

Doen't Make sense

[SanLouBlues]

Why would Corel port the entire WP 5.1 code over, when the could just map the origional key-stroke functions over to the GUI version. I don't know if they actually did that, but it would make sense to think they would have either mapped the f-keys, or just not bothered doing anything too labor intensive for all those people who still want the functionality of 5.1 . If you think about it why go to the extra effort of porting it when it isn't necesary (like running the GUI is the worst thing ever). If anyone cares too much, they should just remake it from scratch on sourceforge. Call it WordCloseToPerfect.

portability

[rixdaffy]

I don't think WP5.1 is very portable...
If i'm not mistaken, it was written mainly in x86 assembly code (I could be wrong... I remember hearing about that though)... so making it in portable C code is just like rewriting it entirely...

Ricardo.

included in WordPerfect 8 for UNIX

[Anonymous Coward]

It's included in Corel WordPerfect 8 for UNIX bundle. The side of the box reports support for HP UX 10.20 9000 700/800, IBM AIX 4.1.4 (PPC and RS6000), Linux, SCO OpenServer 5.0.0, Sun Solaris 2.5.1 (SPARC), and Sun Solaris 2.5.1 (x86). Text mode requirements: 2MB memory for the first user, 1MB for each add'l user; 31-40MB of hard disk space.

Was in Server edition of WP7 and WP8 Unix

[Alan Shutko]

The character mode client was included in the server editions of WP7/Unix and WP8/Unix. It was essentially WP5.1/Unix, updated to read files and try to do stuff with them. It might still be available, as Corel never did WP9 for anything but Linux. However, don't expect any support on it... the company who did the work on those versions is no longer working on it.

Re:It does exist, however.....

[frank249]

You can order WordPerfect 7 for unix from Amazon and the details are here.

System requirements:

X Window System:

9 MB RAM for first user; 2.5 MB for each additional user

43 to 103 MB hard disk space, depending on platform and installation options

Character Terminals: 2 MB RAM for first user; 1.5 MB for each additional user

31 to 40 MB hard disk space, depending on platform and installation options