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WordPerfect Back From the Wilderness
Man With Broom writes "Just when you thought they were riding off into the sunset, they come back into town and start hanging around the mayor's oldest girl... WordPerfect 12 was described today on news.com, with Corel claiming compatibility for the small business user. But can they withstand the juggernaut? And what of OpenOffice?"
Well wordperfect used to lead, I guess while its not leading anymore they are still cranking out copies regardless. They do have a good plan for OEM on new computers though. Alot of compaqs and hps have wordperfect installed on them. $0.02
FuckTheFuckingFuckers.com - Post your th
Yes it once was a fine product. About 6 patches into 5.1 version (1992) it got to be really mellow. Then they put out 6.0 and Novell came forth with 6.1 which does just fine in DOSemu. I still use it just that way. Print postscript to a file and use ps2pdf on it.
Now any current versions are another story. I never could stand any gui version of WordPerfect. That DOS version will stick with you though, and beats M$ product.
A while back, Novell used to own a significant share of both Corel and SCO. In 1996, Novell decided to sell off both of them. Article Here.
I'm a Wordperfect loyalist from way back, just because I find it so much more intuitive than Office (at least, it is on Windows). For instance --- want to change the margins to a specific number? In WP, if you never used a word processor before, you may think to click "format / margins". On Word, where is it? "file / page setup"
I used it all through college and never once used Word. Now that I graduated I never have to write any papers again, and don't have ANY word processor program installed.
The reason to use word perfect is simple: REVEAL CODES!
Otherwise, Wordpad has about all the functionality most people really need to write a stupid paper for a class.
Morphing Software
Word. WP 5.2 is the pinnacle of software. It starts you out, you start typing three seconds after opening the program, every option is accessible DIRECTLY, no fucking menu, and if you forget how to find it, you press F3 and type the function you want. So if you want to insert a graphic, and forgot how, F3, type G and it'll tell you.
I could get more done in an hour in WP 5.2 than in any other word processor I have ever used ever. 10 pages in an hour was my record for crankining out papers in WP...
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Most word processors offer substantially the same feature set. But there are at least three key areas where I think WordPerfect has an edge:
1) Draft Mode. This is the mode most people do their writing in, and I love WordPerfect's minimalism. Lots and lots of space for the text you're working on, and minimal clutter since they don't try to include access to every blasted feature in the ruler bar. OpenOffice's version of draft mode, such as it is, is called "Online Layout" and it's still cluttered looking and IMHO garbagey. MS Word's Draft Mode seems more cluttered than WordPerfect's., and suffers from too many autoedit things turned on, where the word processor incorrectly anticipates your needs.
2) Better writing environment. WordPerfect doesn't try to implement every last feature a business user could conceivably want. So the menus and so forth are far less cluttered, which makes the main features you need much easier to find. Add to this that MS Word's grammar checker is a piece of crap, while WordPerfect will actually make some interesting comments. I think if you're trying to write for a living, WordPerfect is a wonderful tool.
3) Reveal Codes. I've heard MS Word is trying to implement this feature, but WordPerfect's had it forever, and it's sensational. Have you ever used a WYSIWYG wordprocessor, and all of a sudden wondered why your text at a certain point has the formatting go to hell? And the only way to fix things is to delete a chunk of your text?
Well, with WordPerfect, you can see the hidden formatting codes embedded in your text. So it makes locating a problem code easy. In a long document, it makes tracing a piece of corruption a breeze, and it takes only seconds to remove the problem at its source. You find the hidden formatting code, delete it with a backspace, and your problem is solved. As far as I know, WordPerfect is the only word processor where you can be 100% sure that your document has absolutely no embedded crap.
Some final comments. I love WordPerfect but I'm no zealot. I'll happily ditch it in two seconds the moment an open source alternative addresses my above comments. I simply can't understand how people can create a word processor that doesn't have a sharp looking, minimal, ultra responsive draft mode. I like the draft mode in ABIword, but I've found that the program isn't as stable as I'd like it to be.
Unfortunately, WordPerfect has some stability issues as well. I've found that in my newest book, which contains 300 or so footnotes, WordPerfect seems to have a memory leak or something which causes a freeze for every ten or so endnotes I edit.
My guess is that in five years or less, open source word processors will have all the main features a serious writer could want. But for now, WordPerfect remains my word processor of choice.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
"OpenOffice is equally as good and costs nothing?" It is not free and it does not do as good a job. First, the time spent learning a new program is lost time. If I spent twenty hours learning open office, that is twenty hours lost and $7,000 less in the bank. Second, there are features in word perfect, some for lawyers, some for engineers, some for other professions that nobody has copied. For example, in my profession, the law, where there are thousand of members, only a handful of us actually go to court. When we do, we have to write a form of term paper we call a brief. Briefs have a very formal style which requires a very arcane table of contents. With WordPerfect I hit one button and it generates a table of contents and table of authorities which meet the nitpicking requirements of the anal rednecks before whom I practice. Word requires two hours of typing by a $25 per hour legal secretary; or four hours of my $350 an hour time. Assuming I had the time to download, install and troubleshoot an open source word processor, it still would not have my beloved "generate" button. WordPerfect does exactly what Word does only cheaper and better and takes less space on my harddrive. Why not pay for a superior product?
As far as USING the product goes, WP is great. A lot of times I swear at Word for messing up my formatting, being difficult to get a layout 'just right', etc.
But as far as supporting the program technically, WP is a nightmare. They had a component called 'PrintPerfect', which would not only screw up printing for WP, but for anything else on that computer. It basically shortcircuitted the entire Windows print subsystem, trying to get it to use WP's print program. Also, there are tons of other technical issues- IMO the programmers didnt understand how to program for Windows, and rewrote a whole bunch of stuff which was already there in the WinAPIs.
Also, for some reason WP makes it VERY difficult to get service packs. On MSO, you can just use Office Update, or download the whole thing for yourself. Likewise, researching a WP problem is extremely difficult, whereas MSO problems can be searched for via technet.
Its a shame that WP had a good product, but shot themselves in the foot because of bad programming.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
For those of you that don't know, the reveal codes feature was like viewing raw html. You could take away bold by dragging away the bold symbol, etc.
It rocked with page viewing (print preview in word syntax). Because you couild edit the code to make the format look right while you were viewing it at 100%.
For the long-term Unix veteran, or the ones (like myself), who just think more like Unix, a word-processor is really nothing more than a fancy graphical font-end to a combination text editor and typesetter. Most people who think that way would like more access to the actual typesetter markup codes than Word gives you (these are the same folks who still write HTML in Notepad/vi/Emacs, or at least tweak it with those while mostly using a WYSIWYG HTML editor). Some people still write word-processing documents (complete with markup) in text editors and run them through troff/TeX for this very reason.
So you see, Reveal Codes makes things easier for newbies and power-users alike. Unlike Word, which, in typical Microsoft fashion, is only really fun for intermediate users, and a pain for both extremes.
Now, if only they would make a decent Linux version.