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Corel To Test WordPerfect For Linux
prostoalex writes "CNET News says Corel will introduce a native Linux version of its WordPerfect Office product on April 15th . This will be a pilot project, as Corel executives want to find out whether it's worth competing with the other products (namely StarOffice and OpenOffice)." The piece mentions: "Corel previously produced a Linux-native version of WordPerfect 8, released in 1998, and offered a Linux-translated version of WordPerfect 9 in 2000, when Linux was still a cornerstone of the company's broader strategy."
Prehaps as Corel see that the Windows market is lost they are trying to made headway back into the Linux market when Open Office is the leader. Will it be back to a world of incompatible filetypes again?
Rus
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I remember trying out WordPerfect 8 for Linux back when it was first released, and being shocked at just how awkward it was to use. The port had obviously just been a code-for-code translation from the original WP, and although experienced WP users would probably feel at home, it felt less attractive than writing in LaTeX to me!
I think Corel wants to expand their market share, not just port users across to a new OS; to do that, they need to compete with the others named (Staroffice, Openoffice) and not just turn up. IMHO Corel will have to have put a far nicer UI on top of their product before it'll get accepted by anyone not already a WP nut...
If WP9 was far superior to 8, then I apologise to Corel (and hope 'office does well) but I didn't even try 9 because of how awful 8 was. That's the danger in bringing an externally-developed product into a new marketplace - it needs to sing its own strengths whilst merging into the choir... Hopefully Corel has got it right - more competition can only strengthen all the players.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Wow, what's the point of this? OpenOffice has already made strong headway in the linux market, and from what I remember Corel wasn't that great the last time they put it out for linux. Given their dismal market share I doubt there is going to be much of a market on linux...
Definitely worth of competiting, even with OO and Star Office in the field. More competition means more innovation ... competition in Linux market may also boost creativity in other markets more important to Corel at the moment ... you never know until you try.
Saying that WP files can be read elsewhere because they use XML is like saying one IM program can connect to all others because it uses TCP/IP, or configuration files for one program will work for all other apps because they're plain ASCII.
XML, by itself, is not a format, people!
Using XML makes it far easier to write the code that reads the format. If you use an XML format you can't be acc#used of lock-in because if a developer wishes for his app to read your format then all he has to do is hook an xml parser and interpret it. Now take that in comparison with an encrypted binary format...
What I always found odd was the fact that WP hasn't been ported to the Apple Mac OS X environment.
It's not just odd, it's downright brain-dead from a business perspective. I say it every time I see a game get a Linux port and not a Mac port, too. The Mac desktop market dwarfs Linux the same way that the Windows market dwarfs it. It's easy to see that anyone who can be satisfied with a Linux desktop is also probably satisfied with available free office suites, whereas Mac users don't have the same choices in native versions and are further used to paying for such software. So, what, their master plan is to throw millions at something with a market that is maybe in the tens of thousands? This is just a stupid move, and someone at Corel should almost certainly be fired over it.
The problem with that is that it's still:
1) A Windows app. It doesn't use ANY special features of Linux/Unix
2) Still slower than GTK+ for many things because it's abstracting the Windows API to the X11 one and has to do many things in an inefficient manner to duplicate Windows behaviors.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The show codes feature is probably the only good think WP has going for it. It can be a lifesaver a times though. Much of the secretarial staff at the various law offices I've worked at refuse to use anything but WP for precisely that reason.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Given the low cost of Star Office and Open Office is this venture commercially viable? Word Perfect needs to offer a much higher quality product to be good value. Star Office and Open Office use freely available file formats, does Word Perfect? vendor lock-in is something people are trying to avoid by moving away from Microsoft Office.
This is just a guess (I'm not a game developer) but most Linux game ports do NOT work on Linux, they work on x86 Linux. I guess it's much easier to port a game to a different OS on the same architecture than to a different OS on a completely different arch.
Vote for global prefs bug
Yes, except 1)The people on the show chose to be there, and 2)They do get fired for reasons - they screw up.
I used and loved WP on Unix from 5.1 through 8. I still have WP6 and WP8 on one of my Linux boxes to manage the occassional old document.
WP's user interface had clunky spots, but it was *predictable*. StarOffice drives me crazy in a few places-- Getting rid of extra lines at the top of the page sometimes seems impossible, and Good Luck if you have a table at the top of a page and want to insert lines above it.
But WP's most impressive feat was the file compatability. From 5.2 onward, files were forward- AND backward-compatible. The tagged-block structure file format had been thought out well, and as new features were introduced, they were added to the format in such a way that older versions of the app could open and use as much of the newer files as possible. Compared to Word, it stood out as just plain Good Engineering.
Interesting opinion. However, it's impossible to track the actual number of linux users by virtue that it can be downloaded for free. Even those of us who support our OO distro or software of choice often do so in the form of "donations" and not boxed purchases.
That being said, I have a slight tendancy to trust the opinions of those who have millions of dollars to spend analyzing the market for true potential rather than a slashdotter ranting about his OS of choice, throwing platitudes left and right.
Corel is about making money. If they thought there was a realistic chance of making money with the Mac market, they'd port in a second.
The only thing that will tell is time and if Mac users keep channting to themselves they're "the premium second place guy" one day there going to wake up and realize that they aren't. And that's the real key, Apple still has it's same base of loyal users it's had forever while Linux is growing in leaps and bounds each year. Money is to be made in growing markets not stagnate ones with relative market roles already established.
Corel-Draw would not have much competition on the Linux platform, but WordPerfect will.
The suffering and misfortune of the powerless is sport now. Televised sport.
The Apprentice is not really a "firing". It's an extended job interview. Donald Trump "firing" people on the show is just sensationalizing it for TV. These people are not actually employed yet, and they know what they're getting into.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
But it's probably worth pointing out that a whole lot of Linux users also have a Windows box sitting around somewhere (or sharing space inside the Linux box.) Mac users tend to only have a Mac.
So there might be a lot of Linux users who just use WP for Windows and more would be using OpenOffice. On the Mac, though, a signifigantly higher percentage of of users are probably screaming for a decent office suite since they don't own PC's, OO.org's OS X port isn't exactly the greatest thing in the world, and AppleWorks is flat-out poop.
The reason why the Mac market hasn't been to strong for games is because Mac gamers do buy PCs for games, and the Mac ports are usually crappy so why bother buying it?
China is looking at Linux, not Mac. In Thailand most computers are already preloaded with Linux, not MacOS. Munich is switching to Linux, not MacOS.
Also, just linking an app against winelib is much more cost-effective than having to buy new hardware and port it to some Mac-API.
*** "Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden". -- Rosa Luxemburg ***
You'd think.
Unfortunately, Corel seems to have called it wrong several times in the past. They bought Wordperfect from Novell, a questionable move to begin with, and proceeded to sit on it and not market it aggressively.
They then half-heartedly began their Java/Linux initiative, came up with a very promising user-friendly Linux distro, and then dropped it.
More recently, I attempted to obtain the original Wordperfect for Linux from their website because I had a wordperfect document to convert--it's simply not available. When you consider the breadth and depth of the original Wordperfect Corp.'s offerings, where they had a powerful and universally respected product running on several platforms and the original CEO said he'd rather see it running everywhere even as pirated copies, this current stewardship of the Wordperfect line is just pathetic.
To top things off, Corel accepted a huge investment from Microsoft--the ultimate humiliation. Microsoft obviously just did it to fend off accusations of monopolistic practices (and to neutralize Corel in the PC office software and desktop OS space).
Now we're expected to trust Corel on this new initiative. Meh. I'll believe it when I see it. Corel once upon a time was an innovative company with its cool graphics software, but they've lost their edge. Too bad.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Mac will *NEVER* grow its marketshare. It is what it is, and aint getting any bigger. Linux on the other hand, is seemingly poised for a significant boost in market share. So it could very well overcome mac in just a couple of years. PLus, there is a Mac version of MS office. On linux, they don't have to compete with that 1000 pound gorilla.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.