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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."
as a Beta Tester for Wordperfect Office 2000. And even the final version it just stank. It seemed to use Wine to emulate most of the program and what didn't work in wine they reprogrammed to work for Linux. So I wouldn't say that WP 2000 was a Native Linux App, It just kinda Ran in it barely. WP 8 on the other hand ran quite well because they ported the Unix version and not the windows version. I liked WP as a word processor much better then Word or Star/Open Office. It seemed to well designed for word processing and it did it well. But the WP 2000 for Linux was to sluggish and looked to much like the windows version to fit into the linux desktop, and it required a lot of junk most linux apps didn't need and made loading on a remote X difficult (Which is what I did a lot in college when I was beta testing it because I like to work on the schools Sun Workstations with the Unix Keyboard and the 19" monitors) so when a good version of Staroffice came out I started using that because it worked well with Linux and Solaris (even though the install was stupid at the time)
What I always found odd was the fact that WP hasn't been ported to the Apple Mac OS X environment. They could probably do some good business because a lot of the time the Apple users only use office is because there is no decent alternative. Appleworks just stinks, OpenOffice is not quite there yet for the mac. WP would be a good more affordable solution on the mac platform as well.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You could say that WordPerfect was effectively unusable. As this didn't change with the update of WP 7 to WP 8 (AFAIR), I stopped trying. At that time, I got the impression that Corel was not quite sure about the competitiveness of their own product and preferred the option of letting it die slowly.
I hope that the people at Corel finally understand that there IS a problem and start fixing it.
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
Cheap UK and US VPS
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.
Yeah but can it check your mail, manage your datebook, provide emotional support, evaluate elisp, surf the web, read Usenet and fix your car like Emacs can?
Keep the faith, share the code
Lawyers tend to use WP verses the rest of the world. So perhaps that could get the lawyers to switch to Linux and like Linux then we could have a powerful allies who can say IAAL.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'm one of the lucky few to get one of the last copies of Corel Draw 9 for Linux.
It makes up for one of the largest gaps on Linux to date. Professional grafics tools.
It's also heavyly base on Wine, but it runs smooth and over the course of the last 2 years I've done some serious work with it.
I'd wish Corel would join with Trolltec and start porting their apps to QT, making them copmletely plattform agnostic. A lot of people would be willing to make the switch from Macromedia and Adobe back to a solid Draw and Photo Paint if only they would run on Linux.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I can get *serious* amounts of work done with WP5.1. Everything since has been downhill. So how well does the classic mode work on WP11?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Seriously, WordPerfect has a number of functions with regard to advanced document formatting that Open Office.org, for all of its usefulness, lacks. Plus, there's the ever-wonderful option to actually view the document code, and manually correct the hidden formatting bugs that inflict themselves on my Word and OpenOffice.org use from time to time.
It will also be a boon as I ease my mother's business onto Linux, since they interface with a number of law offices who still use Word Perfect.
Finally, I've had good luck with the WP file format and KWord, my preferred word processor (because I use Qt and am a bit lacking in the ram dept for OOo's liking), easing both file exchange with my mother and providing a convenient power-formatting application for stuff i've sketched in Kword (no, it isnt framemaker, but i'm a college student who has to write 30 page papers, not a doc writer). So i'm all for it.
The worst that can happen is that it fails, and since Corel isnt exactly a huge F/OSS contributor these days, that's no major loss either.
U.S. War Crimes blog. Email for free Mandriva support.
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!
The only versions of WP I've used were version 3 (on DOS) and versions 7 and 8 on Solaris (and never used any of them extensively). But I think WP now supports the OASIS Open Office XML Format. If so, what's to prevent me from moving seamlessly between OO.org and WP, depending on the job?
I think there's a market.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
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...
Then Corel got ahold of it, and the added feature sets were late in coming but full of promise, but the damn program just never worked. We got accidentally on some kind of instant-updates-at-all-costs program, maybe because I was vocal on Compuserve at the time, so I can't fault Corel on the number of update CDs we received each month. But the thing just didn't work.
Our word processor was WordPerfect. It was wonderful around 5.1. I beta-tested its Postscript drivers and this was in the days when the Apple rep ran away because he couldn't believe a Laserwriter was being driven by a PC through the serial port. We loved WP. Then Corel got ahold of it, and we had to move on to a product that, well, actually worked most of the time. So we went to Word, but it was a struggle because everyone tried to use WP secretly. What's wrong with a "Reveal Codes" option? Nothing. Why doesn't Word have one? Because the people who design it don't use it for creating pretty language. But we simply couldn't keep using WP, because it broke enough files to affect our ability to perform as a publishing house.
We also used Xara, which was cheap and powerful. Bugger me, Corel got ahold of that, too, and killed it.
Corel's the sort of company that one would love to support as a kind of perpetual underdog, but the reality is that there's been something perpetually wrong with their development cycle: stuff just gets buggier, and buggier, and buggier until it's too frustrating to use.
I'm sure there's room for a Wordperfect-like product, but it's a real shame Corel is the vehicle to provide it.
If it's a decent, usable port (ie, printing and fonts don't require a PhD to set up), and doesn't have a myriad of libc-version-compatibility problems (something that people seem to ignore, but is a valid, serious issue with distributing software for Linux), then I will be one of the first in line to buy WP/Linux. I started with my thesis on WP5.1 for VMS and for DOS. I used 6 for DOS professionally, and skipped the first few Windows versions.
8 for Linux was a bit awkward but it worked, reliably, and I enjoyed it until suddenly it wouldn't work anymore because of my libc version. 2000, well, I really liked the consistency of the Linux and Windows versions; however, printing was difficult and reliability was awful (most crashes were font-related, though, and I blame Wine for many of them).
Another post asks "Why WP when OpenOffice is out there?" You might also ask "Why OO when Word is out there?" or "Why Gnome when there's KDE?" or even "Why Linux when we have Windows?" It's about choice. Some people, myself included, dislike OO immensely. Why? Because it imitates Word, both the UI and the underlying structure of how it formats documents. I've hated Word and its imitators since the DOS version.
I'm not going to argue about whether or not Reveal Codes is philosophically correct or not. *I* like it. *I* am the consumer, and it's what I prefer to use. I hope it's successful; right now I use VMware to run the Windows version, but would much prefer to run natively.
Michael J.
Root, God, what is difference?
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
For once something is happening on Linux just in the nick of time. WordPerfect is just starting to make its mark out there on the street. It should be in a position to give Microsoft a run for its money.
It also looks like Back to the Future Part II will be a big smash this weekend and OS/2 should revolutionize desktop computing.
Looks like the 90s are going to be almost as exciting as the 80s have been.
RP
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.
Linux users will probably stick to OpenOffice/StarOffice.
.lib incompatibility).
They should release WordPerfect that is native to Mac OSX.
The geniuses at Corel will probably wait until they discover on their own that Linux users will refuse to pay for WordPerfect--by then Mac OSX will have an office suite distributed by Apple and their window of opportunity will be gone.
This is almost as stupid as Borland not making their C++ compilers use the same name-mangling & object format as Visual C++ (doesn't matter who's is better, go with the defacto standard you morons because there's no telling how many developers stayed away from C++ Builder because of
I have yet to find a word processor that I like for serious work that runs on Linux. I'm by no means a "feature cripple," and I do a lot of stuff with a text editor, but sometimes I need more. OO.org, in my opinion, is unbearably clunky and just weird. KWrite is fine for my own stuff, but not if I plan to give it to anyone else (in soft copy, that is.) Abiword or whatever it's called was about the same as KWrite when I used it a few times. I'm currently happy with MSWord for Mac running under Mac-On-Linux on my yellowdog machine. That way I get the refinement of Word without having to bow down to the evil master (or at least, bow down as far as having to actually try to boot a windows machine.)
Am I missing something? Maybe this Corel thing will fill the bill.
(and by the way, O.T., yellowdog linux + simultaneous OS X + ibook = Nirvana.)
Evil is the money of root.
We used it to scan specs and generate a Smalltalk/V Win "Proof of Concept" on the CommonDepartmentalFinancialSystem I was working on back in the early '90s.
It was an open file format and I could strip out all the formatting code and parse just the content.
There were other things about that were good, like linking files and so on, but the open files were great.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
"Make it fit." Many an undergraduate's paper has been stretched from seven to ten pages with that little gem, and it's so much more visually innocuous than the standard tack of big chunky margins and 14-point font.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
The Mac desktop market dwarfs Linux the same way that the Windows market dwarfs it.
Actually, No. In terms of sales, both Mac and Linux desktops are each 3-4% of the desktop market. Sales is not a good measure of Linux though, as its freely distributable. Also, a considerable number of desktop systems are purchased as Windows and then have Linux installed, so the Linux could well be at least a few percent higher. Incidentally, this implies that MS Windows sales don't correspond to use.
Two years ago I would have been jumping up and down over this. I was a WP user for a long time and really wanted a good version for Linux. But it's too late now and it's going to cost too much for Linux users (on the whole). I might still need it a little bit, just to translate all of my WP files into something that OpenOffice can read, but I wouldn't do any new work in it. Here's why:
OpenOffice just released 1.1.1. They will likely release 2.0 sometime this year. Meanwhile, users of closed software will wait for fixes. I've gotten used to Mozilla/Firefox, OpenOffice, and a host of other programs that are released much more often than anything in the closed source world.
Beyond that, I've gotten used to not paying for these products. I'll give back in other ways (including donating money to support, just the same way that I support Public Radio), but I won't pay over $100 (US) for software any more. It doesn't fit my budget, it doesn't fit my view of how things should work.
All that said, were I still working at my old school which was a Mac shop, I would buy WP for Mac in a heartbeat. That they aren't developing for Mac baffles me. That's where commercial software ought to focus when they're looking for something other than Windows.
WP had a great run. the 5.1 version was insanely great. But the time for WP is likely past.
Now, if someone would implement the Reveal Codes feature in OpenOffice, every WP user could switch and I could be completely happy with OpenOffice.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
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.
Then they came out with WPO 2000 which ran on Wine. While they did make many fantastic enhancements to wine, they should have never released their product on top of wine (I told their developers this). A native port would have been much more stable, better-received, and more widely supported.
I encouraged the adoption of WP Linux in my shop. We were WP only on all platforms. However, in the last 2 years, everyone is shifting to Word. I now try use OO, but often have to use Word due to esoteric formatting issues that I have to support.
The questions for Corel now are:
Note: WP file support by OO would benefit BOTH parties as OO is the market leader in the Linux space, there are still many loyal WP users but moving from WP to OO and viceversa was a PITA (OO 1.1.1 can finally import word docs exported by WP 7/8 Linux, the native WP support for OO is under development).
Corel-Draw would not have much competition on the Linux platform, but WordPerfect will.
I think the answer to Corel's problem is simple. Corel should sell their own version of OpenOffice as Sun does. Corel could include features such as grammar checking, templates, images, sounds, WordPerfect file format support, WordPerfect shortcuts, tutorials and technical support. That's how other companies are making money from free software but I guess Corel just doesn't get the concept yet.
ayottesoftware.com
*** "Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden". -- Rosa Luxemburg ***
Because the last "8" version was hard coded in the installer so that it would only install on one, then getting very old, linux release of their own. If you had the balls to dare make a new kernel install, the installer was dead.
I've still got that package in its original box on the shelf above me, and AFAIC they owe me about a 90 buck refund (interest accrues on money loaned does it not?).
It has never, and I even copied the script to my HD where I could edit it, been able to install and run here.
I called them at the time, (on my nickle!) and was basicly told that if I wanted support, to install their old crappy version of linux. Early 2.2 series kernel and all...
'scuse me but fsck 'em, and the camel that rode in on them.
Gawd, am I glad 4/01 is over...
Cheers, Gene
Apple sales figures came from: http://www.macminute.com/2003/03/12/desktopsales. (3.8%)5 .html (suggests 2.8% in 2003).
Linux desktop sales:
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/2267
And when it fails, they'll blame Linux.
Corel's track record with these "pilot" programs is very, very poor. They release lots of software for a release or so. It's buggy because it was pushed out of development to make the market window. They don't make any patches, because they're waiting to see if the market will snap up the software before devoting more resources. The market steers clear because the product is a buggy piece of junk. Corel drops the software, claiming the market wouldn't support it.
They do the same thing on Windows, but look at their Linux examples. WP7 was pretty solid. It was developed and supported by another company. WP8 was developed by that same company (SDLC, iirc), but transfered to Corel for development right before release. As a result, it had problems. It was supposed to ship with new printer drivers SDLC had developed to take better advantage of ghostscript and higher-res pictures. They weren't there. It had a huge, major bug where placing text over images could slow it down insanely. Don't even try making an image background! There were a few other minor bugs I don't recall.
If you spent a few hundred dollars on the server edition of WP for Linux, did you ever get things fixed? Of course not. If you bought the personal version, did they get fixed? Nope. Those bugs were fixed, but the only fixed version was released as part of Corel Linux OS Deluxe, and it wasn't even publicised as being fixed.
Still, WP8 was the best release they made for actually editing documents. Naturally, with WP9/WPO2000, they got rid of all that infrastructure and went with Wine.
What did that buy us? Still more, new bugs. Mostly because their version of Wine was buggy and under constant development. It would periodically crash and you'd have to erase your preferences dir, getting rid of any customization. They made a couple unofficial Wine updates in conjunction with their Corel Graphics release, but never released an official service pack. Which would have helped, since some of the bugs required code fixes in the WP code.
The best way to get WP and Draw running was to get the wine source from their CVS, and futz with the startup scripts to get it working. Except shortly after Draw was released, most of the Linux developers were canned.
Throughout this process, I was a C_Tech volunteer, trying to support these products on their newgroups. People kept coming up with the same bugs and I kept asking the product manager when we'd see a patch. He kept saying he'd like to, but upper management wouldn't approve the work unless they saw the software selling more. Eventually I resigned as a C_Tech when it became clear that there would never be a fix.
This is how Corel operates. They come up with some great idea, throw some money at it, but fail to follow through. I'd like to hope this will be different, but they screwed it up when the competition for a good word processor was much less than it is today, and I don't see them getting it right this time.
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.
WordPerfect will need a vi compatibility layer...
I just bought the cd version of Corel Linux 1.0 in order to get the deb package of WordPerfect 8.1. It was only 2 dollars on eBay. It still works even in Debian unstable. You just have to fiddle with the dependencies a bit.
You can still download WordPerfect 8 for Linux and install it, though the legality of this isn't completely clear. Corel at one time made it available for free download. Several sites continue to offer it and Corel has done nothing to stop them. See the WordPerfect on Linux FAQ for more info.
WordPerfect 8/8.1 is a lot faster than OpenOffice, and more importantly, it reads WordPerfect files. A lot of law offices have all of their documents in WordPerfect.
There is a pretty good WordPerfect filter for OpenOffice (LibWPD), but it's hard to compete with the real thing.
I think this will cause many law firms to consider switching to Linux.