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New WordPerfect Releases Reviewed
MikeCapone writes "The Jem Report has an extensive review (all in one page, no flash ads -- what a concept!) of Corel WordPerfect 12 for Windows and the proof of concept comeback of WordPerfect for Linux."
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I've got an old copy of WordPerfect for Amiga. It's the last version they made. (4.1.12?). Got it in an envelope directly from WordPerfect corporation. Wonder if it has any upgrade value :)
Can you save the documents in LaTeX-format?
I really hope they can get some marketshare back, MS Office deserves the competition.
It might even spur MS to really innovate again.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
So if you're looking for a suite that you can use in a Microsoft-centric office, you'd better have another solution for talking to that Exchange server.
Is it just me, or is this remarkably silly? Exchange/Outlook is the hub of most offices' operations these days. Not speaking Exchange's calendar and contact protocols is tantamount to not speaking the Word file format five or six years back.
Is it not compatible or simply not supported? It would be such a pain to have to migrate from Windows ME in order to use Office 12...
From the article:
At the time WordPerfect was easily the most popular proprietary application for GNU/Linux, and the hole that it left opened the door for many people to switch to OpenOffice, StarOffice, AbiWord, KWord, TextMaker and others
Why would I change back from a decent, FREE, application like OpenOffice to WordPerfect? If they're planning on selling it on the name, or because people remember WP, it's too late for that now. OpenOffice has taken over, and could soon be challenging MS Office in a big way.
A history on wordperfect by the great Wikipedia.
an extensive review (all in one page, no flash ads -- what a concept!)
And for all the bandwidth that would save, the webserver is still DOA...
The coolest voice ever.
In the late 90's Corel experimented with the GNU/Linux operating system, developing their own distribution known as Corel Linux and porting their WordPerfect word processor to it. It survived from version 7 to version 9, but in August of 2001 the entire GNU/Linux project was cancelled at Corel and assets sold, thereby ending Corel Linux and WordPerfect Office for Linux. At the time WordPerfect was easily the most popular proprietary application for GNU/Linux, and the hole that it left opened the door for many people to switch to OpenOffice, StarOffice, AbiWord, KWord, TextMaker and others. Now with new leadership, Corel has come back with a proof-of-concept GNU/Linux rework of WordPerfect 8; this review will examine this proof-of-concept software as well as the new WP Office 12 for Windows to see just where Corel is headed with their office software.
Purpose
Office suite
Manufacturer
Corel
Platforms
Windows 98SE/NT/2K/XP/2003 (note that Windows ME is not supported)
WordPerfect for Linux requires GNU/Linux with the 2.0 kernel or later and a functional X11 graphical environment
License
Proprietary, heavily restrictive
Market
Home users, small and medium-sized businesses, legal professionals and government agencies
Price (retail)
Available from the Corel e-store for US$300, or $150 for the upgrade. Academic editions are available for $100.
Demo
Click here to register and download the trial version of WP Office 12
Screen Shot
See article for more than a dozen screen shots, or click here for a directory listing of all screenshots related to WP Office 12
Recommended System
128 MB RAM, Pentium III or equivalent processor, 400 MB hard disk space, CD-ROM drive, keyboard and mouse or tablet
It was the promise of WordPerfect for Linux that got me to switch away from Windows in the first place, about a year and a half ago. Being an avid writer I was a die-hard fan of WordPerfect 10 (2002) and I didn't really want to switch if I couldn't use it anymore. Unfortunately after I completed the switch to GNU/Linux I was unable to locate any Linux-related resources on Corel's site -- they'd taken it all down. News came of Corel's money problems and rumor had it that a $135 million stock purchase (about 20% of the company) by Microsoft Corporation had kept Corel afloat with the understanding that they would terminate their GNU/Linux business. I don't know if the latter was true, but given the situation and the reputation of one of the parties involved I would say that it's at least likely.
Not long after, Microsoft sold their shares to Vector Capital at a 90% loss. More recently Vector moved to buy the rest of the outstanding shares of Corel, thereby turning it into a privately held company again. Overall this is a very positive move because it prevents underhanded manipulation by outside companies like Microsoft (again), but oddly there were some who resisted the buyout. It's hard to tell what went on behind the scenes, but the results are obvious and quite encouraging: there is a renewed interest in GNU/Linux porting and now there's a new version of the superior WP Office for Windows.
It's All About Microsoft
One thing that has definitely changed is the market focus of the WP product line. Corel has already realized their niche markets (legal and government), and WP 10 and 11 seemed to pander specifically to them without regard for the competition. Good for lawyers and governments, but not necessarily so good for people who want to do other things.
It's been a little over two years since WordPerfect 11 was announced and released, but I never had the chance to review it because there was some mysterious reluctance to sending out review copies of the software at the time of my request. No surprise that there was virtually no press on WordPerfect 11 except for legal and government-related print publications. That tunnel-vision focus is gone and has now broadened to include small and medium-sized busines
After coming back to WP at about v8-9, and moving through v11, I can safely say this program is stagnant. It seems like every other product bought by a company and shipped out to Russia or elsewhere for development. (Except Turbocad which I love)
See what simple bell you can add so that we can up the version and ship out a new one in 6 months. Fix old bugs? Sure a few, but the focus is more on adding junk in order to name a new edition.
I quit and gave in to MS Office. Why MS office? becuase it works best with windows (MS secret APIs undoubtidly), and my mom uses windows because of the visual aid software available on it. and I can not teach my mother to use Linux, so don't even say it! She is legally blind already..
For document storage, I convert each character into an octal number, than arrange grains of sand into little piles on my basement floor. It works fine; I have no idea why anyone needs anything else.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Kharma whoring are we? :)
This is the best comment ever to explain the role of presentation software:
"Presentation software has quietly become an essential tool for validating otherwise totally useless company meetings; it makes a lot of nothing look like something important (...)"
I would add:
If you don't have anything good to say, put it in a presentation.
You'd think that "Being an avid writer" this dude would know better than to double the recommened maximum of 66 characters per line.
Christ that page is hard on the eyes.
-Peter
This is a glorified WP 8.0. Based on Motif and all. After that bombastic press release, I was expecting a bit too much, I guess; this is roughly the same thing we had in 1999.
When they come back with a decent interface, all of WP12 features and full support for OASIS format, they may have a chance. This is just half-arsed.
Well, I won't comment on WordPerfect for Linux not supporting dictionary definitions... okay, I guess I did. That stinks. But the Windows version, which supports dictionary definitions, requires you to pay for a complete dictionary.. it's the Oxford "concise" dictionary. If I'm paying for a dictionary service, I'd at least want the unabridged definitions, with an option to only see concise definitions. Also, it'd be nice if they offer a free alternative, allowing the user to specify a dictionary server and interfacing it using the DICT protocol. See RFC 2229 and dict.org for an example at what's available for free.
I know that in MS Word, I curse every day with the damn Autoformat features that try to do everything for you, even when I try to turn the features off, it is still a pain in the ass.
It seems you are trying to write a letter, would you like to:
I'm still waiting for their next release of the Java port of WordPerfect.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Posted by: Valour on Apr 28, 2004 - 10:14 AM
In the late 90's Corel experimented with the GNU/Linux operating system, developing their own distribution known as Corel Linux and porting their WordPerfect word processor to it. It survived from version 7 to version 9, but in August of 2001 the entire GNU/Linux project was cancelled at Corel and assets sold, thereby ending Corel Linux and WordPerfect Office for Linux. At the time WordPerfect was easily the most popular proprietary application for GNU/Linux, and the hole that it left opened the door for many people to switch to OpenOffice, StarOffice, AbiWord, KWord, TextMaker and others. Now with new leadership, Corel has come back with a proof-of-concept GNU/Linux rework of WordPerfect 8; this review will examine this proof-of-concept software as well as the new WP Office 12 for Windows to see just where Corel is headed with their office software.
It was the promise of WordPerfect for Linux that got me to switch away from Windows in the first place, about a year and a half ago. Being an avid writer I was a die-hard fan of WordPerfect 10 (2002) and I didn't really want to switch if I couldn't use it anymore. Unfortunately after I completed the switch to GNU/Linux I was unable to locate any Linux-related resources on Corel's site -- they'd taken it all down. News came of Corel's money problems and rumor had it that a $135 million stock purchase (about 20% of the company) by Microsoft Corporation had kept Corel afloat with the understanding that they would terminate their GNU/Linux business. I don't know if the latter was true, but given the situation and the reputation of one of the parties involved I would say that it's at least likely.
Not long after, Microsoft sold their shares to Vector Capital at a 90% loss. More recently Vector moved to buy the rest of the outstanding shares of Corel, thereby turning it into a privately held company again. Overall this is a very positive move because it prevents underhanded manipulation by outside companies like Microsoft (again), but oddly there were some who resisted the buyout. It's hard to tell what went on behind the scenes, but the results are obvious and quite encouraging: there is a renewed interest in GNU/Linux porting and now there's a new version of the superior WP Office for Windows.
It's All About Microsoft
One thing that has definitely changed is the market focus of the WP product line. Corel has already realized their niche markets (legal and government), and WP 10 and 11 seemed to pander specifically to them without regard for the competition. Good for lawyers and governments, but not necessarily so good for people who want to do other things.
It's been a little over two years since WordPerfect 11 was announced and released, but I never had the chance to review it because there was some mysterious reluctance to sending out review copies of the software at the time of my request. No surprise that there was virtually no press on WordPerfect 11 except for legal and government-related print publications. That tunnel-vision focus is gone and has now broadened to include small and medium-sized businesses and cost-conscious consumers looking for a cheaper solution to MS Office; specifically Corel's press and marketing materials for WP Office 12 tirelessly compare their new products to the new Microsoft Office System 2003. As far as comparing the entire suites is concerned, WordPerfect Office easily wins that duel considering the high price, anticlimactic feature set and mediocre reliability of MS Office System 2003 and the general superiority of WordPerfect as a word processor. Quattro Pro and WordPerfect are far more adaptable and customizable than Excel and Word are, and the tools and guides built into the suite are much more powerful and capable. Business users will appreciate the more flexible licensing that Corel allows, even if it isn't anywhere near ideal.
The License
AnimeNEXT 2004 (NY/NJ/CT, June 18-20) "the next evolution of anime convention"
With the release of:
"Corel WordPerfect 12 for Windows and the proof of concept comeback of WordPerfect for Linux"
That means the new Dos version is right around the corner!
Maybe this means that a new version of Visicalc is just around the corner!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Where I work, only Corel WordPerfect Office licences are officially approved as budget expenses, and supported by the Help Desk.
Yet, I see more and more MS Office documents pass through my department.
But a lot of the people who use either app still don't know how to write a document properly with tabs and other text formatting functions (e.g. 20 spaces instead of two tabs, pressing Enter at the end of each line, etc.)
Maybe it's time I saw a hypnotherapist...
No, if i were karma whoring i would have been moderated up like LostCluster. Straight +5 Insightfuls. What a slashbot cocksucker.
Right on, man. Looking at their "proof" or whatever version for Linux, it's quite a bit lacking of what OpenOffice.org has to offer right now, and for free.
Scott in NC
It seems the site went down.
Proof of concept?. For $30 not a bad deal. But without good support why would someone buy it. As for me, I am quite happy with openoffice.org.
The aging hippy boys at Mythbusters (Discovery Channel) did some experiment involving running through rain. They film out of San Francisco, so of course they had to suit up in skin tight black latex. One of the hosts is a typical out of shape geek, but the other guy is pretty (I'm so pretty, oh so pretty...) buff , so the contrast was interesting. You also could refer back to that guy who built the Tron suit. That may be what you are visualizing...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
it's dead Jim....
--fin
Why would I change back from a decent, FREE, application like OpenOffice to WordPerfect?
.doc format came out.
For the nostalgia value! That's why I've still got WordPerfect 7 installed, anyway. Each click on the craptacular Motif interface takes me back to the heady days of 1997, when even COBOL programmers could find jobs, when the word "terrorists" just meant rednecks with truck bombs, and when we were all so desperate for a Linux word processor that we would even pay for one without source code, praying that the company selling it would stay in the Linux business forever and not leave us orphaned when the next unreadable version of the
The Jem Report has an extensive review
And it's outrageous. Truly truly truly outrageous.
[/80s cartoon]
--saint
Seeing the GNA on /. is one thing, you learn to tune them out. Seeing them out "in the wild," like at the end of this article, is disturbing.
Miss the good old days of truly counter-intuitve UI's? WordStar made the WordPerfect for DOS (FX, Alt FY, Shift Ctrl Alt Yikes) UI look like pure elegance. Get a WordStar 'Diamond' keyboard command emulator Microsoft Word and find out how people really used to party.
If they're working on WordPerfect for Linux, might they consider doing an OS X version as well? How tough can that be if they've done the hard work of making it run on Linux? Now there's a market...
When I saw that WordPerfect for Linux was available I grabbed my wallet for my credit card. I clicked the "buy now", only to see that Corel only sell to US or Canadian billing addresses. That sucks since I live in the EU.
/., that will write comments on "how it is to late for Corel", or "Why bother, OO.org is free", or "reveal codes is overrated / not necessary in a modern Word processor" or "I write everything in ed - the standard editor, so you should do too"
I guess that there will be a lot of people here on
Well I disagree with all that. I want my WP for Linux.
-0-
Just an annoying moving bouncing banner ad.
Really must setup JunkBuster again one day.
Corel changed their logo years ago.
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
I had been an avid fan of Wordperfect back to the days of the much beloved 5.1 for DOS.
If you wanted or needed to have complete control of your document it beat Word hands down. Over the years Reveal Codes alone has saved me many hours of work trying figure out why formatting didn't work.
The real masters of Wordperfect though were always the secretarial folks in any large company. They could make it sing and dance. They didn't need Wizards and Clippy because they knew that program inside out, and knew how to make it do exactly what they needed.
Word simply cannot be controlled in the same manner as WordPerfect. The automagic features in Word are still a phenomenal pain in the ass. It is still possible to find your formatting totally screwed up with no way to find out what's wrong.
So am I still using Wordperfect?
Only for two things: envelope printing, for which it has the best widget I've seen, and outlining, which it does much, much better than Word because it doesn't try to out-think you or take over the whole process.
Other than those, I have moved almost entirely over to Open Office which avoids most of the really irritating things about MS Word, and does so at a price that WP can't beat.
Three Squirrels
Looking at the screenshot of the upcoming word perfect for Linux, and what-do-you-know... MOTIF again all over?!?
Anyone at Corel ever heard of QT? GTK? how about some common interface with KDE or GNOME? (or both? I could always hope...)
It looks like someone took the old version (6? 7? and just doing some touch ups...)..
nah, no sig... move on..
It's not looking goodwhen the first statement they make is deceptive. Apperently the new WP Office is up to 63% cheaper than MS Office....
So brags the author of the link. Then the webserve get's slashdoted as every nerd in the world tries to read that HUGE article on one page.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
ah, must be this tiny little flashy images i used to see before i added some rules to my personal firefox stylesheet...
Browse Slashdot at Funny+5, everything else -5. The only way to sustain it.
A couple of years ago, I was looking for an inexpensive alternative to MS Office. I had considered WordPerfect, but at the time I wanted Asian text support. Unfortunately, WordPerfect lacked in this department, lacking unicode support. A quick scan of Corel's website notes unicode support for CorelDRAW and Corel DESIGNER, but not WordPerfect. So, have they managed to add support (which openoffice.org has) in the meantime?
I'm so sick of the M$ doesn't innovate claims. M$ is always innovating. Have you even pirated Office 2003 yet? It kicks ass. Nothing can touch it.
there are still people I know using the older versions of Wordperfect.
Some people with DOS/Windows 3.X and use WP 3.0 to 5.X for DOS. I know a few lawyers who still use WP 5.0 to 6.0 for Windows on versions of Windows as new as Windows XP. They got documents written using WP macros that do not convert well into modern technologies. There are still bugs with it, like when I created an invoice using WP 6.0 for Windows using the built in template and tried to print it out over a Novel network printer, it made most of the document blank.
I checked the Wordperfect FAQ and site, there is no mention of Wordperfect Office for anything other than Windows. I remember back in the day when Wordperfect was converted for almost every platform that existed. Whatever happened to that Wordperfect? OO.Org seems to have taken the place of that Wordperfect.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I STILL use WordPerfect 5.1. (I've even written TeX source with it on my (sorry) Windoze machines: write and save as text in the WP window, up-arrow a few times in the Command Prompt window to (re)run LaTeX on the source, see the changes instantly in the dvi viewer window).
I recall this being the case with older versions, but neither WP 11 nor 12 do the "million tray icon" thing.
I'm glad to see Wordperfect return to the software stage, but I think it is far too late.
Microsoft Word OWNS the document market by virtue of mass action - no one can fight the torrent of Word documents coming at them from all sides. The stubborn of us, like me, use OpenOffice/Abiword and fight the good fight. But we also get a major benefit - those tools are zero $$$ in cost. That makes a difference, and quite realistically is the only reason they are used on a large scale - if people had to pay $$ similar to what they pay Microsoft, they'd pay it and move on. But free is good for low budget situations. There is the long term benefit of the code always being available and thus in theory the app can survive as long as it is needed, but experimental evidence seems to indicate that benefit isn't enough to counter the Momentum of Microsoft. No one is seriously worried about Word vanishing.
So, I conclude WordPerfect has no chance to be a large scale commercial product. It might survive in small corners somewhere, but the cost of it will turn off the people seriously looking for a Word alternative. It's not open source, so even the small subset who might pay $$$ for an open source app because it is open are out. Their only real potential market is businesses that are going to Linux, but want a commercial word processor and are willing to retrain their folk to WordPerfect. In that scenario OpenOffice is hard to beat, but maybe some companies don't want it. But will that be enough to fund development?
I hate to see this, but it seems to always work like this - market share is EVERYTHING. Even Linux and OpenOffice, with zero up front cost, are only slowly making headway against the inertia out there. Wordperfect doesn't have a ghost of a chance - most of its potential market (i.e. willing to consider something other than Word) has moved/will move to the free OpenOffice suite. If your retraining anyway, why not go for the free, open product?
I don't imagine Wordperfect will ever be open sourced, which is a shame. I used WP8 a little and liked it. Much lighter weight than OO, for one thing. But except as an open source app it won't survive. Too little, too late.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I keep hoping for a full office suite under linux, not just a wordprocessing program, spreadsheet, and presentation program, but also a good PIM, and desktop Database application.
I know people are going to say OpenOffice.Org, Evolution, and use MySQL. I already do, but MySQL is a little daunting and big for what I really need. Access is more what I need, something small, easy to use, and quick to set stuff up in, when you are not a DBA.
Don't get me wrong, I love OpenOffice, I use it all the time, Evolution does a great job for me (when I'm not using a web browser, or pine), but as I said the desktop Database is still for me the missing piece.
Maybe it is just me.
Just joking there. Was referring to the slashbots who shamelessly look something up in wikipedia to say some trivia about a subject to get modded up, just thought the linking to wikipedia was "even more shameless if the poster is a slashbot" :)
That would be cool. .. fine. .. it was a love/hate affair.
But then they can't include VBA
Use Gambas or StarOffice Basic instead (if that is allowed)
I am a Corel Enthusiast - shame it crashed no end
A finished, full-featured word processing program seems to be a pretty tall order.
...that have gotten reviewed as "an excellent starting point," ... ...and that never evolved into a serious, finished product... ...I'd have, I dunno, $0.35 or $0.40. Easily.
If I had a nickel for all the projects that have been mentioned in the last few years that manage to come up, with say, a Word-alike toolbar, and a ruler with pretty tabs on it and a feature set comparable to AppleWorks, and partial RTF-format compatibility except for details like font display... that have all the capability you need for a business letter...
Please spare me the products that are at an "excellent starting point." Wake me up when something crosses the finish line.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Actually, this is a very good thing. The post was made from IP address 217.205.149.48. Jem Matzan, the site editor, was kind enough to provide that information and I will be sending a complaint to the ISP. Unlike the owners of Slashdot, Mr. Matzan doesn't seem so eager to just ignore such postings on his site.
Get real.
First you need to have Linux challenging Windows on the desktop in a big way. Its not happening.
What one thing many OS supporters forget is a lot of these applications don't have the features of commercial products nor do the teams seem to be inclined in many cases to do so.
Comments like yours are one thing many companies use as an excuse for NOT writing software for Linux. It is almost becoming a stereotype that OS=FREE or Linux Software must be free as Linux is. That makes it difficult to move non-Linux products to Linux. Where is the return?
Back to my first point. Office will remain dominant until the common features used by users are all supported and supported flawlessly. Competition to windows on the desktop will not truly happen until OS programmers/teams realize that kissing up to the customer is job #1. Kissing up to the Linux community won't get you anywhere.... you have to kiss up to the Windows community. Instead of saying "we ain't putting that feature in" it needs to become "That is indeed useful, we need to see when we can support it"
Back on topic.
Yeah, they are late to the party, but they do offer a lot and are not asking for an arm and a leg.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I'd fork out the cash to buy Word Perfect in a second if they had a CLI interface on it. There are times when I'd just *kill* to be able to open a .doc file without having to pull up X Windows. Does anybody know if there is an option out there to do just this?
Bah, give up trolling - you're crap at it. For those that don't know look here
No offence Corel, BUT WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN DURING THE ENTIRE LINUX REVOLUTION?!?!? Ok, so they made Corel Linux... that really went well didn't it.. And they also made Corel Draw for Linux... people really cared about that one too... They also had Word Perfect out for Linux a little while ago, but then no one cared because of Star/OpenOffice. Good luck Corel, you are DEFINITELY GOING TO NEED IT. Actually, my advice Corel, just close up shop.
In the mail -- Offical looking envelope from "Human Resources" in Ottawa, and inside was a single glossy "pink slip" saying "seewhogotfired.com".
Cute, but I won't be spending any money on an office suite that isn't multiplatform. Sorry guys.
Dude, you are dead on correct!!! That Clippy is an ASSHOLE!!!!!! ::LOL::
...I'm still running WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS under FreeDOS running in DOSEmu on my Slackware box.
I use vi for most other tasks (scripting, editing config files), but when it comes to real writing and formatting, nothing beats good ol' WP5.1 for DOS. Never cared for that Windows GUI. All the icons and menu bars....too distracting.
The problem with "all" wordprocessors and their level of success is, quite frankly that they are not MS Office (or rather percieved as) anything less is automatically assumed to be inferior. In addition to this the problems interchanging fileformats between different companies wordprocessors will leave bosses wishing they'd "just gone with MS Office".
I happen to think that despite Open Offices speed and slightly clunky interface in terms of compatibility it does a sterling job considering the enormity of the task ahead of them.
So how to beat down the Redmond beast ? Well, at least if there is more diversirty in the wordprocessor market place and the alternatives can talk each others language, or maybe even a standardised fileformat. Might it make Microsoft be seen as the one who's having problems reading files that everyone else can use without problem? Well that could take some time. Id like to support anyone who produces decent Office products , (free or otherwise) for the Linux platform. In spite of the stiff opposition the Linux desktop is a relatively new target, and as its popularity increases we have the opportunity to decide who makes the jewels in our crown.
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
I propose that exactly five minutes after an article is posted all occurances of the word have relating to websites be changed to the word had - in memory of the ex-server page.
This server has ceased to be, it is an ex-server, it has met Slashdot
For those who point out that Word's market share is so large that no other word processor could hope to overtake it, I would point out that there was a time when Wordperfect was seen as the product that ruled the market and was seen as unstoppable.
And perhaps WordStar before it.
There is a reason why Word used to (still does?) include special help for people moving over from WordPerfect.
Three Squirrels
I've heard people complain about MDI before (going back to my OS/2 days), and I am finally going to ask: just what is supposed to be wrong with MDI? I, personally, prefer the "entire app in one box" interface to the "plaster 6 independent boxes around your screen without telling you which app they are part of" approach (I'll make an exception for visual IDEs, where you need to see separately the window you are working on). So, why do people dislike MDI?
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
As a writer, I seem to find myself using OO.o more and more these days for almost all of my writing. The only thing I use other programs for is screenplays, just because formatting on the fly is so much easier. It makes writing screenplay's as transparent as prose.
I disagree with your statement that writers don't write with OO.o. Real writers write with anything, vi, notepad, typewriters, and *gasp* even a pen and paper. Writers live to write, not to play with fancy new wordprocessors.
hrrm.
I hope they get a clue and don't continue this sort of stupidity - it's a turn-off (I've always been a wordperfect fan - but comparing an upgrade price with a competitors' full list price is bogus :-(
Paradox ain't relational, merely SQL.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
I'm sure as heck not going to _write_ anything in OO while this is a concern.
...
If I'm writing documents in *nix, I use LaTeX and send people postscript or PDF.
OO.o has a native "export to PDF" feature in the latest builds. You might want to give it another whirl. Might save some (potentially) messy LaTeX work, at least for non-methematical documents.
It's these idiots who allowed Microsoft to become a monopoly. Remember Word 6 for DOS and Word 2 for Win dows 3.1?
Now those products were actually good (well, better than anything else on the market) and locked a huge consumer base onto Microsoft. From there it's all history. Thank you, Lotus and Wordperfect for the wonderful world we live in today. =)
MS needs to add three more options to Word in order for it to be a usable product:
1. [ ] Just do what I say
This turns off all of the auto-screwup features that do things like randomly change the font when you cut and paste text, or cause the line number to disappear from a line when you delete the line below it.
2. [ ] Just shut up and do it
This turns off all of those annoying "are you sure" and "do you really want to save in that format" boxes.
3. [ ] Mature
This puts the program in "mature" mode, disabling asinine animated paperclips and other such crap that is amusing only to preschoolers and Microsoft coders.
You can transfer your license to anyone provided the receiving party agrees to the license agreement. If that's your plan, bring a lunch -- it's a long license agreement and you'll have a lot of explaining to do.
I had enough trouble getting through this reviewer's 7-8 paragraph summary of Corel's license!
What's with the wordiness of these reviews anyway? Do young geeks really drink that much Jolt Cola?
Back in 1999, Corel released the WordPerfect 8 Download Personal Edition for Linux version of their product which was (and still is) free (as in free beer). It doesn't include QuattroPro or Presentations, but honestly, you can use OpenOffice for those. For document editing, you can't beat the power that Reveal Codes gives you. I mean, it's WYSIWYG vs. editing the actual code. There's no comparision. And the fact that it can open Word documents without destroying them is nice too.
Anyway, here is where you can get your very one free copy of WordPerfect 8 DPE for Linux.
Maybe drives are cheap, but they haven't gotten much faster, in recent years. So code bloat is still a problem, since it means that programs are slow to load.
Big bloated programs are slow to swap too. This is much more of a problem than it really deserves to be for users of Microsoft products. Rather than taking the hit for producing a suite of horribly bloated products that were slow to load Microsoft chooses to betray the true interests of their users, by cheating.
Microsoft gives its own products preferential access to system resources. In particular it gives its products preferential access to system memory.
In 1999 I visited a friend of mine. Her brand new computer was comparable to mine, but much slower. It was slower to boot, and non-MS applications ran much more sluggishly.
Why? When she booted an extra minute or two was spent trying to load all of the MS office suite 2000 into her 32 megs of RAM. Of course there wasn't room, so you could hear her hard drive thrashing, as everything MS tried to put into RAM promptly got swapped out.
Finally, when all the thrashing settled down, what happened when you tried to invoke Netscape Navigator? You would wait while it was invoked. And then, heartbreakingly, as soon as you let the program go idle, the disk would start thrashing like crazy?
Why?
Microsoft was cheating. Microsoft was trying to hide that their applications were slow to load by keeping them constantly loaded and ready to go.
Was there a way to turn this dangerous feature off? Maybe, but it was wildly irresponsible of Microsoft to have put this feature in, in the first place.
Wordperfect file format was frozen at around version 5.1 -- fifteen years ago or more. Good move -- respectful to their customers. Microsoft doesn't even respect their customers enough to maintain compatibility with earlier versions of their own products.
What I said was: Law firms and the like don't need much other than WP, a browser and email. The word processor is probably the most used application on the computer.
.pdf format for submission to federal court; and Mozilla Firefox for research and to access the federal ECF system.
"With all due respect," servicing a law office's computers doesn't exactly give you any special insight into what an attorney actually needs/uses on a day-to-day basis. At best, you know what some sales rep has convinced them they need.
IAAL, so I have a pretty damned good idea of how a law office is run. The only application you mentioned that might be an issue is a time keeping program such as Timeslips. We don't use one at our office, so I didn't think about that.
All legal research -- if not out of a book -- is online through Lexis-Nexis or Westlaw, and Mozilla can access them much more stably then IE. As for the "Legal Edition" of WP, even if it is not eventually ported to Linux all you lose are some forms that you would have to customize for your local courts anyway and some legal terms already in the spell checking dictionary.
I'm sure our accountant has different needs, but here's what I use on a day-to-day basis for work (and as the research/brief writing guru of the firm I probably use my computer more than any other attorney here): Outlook for email & scheduling; WP for word processing & converting documents to
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
I disagree.
As a paralegal and sys admin for a small law firm, which still uses WP on Windows, I can tell you there are no acceptable alternatives for editing or creating legal pleading documents in the wpd format. Considering the amount of work-product we have on our server and in our archive, this is the biggest hurdle for us to clear, when considering word processing applications.
I have tried kword, openoffice.org, staroffice, abiword and others. None of them can successfully read or write WordPerfect pleadings documents. Perhaps, this release of WP12 for linux will finally make a gnu/linux desktop a viable option. (One can hope, anyway.)
not to mention that i read reviews of wordperfect office 12 that say it isn't that good at opening microsoft word files. that could have been my only reason to buy it. now it is just "yet another useless office thingy for linux" I am not paying 4 times the staroffice price for a worse office set. thanks.
Just another IE/OE using loser with mod points, happens all the time these days.
Sun is showing sign of trying to recant and brimg IP stuff...on OpenOffice etc...
So why don't we just use Lyx... and it exports and import from latex...etc etc
And its GPL'd...
With that being said, most Windows users are under the illusion that Windows Font Management is phenomenal when it is not. But drag n' drop or import to /Fonts under Windows makes it seem so as opposed to most Linux approaches to Font Management.
Neither one compares to OS X's Font Management, but I'll take Linux after OS X for Desktop Publishing needs. It just requires a bit more "out-of-the-box" thinking to really understand one's productivity outputs increase with Linux and OS X and decreases with XP.
Still with that being said, Openstep had me more productive with its marriage of simplicity, elegance of a clean UI and openness of its UNIX underpinnings.
I work in an office with a few graphic designers who love the new Photoshop features that are added with each release. Seriously, they come back from seminars raving -- and these aren't droids, they're intelligent and talented professionals.
I know you call a lot of those high-end features "bloat", but Adobe is catering to the professionals who use this software endlessly in their jobs, know that Adobe delivers, and will pay for it (because it's effectively earning them thousands).
It's not worth it to these people to try some freebie (if cost was the factor, wouldn't they just go to Corel or PSP?) that leaves them playing catch-up in features from the very start?
And with Adobe's new Creative Suite, it's quite affordable to get Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign for under AUD$1500 (USD$1k).
For consumers, it's a different story, but if they didn't want the bloat, then there are tonnes of budget options around with more trusting names than The Gimp. Can you imagine parents finding that link in their kids' start menu? Hah.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
At a time when free software has come up with real alternatives to proprietary office suites it shocks me that Slashdot dares to give the impression that non-free software is normal and right.
Consider KOffice, OpenOffice and others that provide all the features the users can possibly want, yet closed source products are discussed as if they are acceptable in a forum that should understand the importance of free software
You can read more about the GNU project at http://www.gnu.org/.
Didn't MS play a role in the cancellation of WP and Corel Linux?
I just bought it. It's a great word processor - it's usability exceeds oowriter. It's only for a lack of a current version of WordPerfect on Linux that I moved to OpenOffice in the first place. Now that WordPerfect seems to be available again, I want to go back.
I also own a copy of Opera 7. I agree that FireFox is really very good, but Opera is still worth the money.
Sometimes, proprietary software that runs on Linux is well worth what you pay for it. And besides, purchasing this product will send Corel a very clear signal: "I'm a paying customer, and I use Linux." Can't be a bad thing!
I tried the WordPerfect Office 12 trial download. The first thing I did with it was open up some (very) old documents I have which were saved with WordPerfect 5.1. Normally I would expect the formatting to change slightly because WP customarily reformats your document for the default printer. Much to my surprise, after viewing the first two pages the rest of the entire document was missing!! I tried a few other documents (each of which should have had dozens of pages), and they all showed the same problem -- only two pages came through, the rest disappeared.
... for over five minutes. That's when I gave up and hit "Cancel". Of course, that caused WP to stop responding, so I had to give it the three-finger salute. (To be fair, WP 8 wasn't any good at opening those MS Word documents either.)
By way of comparison, I regularly use WP 8, and it has never had any problem opening up WP 5.1 files.
Just for the heck of it, I also tried opening up another old document which had been saved with MS Word 6.0, since WP claims to have better Word compatibility. Well, it brought up the "Converting document" dialog box with the pages flashing yellow and white furiously
I also tried opening up a spreadsheet I had saved with Quatro Pro 8 into Quatro Pro 12. This sheet had several pages of charts attached to it. Well, the new Quatro Pro completely redid the formatting of my charts. The line styles and fonts had changed. The numeric format of the X axis labels was changed from dates ("Apr 29") to numeric codes (32756...). One of my line series which should have been scaled to the secondary Y axis was instead scaled to the primary axis. And one of the series seems to have been corrupted, because the right end of the line shot back to the left edge of the chart and made a vertical line. Even worse than losing the formatting was the fact that I couldn't fix it.
Personally, I don't care about WP being compatible with PDF, XML, or MS Word. But if it can't even remain compatible with WP's own file formats, I'm not going to upgrade.