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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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LaTeX is for hippies who like proper typesetting.
The rest of the world is ready to contend with bloaty 2GB "text editors" that will easily put things in the wrong spot and not be compatible between versions and not have professional macros for document logistics and preamble.
Ha!
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
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.
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..
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.
Nice in theory but it will never happen.
1 - They may be able to shave a few megs off, sure, but with MS' fatal infection of creeping featuritis that would be offset in no time.
2 - They're the 800 lb gorilla, "it's up to the other companies/projects to figure out and support the
3 - Protecting their bottom line and investors' cash is their job, they can't help it.
4 - Invented outside of MS? C'mon Tom, you should know better!
Trolling is a art,
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:
At work we used groupwise, and at the University where I'm taking a night class they use Lotus Notes, so Exchange Server isn't as ubiquitous as you think. Plus, everyone running Windows has outlook express for "free" as well as web mail, so lack of an email client in the office suite isn't that big of a deal.
Hehehe true dat.
;-)
Well making money goodism aside they amalgamate crap together until the user is so inundated with "features" they just assume it's great. Then when they learn that the auto-toc isn't standard and easy to trip up [as I found out last semester when I was forced to use it] or that you have to manually layout figures, tables, etc.... it looks less like "neat" and more like "life sucks".
Sure a WYSIWYG is good for short memos and shit. That's why "write" exists. But for manuals, books, papers and reports LaTeX is always the best choice.
Sadly only 10 people in the world seem to know this
Of course MS could just make their own port of TeX and call it MSReX or something... claim they invented it. At least then it would be something I'd use.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Proper typesetting is done by professional typesetting software like Adobe InDesign or Quark Xpress, or even PageMaker or FrameMaker.
Saying LaTeX is proper typesetting is like saying GIMP is equivalent to photoshop. People who say it come across as fools or irrational zealots to actual, knowledgeable professionals in the field.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
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..
Your argument assumes the 80% of users use 20% of the features rationale. What you fail to realize is that those 80% don't use the SAME 20%.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
why is small imp ? last time I checked, hardrives are ~ 1 dollar per gig. So an extra 0.2 gig of office "bloat" is ..r u ready... 20 cents of harddirve ?
as for typesetting... get a life. Not one person in 100 cares, so why shd MS ? go get latex if u want typesetting
More generally, as for "feature bloat" (a) this is wrong and (b) its wrong - (a) there is no feature bloat because you dont have to even see it in default,and (b) features is what makes MS succefull.
PEOPLE LIKE FEATURES MORE THEN "TECHNICAL SUPERIORITY" in the real world, a program that supplies things people need will always win out over crap like typesetting; understanding this is part of the MS success story
Well, considering that MS Word starts to puke and die with large documents, it's pretty clear that manuals, books, large RFP's, etc. are the exact kinds of things you shouldn't do in Word. Even breaking things up into chapters / sections is a pain.
I have a work collegue that wrote a 350 page book in word. Just scrolling the document on a 2.4G machine with 2G Ram was painful.
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.'