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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.
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