Slashdot Mirror
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."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
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.
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.
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...
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-
Hah! I knew someone would bring up the "Why should I pay for something when there's a perfectly good version for free!" argument on this.
I've used WordPerfect since version 4.x. I also use Linux (and Windows). I've tested many different word processing programs (and still do), including StarOffice and OpenOffice.org
WordPerfect will continue to be the word processing program for me because of many features that OO.o seems not to want to include.
Among them? A good Grammatik checker. Advanced typesetting features. Legal templates. Perfect listing of paper and label types purchasable from the store. Great print-as-booklet/double-sided printing. Advanced print-spooling functions (how do you want them to print? Set batches and WP does the rest).
The main problem with ALL other word processing programs is that typesetting. I haven't found one single program, free or proprietary, that has the ability for me to assign an advance-from that works, besides WordPerfect. And I believe they've been doing it since at least 6.
OpenOffice has NOT taken over. It's installed on nearly every distribution of desktop Linux, but it still pales in comparison to WordPerfect for both writers and legal professionals. Until it can come near WordPerfect in the above-mentioned abilities, it'll still be just a glorified vim to me.
And please, before you make statements that OO.o is taking over and giving MS Office a challenge, make sure it's fact and not your opinion. Where's the data that OO.o is in use enough to make a challenge soon for MS Office share?
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
No, you're not. That was a pretty darn good application, and possibly the high-point in Word Processor history. Ever since then, for Word and WordPerfect, it's been "what new junk can we shove in this thing to justify another release."
When I was in high school, I used to do my reports in WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. Since my mom did desktop publishing out of our home, we had a laser printer. It would freak teachers out at school when I'd hand in my perfectly typeset, smooth-font report... when all the other students had crappy pixilated faded dot-matrix printouts.
dinner: it's what's for beer
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'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?