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1 Million Word Perfect/Linux Downloads
Armin writes "Corel says that as of Wednesday, a free
version of its WordPerfect 8 for Linux
software has surpassed the 1 million
download mark, another harbinger of
Linux's growing popularity. " Ya know, ever since I graduated,
I haven't needed a word processor.. vim seems to be just
fine. But apparently a million of ya disagree. Pretty
excellent.
Well... I agree the ones they give away for free are next to useless, but that's just a hook to get you to buy the CD. Sucks, but hey, they are a for-profit company.
No driver for my Canon BJC 4000 [...] if it would print using the print system I ALREADY HAVE!
You can get it to print vanilla postscript by using the Apple LaserWriter driver. That's what we did at my office because the HP LaserJet 5M driver was icky...
Word import sucks. It mangles anything more complex than simple paragraphs, and the fonts all go to hell.
Well, yeah, that's because you only have a dozen fonts or so. See the first point.
The interface was clearly designed by aliens. It's even more counterintuitive than Word for christ's sake.
Really? I didn't think it was that bad. Matter of opinion I suppose.
Given that I have a 32M machine at home, this thing blows StarOffice right out of the water. I won't be buying the CD, as I really have almost no need for a WP anyways (LaTeX will do fine in a pinch), but WP seems very nice to me. Mind you, I haven't tried Applix.
And all of this may become academic when KOffice matures. I've used some of the prereleases. They're crashy (as of 2 months ago, anyways) but they look mighty fine... KOffice, along with Mozilla, is the app I'm most looking forward to maturing. I think it'll do a lot for Open Source software.
Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty
Use ghostscript to translate the postscript into what your printer uses.
That's the nice thing about Ghostscript. You only configure it once, and that's it. Then you just have to tell UNIX apps to send postscript to that printer and things'll print out purrfectly every time. }:)
- =^o.o^=
If you've already formed an opinion about Word Perfect on Linux, ignore this. If you're curious about one Joe User's experience, here it is.
:)
I've used both ApplixWare and StarOffice. 99% of my need for an office productivity suite is the word processor. Accurate importing of MS Word docs is nice because it saves me having to use my spouse's PC.
ApplixWare and StarOffice both have fine word processors which meet most of my needs. For me, though, ApplixWord seems to have a few bugs in the MS Word import. StarOffice works a little better, but it's just too much. IMHO, StarOffice comes close to being an operating system all by itself. This is totally subjective, but I'm not looking for an office suite on Linux that makes it feel like I'm using Windows (a "start" button?).
I downloaded Corel's Word Perfect for Linux and found that it's a perfect fit. It's very intuitive. It has everything I want in a word processor with minimal feature bloat (no talking paperclip). So far, it has done a good job of reading/writing MS-format documents.
For me, at least, Corel's free WP trial has worked perfectly. I'm ordering the CD.
BTW -- I like vim too for code/HTML/text editing. It's just that WYSIWYG is easier when I'm creating invoices, proposals, and other "business" documents. Maybe someday I'll be able to pay someone to do that stuff for me.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Does anyone have the scoop on when Corel is planning to release a *modern* version of its Office Suite for Linux?
...
Word is that Corel's new distribution will use Debian and Qt - strange mix, but a good one. I would be willing to pay money for a Qt version of Word Perfect or even a text mode version for Linux like the trusty old WP 5.1 for DOS. (I still have the DOS floppies and may reinstall it after 5 years and run it under DosEmu.) *Anything* but this horrible motif port of its Windows product which is butt-ugly, slow, buggy and awkward to use.
The fact that over 1 million people have downloaded this dog of a product shows how desperate Linux users are for desktop apps. Desperate people will try anything
Corel has a reputation for porting products to other platforms and then "going back to its roots" and leaving its users flapping in the wind. Remember the ports of Word Perfect to Amiga and OS2? Users begged and pleaded for Corel to keep supporting and upgrading Word Perfect on these platforms but were ignored - even at a time when relative to the total number of personal computers in the world Amiga and Os2 had a larger market share than Linux does today.
Corel - put up or shut up. Where are the screenshots of your new desktop? Is there a home page with information about release dates or features? I understand that a development team in Ireland is working on this project. This is encouraging because the team is removed from the main office and may have some chance of doing it right for a change, without the intervention of pointy-haired managers who, in the name of short-term cost-cutting, almost cost Word Perfect the whole show a few years ago.
I am willing to give Corel another chance after having been betrayed 3 times on 3 different platforms. But, Corel, your washed-out port of Word Perfect for Windows to unix is not the way to build a loyal user base on the Linux platform.
former DOS, Amiga and OS2 Word Perfect user
Well... who cares how many people attempted to download it? For all we know, it was just a couple of guys with a fast line and amazingly bad luck trying to download it and failing every time...
The real question is how many people acutally registered the thing so that they could use it legally? I know they have the numbers to this, but Im sure it would be somewhat embarassing compared to the "1 million" that tried to download it.
Arrgh! Will you guys (Rob ESPECIALLY ... you've said this same thing twice in two days) get a clue?
Word processors do fonts, layers, colors, pasteup, image layout, flow text around graphics and along curving lines, and other sorts of things you might like to have if you're doing something like wedding or graduation invitations, newsletters, flyers, advertising, etc., etc.
Would you really prefer a plain A9 typewritten notice over a beautiful invitation, or an eye-catching advertisement or resume? I notice Slashdot doesn't use plain ASCII text in its banner ads... I wonder why?
Plain ASCII text is perfect for certain things (programming, email, etc), but when you need a hard copy of something, you very rarely mean "type this up and print it out so it looks like it came from a dot-matrix printer."
Actually WordPerfect/Linux is more like a mini Office Suite, it comes with all the spreadsheet functions that I will ever need to use (for example, calculating mortgages, etc.) I am also using it as my little database program (for sorting tables, addresses). The search capability of the Linux version is actually much better than the Windows version. Its macro capability is not nearly as good as the Windows version, but, to me, is more than adequate. Also do forget its high-octane equation and graphic capabilities.
The main problem is, very few Linux users know about these scrects, or know how to take advantage of them. A WordPerfect/Linux book (WP/Linux Bible) by one of the best writers in the Windows world will come out in July. I strongly recommend that you should at least just browse it and see the powerful functions that it provides. It's more than just a wordprocessor.
I have been using WordPerfect/Linux for several months now. I am very glad to have it as a showcase for Linux. It sends a very strong message that a native Linux program, when ported properly, can be so much faster (on the same machine)and customizable/flexible than its Windows counterpart. But more importantly, it gives you a feeling that Linux is no doubt that its is a much more solid OS than that MicroJunk.