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Corel Wordperfect Office 2000 for Linux Beta Test
KiWiB0RG writes "Corel has opened Wordperfect Office 2000 for beta testing. The only requirements is that you run Linux, using kernel 2.0.30 or greater, and have experience in one of these software packages -> Wordperfect, Quattro Pro, Corel Presentations, CorelCentral and/or Paradox. "
If I find Clippy in this thing....
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...will this have good import filters for Microsoft office as well as Star Office files?
It would really be good to have all my files accessible on one place...
Another question I have is does it co-operate with window managers... separate windows instead of the fake windows that StarOffice generates?
What about swap space? Again, compared to star office, is it still going to sink my 64 MB ram, 64 MB swap computer into oblivion?
You'll eat it and you'll like it.
I've been wondering why Corel's stock has been on a tear this week. It almost doubled since August, with most of the gains coming in the last month.
One thing I didn't like about WP 8, and I hope that they fixed this in WP 2000, is that the Linux version of WP 8 was pretty much a port of the DOS/Win product that did not take advantage of the Linux platform. I really thought it was quite silly to have application-specific printer drivers and fonts, in this day and age. That's so... 80s.
I gave up on WP 8 when I realized that I was spending more time fiddling with the printer driver, then playing with the program. I also so that it was rather strange that a word processor does not have a "Print Preview" function. I managed to hack one up by setting up a postscript printer driver that fed ghostview. That was fun, but I don't think that Joe Sixpack should be expected to live with something like that.
Although I don't have the time to beta WP2000, I'll definitely give WP 2000 a spin once its available. Although I didn't end up liking WP 8 very much, it was definitely a solid product which I'll keep my eye on.
Wish list for WP (is it too late, for one?)
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Yes, it'll have nearly perfect compatibility with MSWord -- WP 2000 is great on my (Windows) system. Microsoft keeps trying to change, but Wordperfect MUST be comatible of it's to survive.
...couldn't complete the form... ...too many questions... ...stop... ...please... ...no more questions... ...Why do you need to know my blood type?... ...Why do I have to ask to beta-test your product?... ...Why are you being so picky about your testers?... ...I just want to help you make a better product... ...Please... ...I like WordPerfect... ...I have a registered version... ...I want to try the new version... ...no more questions... ...I give up...
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Anyone else find it disturbing that the application for a Linux product beta test indicates "Windows version" as a required field?
Here is something interesting on printing & linux off of the Corel job site... seems they are look'n for a print'n geek. ps. Any good - non listed - geek jobs available in ottawa??
I don't know how many of you have tried to download the beta of WP2000, but they practically want to know when you first burped and last fucked (to quote some book I read sometime in the last 6 months or so).
First, they want name, address, etc. The standard stuff. CPU type, computer 'make and model number' whatever that means. CD-ROM type, printer make and model, printer ram, plotter or etc. How about your video card? Its ram? Your monitor make and model? How about mouse? And your sound card? Got a scanner? OS and version? (mind you, this is on a page that only lets you download a LINUX version of the software...what the fuck do they THINK my OS is?!?) Windows version? Isn't that covered in OS and version?!? Network? Scan software? HD and compression? Other TSRs? Font manager? They don't need half this stuff for legitimate development reasons.
I don't know how much this info's worth but I'll bet for the cost of pressing a CD (and they probably don't even do that. I'll bet you've got to download the software anyway) they get over $50 worth of information.
Sorry about the rant. Usually, I like Corel, and wordperfect in particular (though the windows versions have all sucked big-time. 5.1 for dos (IMNSHO) was the best one they made. Still use it, in fact) but this is such a blatant effort to invade my privacy, it's sickening.
No kidding! WP 2000 for papers and reports, and Mathematica has been available on Linux for years. Also, homework is so much easier on a platform on which I own no games...
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
I was going to sign up for the beta program, until I saw the application form and I decided not to - 35 mandatory fields. I don't want to submit to a rectal examination just to join a beta program. I don't want to give away that much personal information, either. Man, corel should be bending over backwards to get techies to join the beta program. Why can't I just sign up with my slashdot id??
While I'm in rant mode, corel should make sure the download is not just a cgi script, but also has a straight url. Big downloads do get cut off, and with a cgi script I can't use nice programs like getright. (yes, I'd boot to windows just to use getright)
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Printer RAM? Come on...
We've got 5 Printers around here, over a dozen computers, running everything from NT to redhat 6.1, to debian, to windows 98..
What the hell do they expect but for me to put "varies" on everything?
bleah
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- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The reason I'm asking this is that if I didn't know any better, I'd think that this is just WordPerfect and a few little addons, not an entire package (word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, etc.).
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Error Occurred While Processing Request
Error Diagnostic Information
ODBC Error Code = 37000 (Syntax error or access violation)
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL
Server]User 3 not allowed in database 'b etarep' - only the owner of this database can access it.
SQL = "exec GetElements 1"
Data Source = "betarep"
Date/Time: 11/13/99 00:11:03
Browser: Mozilla/4.7 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.13 i686)
HTTP Referer: http://slashdot.org/
Template: e:\dox\cfscripts\betarep\applicationform.cfm
Query String: bp_entity_id=2
I would have thought they used their own product!!!!
Some people might like their bloated word processors, but I'll stick with raw LaTeX, thanks. Doesn't suck down all my memory and I invariably get better output than that of any GUI word processor I've ever seen.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Thought about trying WP2000. Saw the form. Thought better of it.
Note to Corel and all other companies:
Don't make these mandatory forms that people have to fill out before using your product. You will gain NOTHING from them. NOTHING! except a bunch of useless fake data.
There is no way for you to verify any of that information. Even if some people do fill in the correct information, the false data will simply screw up any analyses you plan to do on it.
GIGO. Garbage In. Garbage Out.
Using PostScript as the API for communicating printers is just a bad idea. PostScript is Turing complete. That means there's all sorts of analysis yousimply can't do to the stream sent to the printer. It isn't even guaranteed that the printer will ever finish (the halting problem). It would be a lot simpler if there was a drawing API, sort of like a subset of X, but for paper. Or heck, an XML-based page description language. Just make sure it isn't Turing complete.
:-) and do what had to be done to it to make it render everything a printer has to render. We need that anyway (probably) so we do things like write full biz documents and books, using HTML+CSS.
Postscript isn't going away any time soon, and the glitches you mentioned will be eradicated over time in classic open-source style. The turing-complete problem isn't a horrible problem because the postscript-generating program can limit itself to generating postscript commands that are known to produce predictable results.
You can use the turing-complete features of postscript judiciously without taking the risk of your printer never halting. E.g, for doing things like headers and footers - you don't download the whole text every page, you just make up a function and call it. Not that it really matters that much with a fast printer connection.
But basically, I agree with you, why does a printer language have to be turing-complete? If it does, then why don't we make every darn interface in the whole computer turing complete? IOW, what's so special about printers?
Postscript is so firmly entrenched, though, that an alternate solution would have to be really compelling to make any headway. The easier to implement, the more compelling. So, what's easy to implement? I'd say, start with Gecko
Then we'd need a kickass way to talk to Gecko. XML would fill the bill, as you said.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Somewhat offtopic: I recently started using LyX, basically a WYSIWYG front-end to LaTeX that's actually pretty cool. I find it nice when creating documents containing lots of greek to actually see what the formulas are going to look like. It even supports macros (though only in math mode). Plus, it's open source! I used it to write a conference paper submission and found it way smoother than hacking the raw LaTeX. Not everything is as intuitive as one might hope -- I had a few points of confusion early on, mainly because I didn't RTFM, but the developers were quite helpful and set me straight.
Granted, LyX still has some stability problems (i.e. it randomly dumps core) but since it makes emacs-stlye emergency backups, in addition to creating recovery files just before giving up the ghost, I've never lost a single keystroke of data, unlike some other word processors I've used.
and what do you use to share our documents with your classmates?
Jilles
and what do you use to share your documents with your classmates?
:(
damn should 've used the preview
Jilles
You'd be a terrible person to work with. Suppose we'd be writing a report together. And I'm not using TeX, are you going to put me in position where I either remove all the gibberish from a stupid ascii file and then do the layout manually or will you let me print your document and let me figure out how to integrate the printed version with the document. Duh.
Postscript is not a format that's very suitable for editing. TeX is particularly lousy for exchanging documents. Basically all the exports to other wordprocessor fileformats are
A one way, no way to read back an rtf file and maintain the layout
B pretty lousy (HTML, rtf, wordperfect)
"That's what I do with my physics labs; of course, it's physics with other geeks who know what Postscript actually is, but..."
I know what postscript is and I know its only good for forwarding it to the printer (if your lucky enough to have a postscript printer). I found that ghostscript reads most but not all posscript so in most cases it is possible to get a printed version of the document.
Jilles
Every time I've asked a professor to email me an assignment, they have always sent a Tex file. They just assume you have access to a Linux system. BTW as far as I have seen there is no free Tex interpreter for Win32. Maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, Tex is standard.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
For physics and other scientific documents, there's really no alternative to TeX for now. And for that matter, for that type of document, TeX is exactly what's called for. Symbol heavy, text light documents with lots of funky characters where exact layout matters, and presentation style is important, and maximum flexibility is required -- that's what TeX does well, and that's why we (physicists) use it. Obviously Postscript isn't a good format for document exchange since it's not exactly human-editable.
They probably used winelib (aka libwine), the basis of Wine. Wine is not an emulator, but an alternate binary loader which dynamically relinks Windows programs to winelib. Kinda screwy. :) I wouldn't be surprised at all if Corel just used winelib to 'port' (i.e. recompile) their Windows programs for Linux; I believe their whole interest in supporting Wine was specifically for this point. (After all, any functionality added into winelib gets implicitly added into Wine.)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
As a developer, I can attest to the following: It is not possible to have too much information about a Beta Test system. I would really prefer an exact duplication of the test systems at the molecular level, but unfortunately, this sort of questionnaire is the best thing possible.
First of all, they are going to have to cull a list of a few testers out of the hundreds, if not thousdands, of applicants. To do that, they are going to want to pick canidates who are knowledgeable about computes, have experience with all the software involved, and have a wide variety of software, hardware, and configurations in use.
Once you get to the actual test, the exact combination of hardware, kernel, drivers, daemons, libraries, desktop environment, and everything else up to and including their background image, can make a difference. If you don't think so, you've never had to operate a Beta Test before.
I found their survey perfectly reasonable, although their were a few (excusable) DOS- and Window-ish questions on it ("TSRs" are "daemons" on Linux, etc.).
A couple of specifics --
OS and version is legit - you can run Linux programs on BSD as well, plus there are different distributions of Linux that can be considered different "OSes" depending on your definition of the term.
Windows version is legit - they could want to know if you have Windows install in a dual-boot configuration. (It could be simple stupidity, but neither you nor I know for sure.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Okay, as someone who interviews alot of people in a year.. I HAVE to answer this.
First off.. PEOPLE LIE. They say they've managed project X which consisted of buzzword buzzword buzzword. For instance, "I wrote the classes which interfaces an Oracle database into the java application. I used inheritance and operator overloading.. blah blah"
5 minutes later, I'll ask him.. "What is a byte?" Couldn't answer the damn question!
Now, I don't go asking API questions, but I make sure they know types, arrays, pointers, etc.. But I would ask generic questions ABOUT an API. (What does the Xt lib do in X windows?)
The point is that there are too many potted plants masquarading as PROGRAMERS. They read Dr. Dobbs, and PC Week, and can spit buzzwords at you all day. But when you get down to specifics, the thin vail crumbles.
I asked a DBA position candidate (first question, honest) how to insert a row. He actually added a "where" clause. BWAHAHAHA!
So, there is a minumum technical interview required. Some places would require a very deep interview for their projects. (Think "router design and programing" at Cisco!)
I don't think it's necessarily about doing a "better job" - but I do think it clues the interviewer into if the candidate will be able to operate with a core competancy to DO the job.
The other half of the equation is motivation. People that are _not_ motivated, but have the skills are also potted plants.
Pan - from the hellfire known as "Saturday Work"
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
This is tiresome. Corel doesn't have a SQL database server in their product line,nor do they have a web app server. What do you mean by "their own product"? Corel Linux? With PHP3 and Postgres?
Why should their Linux Desktop Apps Group waste their time reinventing the wheel and learning PHP when Corel already has a generic beta-tester signup form handy? It's not as though this is, say, Sun, still running a web store written with Dynamo when they own not one but two competing app servers.
Lord knows I've never seen a MySQL or Postgres database throw errors when a tablespace fills up and there's no room for more extents. Not.
Babies.
Obviously you aren't really a student. If you were, you'd know that in the academic world teamwork is called 'cheating'. Code re-use is called 'plagurism'.
In case you are wondering, this is called 'sarcasm'. But only slightly.
What the hell do they expect but for me to put "varies" on everything?
Funny to be replying to myself, but..
I got accepted into the beta.. sweeeeet!
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- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.