Talk:WordPerfect

Reveal codes

a note for any wordperfect fan that might happen to see it: what are "reveal codes"? -- Tarquin 13:08 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)

It's like, say, if you used a web page editor, being able to flip between the page as displayed on a browser, and the page as HTML code, so you can see where that pesky & persistent italics tag is hiding in the text. It's the main feature that a WP user misses on being forced to use Word -- Malcolm Farmer 13:31 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)

Thank you :) (wow! wikipedia is fast!) -- Tarquin

I took out the WYSIWYG link in the description of the Reveal Codes edit mode, because WP had Reveal codes right back when it was just a DOS program and didn't do anything like what we now call WYSIWYG -- Malcolm Farmer 14:07 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)

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Well I would have called its normal editing mode "WYSIWYG" even in the DOS days--which is the last I used it (4.2, if I remember correctly), in that in normal editing mode it showed the page as it would be laid out, showed bold characters and underlined italics, etc. Yes, it was just a text screen, but it was "WYSIWYG" in the sense that it didn't show anything that wasn't actually printed, and it showed stuff as close as it could to what would be printed. True, it didn't have fonts and colors and such, and maybe you have to have that these days to be considered "WYSIWYG". --LDC

Perhaps call it "formatted display"? "WYSIWYG" really means that what is on-screen is an exact rendering of the printed version, typeface, size, effect, line width and all -- Tarquin

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I removed "(At least one law firm had problems from submitting a Word-edited document that exceeded the maximum allowed word count because Word did not count the footnotes)"...it is hearsay, and incidental. One law firm out of 100,000s had problems. This is anecdotal at best. The sentence needs a great deal of re-work if it is going to be of use. Kingturtle 20:39 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC) Also, I removed "External link: (problems with Word's word count) http://www.kentlaw.edu/7circuit/1999/jul/99-1754A.html " because the link is broken. Kingturtle 20:41 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

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I also removed "The market seems to have disagreed with the WordPerfect faithful" because it is vague and not neutral. "The market seems" and "WordPerfect faithful" need to be re-worded. The entire sentence needs to be re-thought. Kingturtle 20:47 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

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Actually the word count problem is not hearsay: there was an actual court case where the judge scolded lawyers using MS Word who got the wrong count. A quick google search turned up the original link: http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/7th/991754a.html

Perhaps WP Corporation can get its own entry? Maybe after I read "Almost Perfect" I'll know enough to write up something decent... :) --Krupo 06:49, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

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I've been using WordPerfect since 1985 and have written 17 books on it and millions of words and love it. And I hate Word. Nevertheless, I feel that there were many POV or semi-POV phrases in the article that had to be edited.Hayford Peirce 02:42, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

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Unlike Word, all editions of WordPerfect since version 6 also use the same file format, making it easy for users to share documents between newer and older copies.

You can't say "Unlike Word" because that implies that Word and WordPerfect share the same file format, or have the same version 6. Indeed, Word files are compatible from Word 97 to Word 2003. The phrasing as-is implies a non-NPOV, so I recommend removing the comparison to Word in that sentence. --Ilya 17:55, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

There might be a way to clarify the wording on that, but the phrase is correct in asserting that WP's file formats have been the same since version 6. Word changed formats between version 6 and 97 (aka "7"). Word users also report myriad problems between file formats, but that's another story. :) Krupo 03:45, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)

WordPerfect and Borland

WordPerfect was never sold to Borland. On the contrary, WordPerfect bought the Quattro spreadsheet from Borland and tried to bundle it into the WordPerfect Office suite.Hayford Peirce 01:18, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Actually, reverse the names of the players. Borland marketed its programs plus WP Corp's WordPerfect as a suite, before eventually Borland sold its products (to whom, I'm not sure... I don't know if this was before or after Novell bought the package). SterlingNorth

That's correct; "Borland Office" was a package sold by Borland, including WP (licensed from WPCorp) as its word processor, as Borland's word processor (Sprint) had no market share to speak of. At the time Borland was gearing up to compete product-for-product with MS and Lotus, and probably hoped to buy WP eventually. Then Novell stepped in with the same hopeless goal (after all, they already had DR-DOS and Netware to compete with MS-DOS and NT), and bought out both companies' officeware. Tverbeek 02:30, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Comparison to other word processors

I think the "other word processors" should be explicitly named in order for the section to sound plausible. Currently the "more stable", "easier", "greater use" phrases sound like taken live from an ad. At the same time, the points such as "a wide variety of import and export filters" aren't really comparative.

So, what I'm proposing is: either change the section to "features" and remove the comparative points; or change it to "comparison to MS Word" and remove the non-comparative points; or specify all word processor names that all the points apply to and remove the non-comparative points. -Unavowed

Wordperfect for UNIX not mentioned in version history

Wordperfect for UNIX also existed, but I'm not sure what versions were out there. On Corel's FTP site you can find demo versions for HP, IBM, SGI, SCO and Sun systems. However, I don't know what versions these are, and what versions have been released on this. - 207.161.59.161 22:35, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Yep, I noticed that too. I used WP 5.1 on an AIX mainframe regularly about 10 years ago--it was almost exactly like the DOS version, but there was also an e-mail client, a plaintext editor, and a curses shell, similar to pine/pico's "pilot". —Chowbang 20:51, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

There is also no Wordperfect for OS/2 listed.

I seem to recall a version for JavaOS too. Anyone remember WP on the JavaStation.

Future Versions

The "Future Versions" section really needs to be cleaned up. I'm afraid of doing it myself, because I'm afraid of upsettin people who have invested their time in this article, but really, it's a collection of past speculation, POV, and disorganization. I think this section should be discussed (with regards to what we should do with it).--142.161.175.169 02:42, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Suggested Reorganization

I've corrected some nits and added some new material, but was frustrated by an article organization that impedes discussion. I intend to return and work on it, but here are my initial thoughts:

Add the topic "WordPerfect Ownership so there is a section near the top that sketches the history of WordPerfect ownership. As it is, there is no coherent discussion of WordPerfect Corp.'s merger into Novell and no discussion at all of Novell's sale of less than the full product line to Corel. So the reader gets no clue about Corel's role or its strategic blunder in allowing Novell to retain "Groupwise," or the other Library/Office tools. Should also summarize the history of Corel being taken private after Michael Cowpland and Derek Burney were ousted from Corel leadership.

Add the topic "Marketing" to discuss the history of WordPerfect's marketing, i.e., the concentration of features for law offices in the early days, WordPerfect's development and marketing as a development platform for system integrators, VARs, and add-on developers. Novell's plan to go head-to-head with Microsoft from a Netware-DR DOS platform with market-leading office software to counter MS Office. Corel's blunder in not recognizing that WordPerfect was a development platform, its abandonment of the platform developers, its focus on the retail channel that had worked for Draw, and its blunder of playing into the "let's make a deal" games of the big software retailers, creating the market pressure that drove retail prices below the price Corel charged VARs and system integrators, the entirely predictable resulting exodus of the developers, VARs, and system integrators to Microsoft's office development platform.

Add the topic "Current Market Conditions" for a discussion of trends in WordPerfect's market. Provides a logical space to discuss long-term trends, WordPerfect's loss of market share, its only niche market where it retains the lead being the law office market, the same market that fueled WordPerfect's growth, Microsoft's dominance of the market, Sun's acquisition of StarOffice and open sourcing of that platform as OpenOffice.org, OOo's growing market share (estimated 10% now), the adoption by OASIS and then ISO of the OpenDocument file format standard for office documents, Microsoft's countermove with its XML formats, Corel's refusal to reveal its plans for OpenDocument and Unicode support.

Part of the organizational problem also stems, I think, from trying to separate discussion of WP DOS and WP Windows. As demonstrated in the text, it is very difficult to talk about one without talking about the other. The divison by operating systems supported also gives short shrift to WordPerfect support for many other platforms. It might allow better organization by dropping those two topics and incorporating their elements and those of the Ownership topic discussed above under a "History" topic. Subtopics might go something like: Initial Development, Satellite Computing Era, WordPerfect Corp. Era, Novell Corp. Era, Corel Eras, then go to a "WordPerfect Today" topic that provides an overview of important features.

I'll think about it some more, but I'm pretty sure it's the organization that is messing things up.

Very good points. The current page reads like product literature. 70.112.29.65 02:33, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

WordPerfect Complaints

Could there be room for a section with gripes, in hopes that the programmers read it and improve the product, or at least provide workarounds? I hate, for example, the way the screen jumps around when you save in WP 12 for Windows, or the way the font toolbar says that "Selected Text" is some particular font when really it's got three different fonts. Or the nonstandard use of CTRL-W. Or the failure of the down arrow to take you from inside the last line to the end of the last line. Or the way WP reformats text when you paste it. Or the failure of the blockquote format to change text if it's highlighted over a page break. Or, worst of all, the inability to even use multiple document windows without seeing that gray background thing that blocks your other windows. Actually, the worst thing may be the nagging dialog box that asks you if you want to save the highlighted text as a separate document. Could anyone possibly do that often enough to justify presenting the question to all users rather than making it an obscure menu option? Maybe this section could be called "Reasons WP is a Discount Word Processor" or "What Makes Me Curse WP Every Day." Or maybe these things have been fixed in the current version.

I haven't noticed those problems with WP 5.1 for DOS. Maybe it's a Windows related bug?

I have a feeling WP for DOS also obscures the desktop even when no documents are open. Does DOS even use a desktop and windows? If not, why would anyone use DOS? (Does anyone use DOS?)

--Curiously strange 15:33, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

On wikipedia there is no place for this. In case you encounter bugs, just go to the newsgroups of corel (find the link on wordperfect.com; go to community and click on newsgroups and you will get a list of newsgroups on the different corel products). Annabelleke 08:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Wordperfect thesaurus format

Can somebody comment on the way the Thesaurus file is structured in Wordperfect?

Is it interchangeable between different versions of Wordperfect?

Where can I get a German Thesaurus file that is compatible with what Wordperfect expects? (My best choice for Wordperfect would be WP 5.1 for DOS.) Would the WP 5.1 Thesaurus file (written for DOS) work with Wordperfect for the Atari ST?

How compatible is the Atari ST version of Wordperfect's Thesaurus with the Mac version? Can they be switched freely?

Advertorial tone

Is it just me or does this sound a bit like an advertisement for WordPerfect?

"No description of WordPerfect for DOS would be complete without mentioning its Alt-keystroke macro facility..."

88.110.95.20 22:52, 20 February 2007 (UTC)