used to LOVE the Dashboard thingy
Posted on 01/18/2017 2:03:40 PM PST by rey
Years ago, I used WordPerfect for all my academic papers. I felt the program was more friendly toward that type of writing, easier to cite, create footnotes, end notes, bibliographies, etc. As Microsoft Word no longer comes as part of the operating system package, I have been considering my options.
My question is two-fold; is WordPerfect still a good product? Is it superior to Microsoft Word? What do professional writers prefer and why? (Yeah, that's three. I guess I'm a heavy tipper.)
Thanks.
I refuse to use Word, opting for Open Office instead (just a Microsoft thing). I use OO for anything that needs to go out to the general public or for quick and dirty docs.
I use WP whenever formatting docs for printing. Just having “Reveal Codes” available for intricate formatting makes it worth the cost. And “Make It Fit” can be a lifesaver.
WP was the first major wordprocessing progam I used. I had to write a user/operator manual in 1986 and WP was the major wordprocessing software.
MS struggled with Word but it finally got a hold on the market. I had to do some Word Basic programming at one job in 1993-94, so I became familiar with Word.
Even by then, the DOS WP seemed to have a hard time becoming a Windows wordprocessor. Then, IIRC, WP was sold to another company that had a habit of killing major software. Several years later, Corel acquired WP and tried to keep it afloat. I think the last version I ever used was around ver 8.0.
Now (since I am retired and seldom do much heavy wordprocessing or data) I load up Word 98 when I need something done. I can have the project finished before figuring out the newer Word with the ribbon menue. I do similar with Excel 98.
There are hundreds of ways WP is better than Word! I used to have a list. Reveal Codes in WP is the best.
“Openoffice Writer - free”
I’m doing LibreOffice on Linux (I think just a branch of OpenOffice). I write books and self publish, so it is quite a risk moving from Word. Libre is a little quirky, but so far so good though. The big question is whether the index will work and how to format the tabel of contents better with multiple tiers.
BFL
I used to like pfs:Write !
Nowadays use Libre Office, does everything I’m likely to need.
Word still hasn’t gotten a multi-level list function that works! WP was great back in the day, but they lost the market. Superior products don’t guarantee a market success—especially when you don’t know the market.
Amen. WordPerfect's Reveal Codes is very much like editing HTML with a text editor (or posting html text on FreeRepublic).
When you turn on Reveal Codes it shows the font and formatting attributes in the form of a code before and after affected text, for example [underline]will underline this text[underline]. It makes it very easy to fix formatting errors.
Long MS Word documents will often have multiple unintended font and formatting changes throughout a document that are left over from when text was cut and pasted from an earlier document. Sometimes the only way I can figure out how to fix a complex MS Word document is to convert it to WordPerfect, fix it, and then save it as a Word document.
The Word format is the office standard. If you are writing to share, you should use whatever fits that standard.
If you are writing for yourself, never mind.
Wordstar.
Most legal secretaries had a Wang on their desk until the late 1980s or early 90s. I first switched from Wang to MS-DOS and WordPerfect 5.1 around 1990.
I have used WordPerfect ever since, though I finally switched to the Windows version in the late 90s and have upgraded to newer versions nearly every year since, mainly for the ever improving MS Word and Adobe pdf conversion functions.
Sometimes I really miss MS-DOS. My computer never crashed and the only programs I ever needed were WordPerfect and Lotus 123. It was kind of a pain though to have to load the programs from 5.25" floppy disks every time I wanted to use one.
Take a look at Outlook.com. They have free versions of all Office components.
Lawyers and law offices LOVE WordPerfect.
My kids use google docs, don’t know much about it though.
I still use WordPerfect x14 for my personal stuff. Anything I do for others, especially if it is heavily formatted, has to be in Word, as WP’s save as DOCX does not always give expected results.
WordPerfect has MUCH better paragraph formatting, better kerning, and complete control down to the character level. Foreign and special characters are also easier to use. Better mail merge for envelopes. Much better for printing sheets of laser/inkjet labels. Cool way to set margins in raphic version.
Word is vastly superior on its embedded tables and spreadsheets. There is no area that Word is awful.
WordPerfect crashes more, especially in complex documents.
I don’t know if WordPerfect will ever be truly 64 bit.
The add-on products (mail, calendar) are awful. Quattro Pro is no Excel. Paradox is for those who like it, and it isn’t really being upgraded. The PDF generator usually works well enough, but no better than CutePDF, and without the features of my Adobe Acrobat Pro 9 (I will NOT go to subscription model).
To make it work like the old WordPerfect (DOS 5.1) you have to make some hard choices on keyboard mapping, and make sure you turn OFF select whole word on click. If I WANTED to select the whole word, I would have dragged the mouse or double clicked.
Reveal codes is 80% of what it was in the DOS era. Macros are easy but not as unlimited as in the DOS version (when you could actually hit the RETURN key to search for a return). These concessions had to be made to accomodate the Windows standard user interface.
It is still a better word processor for people like me, but it really can’t be your only one. Nota Bene is gone.
Yes
Wordperfect for documents
Pstyler for images
AOLPress for webpages
Better than any of the bloatware today.
Though Paint Shop Pro Version 5 was close to Pstyler and works better than Photoshop and can still be found today.
Bullets & numbering & tabs
Nightmare on word
For a time, in the late 70s, I used a Lanier word processor based on an 8080 chip. The whole shebang cost about 25 grand.
used to LOVE the Dashboard thingy
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