Could WordPerfect have remained the most popular word processing program?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Another advantage that Microsoft had was that they’d been building GUI-driven versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint for years before Windows arrived on the scene – for the Macintosh. The modern Microsoft Word for Windows owes a lot more to Word for Macintosh than it does Word for DOS.

Microsoft was also the first company to create a suite-wide, consistent UI. Which in this case meant taking the UI from Excel 4 and applying it to Word 6 and forward, and PowerPoint. Because back in the early 1990s, the key app of your office suite wasn’t your word processor, or your PIM, but the spreadsheet.

WordPerfect didn’t go to the Mac until the late 1980s, and it was never a priority (though when it was all said and done, the last version of Word Perfect for Mac, 3.5 – though the number has no corrolation to the Windows version – was a damn sight better than Word 6.0 for Mac, its contemporary). So when Windows rolled around, they had little to no idea as to how to produce a GUI word processor.

They also had no spreadsheet program, and had to drum one up in a hurry.

22

Lone Corndog, indeed WP 5.1 – and even WPWin 5.2 – were and are still great programs for what most of humanity needs in word processing.

However, WPWin 6.0, as introduced, was one major fumble. People expected something that would be as great for Windows as 5.1 had been for DOS. It wasn’t. By the time they got things straightened out, MS was already well on its way to the integrated suite.

23

Just to hijack slightly buy what is it about WP that makes it so suited for legal types?
btw Wordstar rules.

24

Never cared for either one of them a whole hell of a lot, but if I had to choose it would be WordPerfect.

I’ve never liked “Styles” or “Codes”. Each individual character should have character-level attributes (font, size, style {in the sense of italic, bold, etc}, color; paragraphs should not have those attributes, nor should documents. Composite blocks of text, meanwhile, should have paragraph-level attributes (left margin, right margin, indent-on-return position, tab stops, justification, vertical spacing), which should remain attached to the text regardless of whether you backspace over the hard return or cut it and paste it elsewhere, even in another document.

Newly created text should inherit the characteristics of the text immediately preceding it unless you issue commands to change the formatting just before typing. Thus, if you insert your cursor in a block of 11 point italic Bookman Old Style and start typing, you get 11 point italic Bookman Old Style; and if that block was double-sided justified and double-spaced, your newly created text has those characteristics also. If you issue the command for boldfaced text at the end of the paragraph but don’t bother typing anything there, and go off and do other things in other parts of the document and then come back to that paragraph and start typing, it should not show up in boldface. (If you typed a character when you were there before, that’s different. It would inherit the bold characteristic from that character if you put the insertion point at the end of the paragraph).

If I were on a PC I’d probably use WordPro rather than either WP or Word, as it seems to come closest to the behavior I’ve described above. On the Mac, despite a lot of admiration for Nisus Writer, I really still used MacWrite Pro until I got my hands on AppleWorks and discovered that its embedded word processor is essentially an updated version of MacWrite Pro.

25

WordPerfect blew the upgrade to Windows 3.1. It’s that simple. They failed to appreciate how a graphical interface worked, so their Windows version was clunky. And the lack of a suite did hurt them, too.

Microsoft’s big advantage in everything is that they realize they don’t have to be great – just good enough. That worked great when they created Office. Word was the second best word processor next to WP; Excel was second best to Lotus. But WP didn’t have a comparable spreadsheet, and Lotus didn’t have a comparable word processing program. So people bought Microsoft because they were good enough.

As far as reveal codes is concerned, it was something I really bemoaned when I switched. Six months later, I realized I didn’t miss it; all the information could be found in Word, usually merely by looking at the page.

26

Count me as another person who bemoans the decline of WordPerfect. I don’t think really there’s one single thing that I could put my finger on and say, yes, that’s why I prefer WP over Word. As a stand-alone word processor, I just thought it was a better product. (Same went for Lotus 1-2-3, as a spreadsheet goes.)

I think WP was a better product for academics, IMHO. One incident I remember involving a friend of mine outlined the problems with Word. He was having a problem with footnotes in a paper appearing on the wrong pages. It seemed like a simple problem to fix, but nothing worked. I had a go at it, the computer staff at our college had a go at it, even one of our computer science professors tried fixing it. He called the Microsoft UK offices, and after being bounced around for days (good thing the guy was a chaplain, he needed the patience of Job) he got to someone who told him, “Interesting problem. We’ll get back to you on it.” Two days later, he got a phone call from head offices, and they said (in so many words) “It’s a bug, we know about it, but we haven’t received enough complaints to make it worth doing anything about it.” Apparently, not enough people used footnotes with Word. I think that might be what Bill H. was referring to by saying WP was a “ideal for lawyers.” They use footnotes too…

Of course, WP probably couldn’t have afforded to alienate a significant customer base. As RickJay points out, Microsoft had the luxury of surviving as the second-best system.

27

I was going to mention the same thing specter did-- tht MS
Word had a GUI version for Mac before Windows. But he beat me to it.

28

Others have already mentioned it, at least from my perspective:

  • reveal codes;

  • no automatic styles.

If I’m working on a brief, i’m almost always under the gun for a deadline. The last thing I want is some mysterious style merge happening, because Bill Gates knows better than I do what I’m trying to do. Well guess what, Bill - you don’t. I’ve never yet found a way to turn off all those f****** auto-format things on all the Word features. I can’t afford to miss a deadline because of some formatting problem that no-one in the office can fix. If there’s a formatting problem in Word, well, it might be this, or we might have to re-format that, or we may have to delete the last two pages you typed, … but we’re not really sure.

If there’s a formatting problem in WP, open “Reveal Codes”, fix it, and keep going to meet that filing deadline. No probs.

Plus, for longer documents, the footnote function in WP is just so much better than Word. It doesn’t corrupt the way Word tends to do.

As well, we tend to rely a lot on re-using old documents. If I’m writing letter no. 47 to opposing counsel on a particular file, I pull down letter no. 46, change the date, delete the old text, bang in the new, and away you go. But because Word puts all the formatting codes at the end of a document, they tend to have a higher corruption rate for re-using documents than do the WP docs. Microsoft assumes that you’ll use their fancy templates every time you do something repititve, but I never do. If I were using Word, that would mean my douments would tend to corrupt quickly, usually at a crisis point, and without “reveal codes” no quick way to fix it.

And finally, I just find that WP is intuitive, in part because it doesn’t have all these fancy styles, and the codes are easily accessible. I don’t have any computer background at all, nor have I ever taken any courses on WP or Word. I’ve had both programs for years, with a dummies book for each. I’m a whiz on WP, but still can’t use Word without using up all my month’s quota of naughty words. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

29

bryanmaguire wrote

It’s gotta be 20 years since I used it, but I can still recall a few keystrokes. ctrl-K ctrl-B mark beginning of block, ctrl-K ctrl-K end of block…

30

What? You’ve got to be kidding- I have to fight (literally!) with WP to get my freaking paragraphs to have the same formatting. Revealing the codes and “fixing” it always- and I mean always- changes it the wrong thing.

Courier is not in any of my templates (or any other), but every few paragraphs, any edits change font. And yet WP fanatics say this is better than Word, where “default” means “default”.

I dinna unnerstan.

31

smaft, if I may call you smaft, I think you’re running into an example of “My daddy drove a Chevy, his daddy drove a Chevy, so they’re good enough fer me!” I.e. People set in their ways.

32

Oooo, I saw this thread and just had to register so I could reply to it! What a good way to do post #1!
First, my background in WP–I learned 4.2 for DOS (on a '286) in 1987. Then 5.0, and 5.1. I then actually went to work for Word Perfect in 93-94, just when WP 6.x for Windows was hitting the market.

[brief hijack]
I was a customer support technician for WP for Win (3.1, 3.11) installation. In other words, if you were installing WP for Win 6.0 on your Windows machine and having problems, I was on the other end of that free support line.
At that time, the free tech support was being phased out, and a new CEO was installed in the company (Adrian Rietveldt, from the Netherlands) to try and boost sales worldwide. Cos
Well, I lasted in that job for 4 months. Before I worked there, it was a great environment, but it changed that winter. The emphasis changed to “how many calls did you hand an hour?” from “did you help the customer with what they needed?” The corporate cubicle culture was toxic, and I bailed.
[/brief hijack]

But getting back to the software, it was VERY hard getting software (such as WP for Windows) that was not MS-created to run as smoothly, as integrated, and as crash-free as MS software was. Microsoft always claimed, of course, that this was because their software was just “better,” when, of course, it was actually a matter of wheeling and dealing and often withholding the proprietary information competitors needed to make software work on their OS.
And so, at this point, Windows 95 came in, Novell decided to try to get another “cash cow” to try to out-Microsoft Microsoft, and it just didn’t work. I understand that Novell just didn’t really do anything with the program, and so it never developed.
Corel rescued WP from oblivion, thankfully, although Corel always seems to be playing second-fiddle to the bigger names in the US (Corel Draw/ Photo Paint vs. Adobe Photoshop, for example.)
WP could have made it–if MS hadn’t done a terrific job of using their market share and lower pricing deals. For most people, Word handles their light publishing needs just fine, and it was cheap, and in many cases came with their computers! Microsoft stacked the deck on that one.

Now I am using WordPerfect Office Suite 2000 (which is WP 9, by the way). I also have used MSWord 97 - 2000 on various machines, as well, since (like a virus) it seems to have infected everybody elses machines.
But I don’t like Word. Why?
I have tried to put together an academic journal on MSWord, and it just did NOT work. Word is great for “light” publishing, letters, memos, and other business stuff. But when it comes down to things with heavy footnotes, indexes, specific formatting, Word is counter-productive. It takes control of your documents, instead of letting you control it.
Oh, yes, you might be able to do it in Word, but I was able to do things MUCH easier and with more control (and less “dang! why is the machine formatting that this way when I don’t WANT it to?”).
(People always tell me, “Oh, you can turn off the auto-format function…”–but it’s always more complex than that.)

So, why do I keep WP on my machine next to MS Word?

  1. “Reveal Codes” is a godsend–I will CONTINUE to buy WordPerfect as long as they keep that function in (are you listening, Corel?). That “tagged” text sure works a lot like HTML, XTML, and other flavors of hypertext. Imagine if you had to do a webpage the Word way, using “containers”–would it really be easier or more reliable?
  2. The “Make it Fit” command is great! Is that not available in Word yet, either?
  3. In my experience, it is MUCH more robust than Word for complex documents, and doesn’t jerk you around so much. This, I imagine, is why lawyers use it. You are much more in control of your formatting and layout.

Viva WordPerfect!

33

Not a very good analogy, GMRyujin - if you re-read my post, you’ll see that I began with both programs available, and still have both - and in trying to use both, I’ve found that one is aggravating and the other easy to use.

34

Bring back Bank Street Writer! :smiley: