New WordPerfect Releases Reviewed

MikeCapone writes "The Jem Report has an extensive review (all in one page, no flash ads -- what a concept!) of Corel WordPerfect 12 for Windows and the proof of concept comeback of WordPerfect for Linux."

I remember using WordPerfect 5.1 on my dos 3.3 box

[i_am_pi]

A history on wordperfect [wikipedia.org] by the great Wikipedia.

Full text

[MarcDuflot]

In the late 90's Corel experimented with the GNU/Linux operating system, developing their own distribution known as Corel Linux and porting their WordPerfect word processor to it. It survived from version 7 to version 9, but in August of 2001 the entire GNU/Linux project was cancelled at Corel and assets sold, thereby ending Corel Linux and WordPerfect Office for Linux. At the time WordPerfect was easily the most popular proprietary application for GNU/Linux, and the hole that it left opened the door for many people to switch to OpenOffice, StarOffice, AbiWord, KWord, TextMaker and others. Now with new leadership, Corel has come back with a proof-of-concept GNU/Linux rework of WordPerfect 8; this review will examine this proof-of-concept software as well as the new WP Office 12 for Windows to see just where Corel is headed with their office software.

Purpose
Office suite

Manufacturer
Corel

Platforms
Windows 98SE/NT/2K/XP/2003 (note that Windows ME is not supported)
WordPerfect for Linux requires GNU/Linux with the 2.0 kernel or later and a functional X11 graphical environment

License
Proprietary, heavily restrictive

Market
Home users, small and medium-sized businesses, legal professionals and government agencies

Price (retail)
Available from the Corel e-store for US$300, or $150 for the upgrade. Academic editions are available for $100.

Demo
Click here to register and download the trial version of WP Office 12

Screen Shot
See article for more than a dozen screen shots, or click here for a directory listing of all screenshots related to WP Office 12

Recommended System
128 MB RAM, Pentium III or equivalent processor, 400 MB hard disk space, CD-ROM drive, keyboard and mouse or tablet

It was the promise of WordPerfect for Linux that got me to switch away from Windows in the first place, about a year and a half ago. Being an avid writer I was a die-hard fan of WordPerfect 10 (2002) and I didn't really want to switch if I couldn't use it anymore. Unfortunately after I completed the switch to GNU/Linux I was unable to locate any Linux-related resources on Corel's site -- they'd taken it all down. News came of Corel's money problems and rumor had it that a $135 million stock purchase (about 20% of the company) by Microsoft Corporation had kept Corel afloat with the understanding that they would terminate their GNU/Linux business. I don't know if the latter was true, but given the situation and the reputation of one of the parties involved I would say that it's at least likely.

Not long after, Microsoft sold their shares to Vector Capital at a 90% loss. More recently Vector moved to buy the rest of the outstanding shares of Corel, thereby turning it into a privately held company again. Overall this is a very positive move because it prevents underhanded manipulation by outside companies like Microsoft (again), but oddly there were some who resisted the buyout. It's hard to tell what went on behind the scenes, but the results are obvious and quite encouraging: there is a renewed interest in GNU/Linux porting and now there's a new version of the superior WP Office for Windows.

It's All About Microsoft

One thing that has definitely changed is the market focus of the WP product line. Corel has already realized their niche markets (legal and government), and WP 10 and 11 seemed to pander specifically to them without regard for the competition. Good for lawyers and governments, but not necessarily so good for people who want to do other things.

It's been a little over two years since WordPerfect 11 was announced and released, but I never had the chance to review it because there was some mysterious reluctance to sending out review copies of the software at the time of my request. No surprise that there was virtually no press on WordPerfect 11 except for legal and government-related print publications. That tunnel-vision focus is gone and has now broadened to include small and medium-sized busines

Re:The hole it left has been filled

[Christopher Thomas]

Why would I change back from a decent, FREE, application like OpenOffice to WordPerfect? If they're planning on selling it on the name, or because people remember WP, it's too late for that now. OpenOffice has taken over, and could soon be challenging MS Office in a big way.

OpenOffice will convince me to abandon Office when it stops mangling fonts and layout for the Word documents people keep sending me. I can read them, but they don't look pretty, and I'm sure as heck not going to _write_ anything in OO while this is a concern.

Bad install? Maybe. But I've run into the problem in two unrelated *nix labs where it was installed. I suppose _both_ admins _could_ be sloppy, but they've been pretty sharp in other regards.

If I'm writing documents in *nix, I use LaTeX and send people postscript or PDF. But when I need to give someone a Word document, or bring a PowerPoint slide show to a conference, I use MS Office.

Your mileage may vary.

Re:The hole it left has been filled

[the unbeliever]

Mangled fonts are most likely the result of the writer of the document using a borked TTF font that has no equivalent under *nix, and doesn't tell the application a good alternative.

Re:*thrums fingers on the desk*

[ValourX]

Sorry -- good hosting plans are expensive. I'm looking into moving to Pair if I can afford it. In the meantime, in case this happens I code all of my articles as HTML and then use a JavaScript redirect to the "real" article in the database. So just turn JavaScript off and go to this address:

http://www.thejemreport.com/software/wplinux.php

Or just turn of JavaScipt and click here [thejemreport.com]

-Jem

Am I the only one?

[ahappli]

I keep hoping for a full office suite under linux, not just a wordprocessing program, spreadsheet, and presentation program, but also a good PIM, and desktop Database application.

I know people are going to say OpenOffice.Org, Evolution, and use MySQL. I already do, but MySQL is a little daunting and big for what I really need. Access is more what I need, something small, easy to use, and quick to set stuff up in, when you are not a DBA.

Don't get me wrong, I love OpenOffice, I use it all the time, Evolution does a great job for me (when I'm not using a web browser, or pine), but as I said the desktop Database is still for me the missing piece.

Maybe it is just me.

Re:The hole it left has been filled

[GeekBoy]

Actually the TTF support in Linux is, now, quite good. It's no ones fault that the fonts on windows are not the same as the fonts on Linux. (unless the linux user imports their windows fonts, which is fairly easy to do w/ KDE.)

I can tell you are a windows bigot, but don't be ridiculous.

Re:Irony

[ValourX]

Just turn of JavaScript and go to www.thejemreport.com/software/wplinux.php for the full article in HTML (it bypasses the database, which is now overloaded).

-Jem

Re:LaTeX

[ScottGant]

Also, using 5th and 6th color touch plates wouldn't be hard to do once CMYK comes out.

We always did 6 color PS files and broke out the 5th and 6th colors as seperate PS files (for instance putting like PMS 300 on the Cyan sep and PMS XXX on the Magenta plate). Then send them to the page assembly dept to trap them in ArtPro...

But this is all dependent on Gimp getting CMYK...once it does, all the tricks and work arounds we used to use with older versions of PS can come into play.

Could be helpfull to small shops...but who knows.

Re:Innovate, again? M$ is innovating!!!

[trewornan]

Bah, give up trolling - you're crap at it. For those that don't know look here [vcnet.com]

Re:LaTeX

[ScottGant]

I ment worked in natively into the Gimp.

Which begs to question: if they have these plug-ins already, why are they working now to includ CMYK into the Gimp now?

And yes, I knew about this already, but as you can see right in there web page: "A plugin providing rudimentary CMYK support for The GIMP"

What can it do?

* Convert an RGB image to individual CMYK layers, using specified source and destination Colour Profiles.
* Save such a collection of layers as a CMYK TIFF.
* Proof the CMYK image on the monitor. (I don't think this is currently working correctly)
* Perform a "duotone" separation on an RGB image, reducing it to just those colours achievable with red and black ink. (This feature does *not* use colour-profiles!)

What can't it do?

* Load CMYK TIFFs into individual layers. If you want to edit a CMYK image, save it in XCF format as well as CMYK TIFF, so the layers are preserved for future editing.
* Embed ICC profiles in the generated TIFF.
* Perform the "duotone" trick based on any colour other than red.

So while you're sitting pretty smug with the knowledge that thought you'd show us the way, it's still not quite what the pre-press world is looking for...sorry.

Five seconds of a little thought go a long way. Yes, CMYK is kinda sorta there for the Gimp...but "kinda sorta" doesn't cut it. Yet.

The Gimp project IS working on native CMYK editing right there...live. Give it time. I want to be able to load a CMYK TIFF, not convert it to anything, color correct it in CMYK, and then save it back out as a CMYK TIFF. I also want the ability to have 6-7-8 extra color touch plates to a file...then save it out. This plug-in doesn't do that.

But yes, it's a step in the right direction. So sorry, your 5 seconds and a little googling didn't go anywhere.

Re:The hole it left has been filled

[13Echo]

What in the hell? This is like the third or fourth troll I've read from you in this thread. Linux has FANTASTIC Truetype font support. There are just very few Truetype fonts that have a GPL license, so there aren't many that are included in Linux distributions.

http://borgerding.org/fonts.png
http://borgerdi ng.org/katana.png

Please, enlighten me with a good reason as to why the Truetype support sucks on Linux/X11.

Re:The hole it left has been filled

[Arkaein]

Possibly because although most Linux distributions ship with a great set of core fonts nowadays, they also ship with many of the older, lower quality fonts. Most Windows machines don;t have too many fugly fonts on them.

The key is likely either configuring OO in some way to select better fonts (maybe choosing better default for each font family?) or simply removing the uglier fonts from your Linux machine.

Document compatibility problems

[Trevin]

I tried the WordPerfect Office 12 trial download. The first thing I did with it was open up some (very) old documents I have which were saved with WordPerfect 5.1. Normally I would expect the formatting to change slightly because WP customarily reformats your document for the default printer. Much to my surprise, after viewing the first two pages the rest of the entire document was missing!! I tried a few other documents (each of which should have had dozens of pages), and they all showed the same problem -- only two pages came through, the rest disappeared.

By way of comparison, I regularly use WP 8, and it has never had any problem opening up WP 5.1 files.

Just for the heck of it, I also tried opening up another old document which had been saved with MS Word 6.0, since WP claims to have better Word compatibility. Well, it brought up the "Converting document" dialog box with the pages flashing yellow and white furiously ... for over five minutes. That's when I gave up and hit "Cancel". Of course, that caused WP to stop responding, so I had to give it the three-finger salute. (To be fair, WP 8 wasn't any good at opening those MS Word documents either.)

I also tried opening up a spreadsheet I had saved with Quatro Pro 8 into Quatro Pro 12. This sheet had several pages of charts attached to it. Well, the new Quatro Pro completely redid the formatting of my charts. The line styles and fonts had changed. The numeric format of the X axis labels was changed from dates ("Apr 29") to numeric codes (32756...). One of my line series which should have been scaled to the secondary Y axis was instead scaled to the primary axis. And one of the series seems to have been corrupted, because the right end of the line shot back to the left edge of the chart and made a vertical line. Even worse than losing the formatting was the fact that I couldn't fix it.

Personally, I don't care about WP being compatible with PDF, XML, or MS Word. But if it can't even remain compatible with WP's own file formats, I'm not going to upgrade.