bob@imspw6.UUCP (Bob Burch) (01/09/89)
From Ted Holden, HTE Nobody gets to a point of near total dominance in one of the two or three most competitive niches in PC software by being anywhere remotely close to 10 worst. It is true that there are an occasional bug and fluke in 5.0, but 5.0 appears to be an interrim product with which WordPerfect Corp. attempted to bite off a very great deal, so much so in fact that there's almost no way anyone could have gotten it all perfect at one fell swoop. With 5.0, they left the realm of compatibility with the first generation of PCs and moved into the realm of today's hardware, ega/vga, fonts, graphics, and the whole nine yards. Several of the key things which establish WordPerfects market dominance are nearly invisible features which you really have to think about a little to appreciate, and include, at least, the following: 1. WordPerfect's file structure is simply more intelligent than that of any other wordprocessor (at least, that I know of), and contributes to the great speed of the product. WordPerfect file codes are entirely symmetric i.e. the program itself can see and interpret them properly coming or going ( scrolling up or down) and requires no secondary system of pointers or seperate formats as do at least half what I've seen. 2. WordPerfect has the only real spelling checker in the industry. Try keying in something like "aaaan elefent stteeppeed ooon a bigge blaeckke buuug and the bigg blaaq buuug bleead thiickke blakk blooood" on WordPerfect and then invoke the spell-checker... no problem. Next, try the same thing with MultiMate, MS Word, Q1, or anything else out there and watch the fun. 3. Most PC word processors come with about 30 printer drivers; if yours ain't one of theirs, tough shit. WordPerfect comes with an assortment of about 250 printer drivers and a damned reasonable little system for constructing printer drivers from scratch for exotic printers. Try using any of the other vendors' systems for constructing printer drivers. This feature is immensely valuable for large organizations which perforce must utilize numerous printers bought for different projects over a period of years (i.e., a 5-7 year gap in technology from oldest to newest) and yet would benefit from having the same word processor used throughout. Ted Holden HTE
tbetz@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Betz) (01/10/89)
Quoth bob@imspw6.UUCP (Bob Burch) in <213@imspw6.UUCP>: |From Ted Holden, HTE | | With 5.0, they left the realm of compatibility with the first |generation of PCs and moved into the realm of today's hardware, ega/vga, |fonts, graphics, and the whole nine yards. I agree with your overall statement, I just want to pick one nit: 5.0 works fine on an XT-clone (we use it on an old Leading Edge, using its old built-in Herc emulation)... a little slow, but it works fine, displays fonts in Page Preview mode wonderfully well. Try using Word 4.0 on the same hardware... most unsatisfactory! -- "Big Bob says he's getting tired of you saying he |"Do you think God lets doesn't really exist." - Fat Little Nerdy Kid - | you plea bargain?" Tom Betz - ZCNY - Yonkers, NY - 914-375-1514 |"I'd worry more about ...cmcl2!dasys1!tbetz OR ...uunet!dasys1!tbetz | your mom." - C & H
peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele) (01/10/89)
While WordPerfect is a very solid product, give me a WYSIWYG editor anyday.
A page preview feature (like WordPerfect's) just doesn't cut it when it comes
to using multiple fonts. For that reason I do all my personal wordprocessing
on the Mac (mostly in Word). I'm looking forward to WfW by Microsoft. If it's
as good as the ads say it is, WordPerfect had better look out...
--
Peter Steele, Microcomputer Applications Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 (902)542-2201x121
UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}!dalcs!aucs!Peter
BITNET: Peter@Acadia Internet: Peter%Acadia.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDUrogerson@PEDEV.Columbia.NCR.COM (rogerson) (01/12/89)
I have not tried Word on the same hardware, but I have tried it on a Tandy 1000A running at 4Mhz. It runs just fine. You of course need a harddisk, but you also need one of those for Word Perfect. The best way to use Word is of course in the character mode, and then switch to graphics when you care finished. My biggest complain to Word is that the interface is really non-standard and that if it was more normal then the average user could get more out of the program. At $99.00 educational discount I still think it is better than anything Word Perfect has to offer. Word Processors are basically a matter of opinion. The best one is the one you are used to. No one uses or even needs all of the features found in either Word Perfect or Microsoft Word. This means that for some uses one of them is better than the other. The fact that both of these products are consistantly the "Best" in magazine reviews shows that neither are the worst of 88. The competition between the companies results in the user being the winner.* -----Dale Rogerson----- *Unless you take into account the amount of money you must spend on upgrading either product plus the time involved. There are alot of people who are NOT upgrading to Word Perfect 5 because they do not need some of the new features. I think Word Perfect is going to continue supporting both versions.
rmeyer@XAIT.Xerox.COM (Richard Meyer) (01/13/89)
One contributor noted: "Wordperfect lets you choose color to display the various fonts -- just look at display/fonts/attributes" -- You will note that this does not work for font changes -- for example, if you switch from 12 to 10-pitch font (rather than using "large"). In addition, if your printer definition maps font changes, the same thing happens (e.g., you may loose the underline indication). In complex situations, where one uses styles all the times to switch among a number of fonts, there is indeed no easy way to detect and verify the correct style use on the screen while typing. One would need to use "displaying codes", or "preview". Nevertheless, looking at comparably priced products, running on the same kind of hardware, WP 5.0 is a good deal.