4526P@NAVPGS.BITNET (LT Scott A. Norton, USN) (08/08/87)
The Wordperfect rep spoke to the NPS Computer Club last night,
and I got a few new nuggets of information about the Amiga
version of WordPerfect.
As I previously reported, the Amiga version of WordPerfect is now
shipping. The Amiga version, 4.1, has the same functions as the
IBM version 4.1. The most current IBM version is 4.2, which has
some goodies 4.1 doesn't.
The new information I picked up last night includes the
following:
The Amiga version is expected to leap to 5.0 in the near future (
6 months to one year ). That version will incorporate bitmapped
graphics, and will break away from the IBM-PC
ASCII-character-only history of WordPerfect. Upgrades for the
IBM version run $35, and Amiga upgrades should be slightly less,
since the Amiga program has a lower list price.
The Amiga version is on 3 disks, and is not write protected.
( The rep says they only write-protect what they ship to South
America. I was aware that the international agreements on
copyright protection are not agreed to by some South American
countries, but I didn't realize this situation could make a
software house alter its policy on write-protection. )
The rep claimed the reason WordPerfect Corp has seized the
largest share of the word processing market, and is continuing to
grow towards a majority of that market, is the emphasis they
place on customer service. C= take note! WP came into the word
processing game late ( 1983, I think ) and have grabbed 30% of
the market, and look like they'll get over 50% in the next year.
And they based that growth on customer service. 150 people on
the phones full time to answer questions. How many people work
at CATS?
LT Scott A. Norton, USN
Naval Postgraduate School
Monterey, CA 93943-5018
4526P@NavPGS.BITNET
---
"George took Textcraft and threw it across the pool to
the other side, among the brush. 'What do you want of a
bad word processor, anyways?'
'I could pet it with my thumb while we walked along,'
said Lenny."
-John Steinbeck, "Of Mice and Men
and Word Processors"
manes@xanth.UUCP (Mark Manes) (08/13/87)
Hello all, tis my first post to the net. I have been reading this
news group for months, and finally I have something to offer.
I just got Word Perfect for the Amiga, it comes on four disks:
- Word Perfect Program Disk
- Speller / Theaseraus (sp?)
- Print (Printer Definitions)
- Learn
I must say that the Amiga now really has a decent word processor. It
works rather well, in fact why restrain myself? It is great!
Now for a few problems that I have found:
- I have a Fujitsu DL3400 Printer (it is a 24 pin printer)
The driver exists on the printer definition program, and
I have set the driver up correctly. Unfortunately (sp)
when I print it does not print absolutely correctly.
Fortunately for me my printer emulates a IBM Graphics
printer and this driver seems to work fine. I also had
trouble with the Citizen driver.
- I caused Word Perfect to lock up with the following
sequence:
1. Hit help key
2. Help was displayed, left help
3. Called Printer Control from menu
4. Asked for help (hit help key) no help here, so I left
5. Hit help key again, and whammo no mouse!
In case you are interested, it appears that Word Perfect does not use Amiga
Preferences information for printers, they use their own drivers, they
have 251 printers defined, and they also provide a facility for defining
printers.
Regardless, I love Word Perfect and now happily hate Scribble, TextCraft
and certainly LPD Writer...
-mark=
ST Amiga
Scribble? - Just say *NO*strovink@ssc.afit.arpa (Mark Strovink) (08/17/87)
Taking advantage of the educational discount for WordPerfect ($99), I calmed my wife about the poor performance of Amiga wordprocessors. As a word processor, WordPerfect is excellent. I am not at all tempted to use it for programming though. WordPerfect expects its libraries to be in LIBS:. It offers no way to change this. So you: A) boot the WP disk, or B) assign LIBS: WP:libs, or C) make room for the libs on you workbench disk (HAH!). Or you can buy a harddisk. WP DOES keep up with my wife's typing. Polly (my wife) uses WordPerfect on an AT at work. She is not sure she approves of the pop-up windows in the Amiga version covering her text (on the PeCe the menu is a strip at the bottom). I would not mind if WP gave you front/back gadgets on the popups (it don't). If you want a laugh, watch me multi-task with a WP popup in the way! My overall impression of WordPerfect for the Amiga so far -> it has the heart of WordPerfect, but lacks the soul of the Amiga. We think it is a very good wordprocessor and look forward to it evolving into a true amiga wordprocessor (maybe even a document processor?). Mark Strovink (strovink@afit-ab.arpa)
john13@garfield.UUCP (08/18/87)
In article <179@ssc.afit.arpa>, strovink@ssc.afit.arpa (Mark Strovink) writes: > My overall impression of WordPerfect for the Amiga so far -> it has > the heart of WordPerfect, but lacks the soul of the Amiga. Have to diagree here. The "iconify" gadgets on the windows, intelligent use of overlays, scroll bars, multiple windows and in the case of the print spooler multiple tasks, make it similar in interface to the best Amiga-ized programs I've used. As for pop-up requestors and gadgets without depth arrangers, they only appear when you are actually doing something within the program. The 80% of the time that the program is waiting around, they aren't in the way at all. And don't forget, if the other program you are using has a window-to-front gadget, you don't need a window-to-back gadget on everything else. John -- "She's sort of a 'pit baby', with interlocking jaws. We feed her on chicken parts." "But baby-fighting has been outlawed, hasn't it?" -- Tracy Ullman describing her infant daughter to David Letterman
rich@lakesys.UUCP (Rich Dankert) (03/20/88)
[] A line eater born every day.....
After reading the message posted in another newsgroup, and in turn posting
the message to this newsgroup, I went and took the sunject to the rest of
the excecutive board of Mil*Atari Ltd. (Milwaukee Area Atari Users Group),
at which time we set out to get the confirmation\denial direct from
Word Perfect Corp.
The following is the direct --> Offical <-- response from Word Perfects
perfects person in charge of marketing for the Atari computers, as well
as the OFFICIAL response from the TOP of the corporation.
The response brings great releif after the previous message, and also
shows exactly what a well run corporation should be like. I would hope (as
well as others) that other corporations would follow suite to WP's policy.
Apoligies to any that had near cardiac arrest from the first message. The
following should dispell and destroy any possibe WRONG rumors to abound.
Word Perfects response follows......
----------
Category 18, Topic 16
Message 15 Thu Mar 17, 1988
I've spent the last two hours reading the messages on this thread
regarding our impending departure from the Atari market, and I would like
to clarify our position.
First of all, we have not announced that we are withdrawing from the
Atari market and have no current plans to do so. We DO have some
concerns but they are not limited exclusively to the Atari market.
Recent events in the Atari market have simply focused our attention, once
again, on these concerns.
We have long held the philosophy that copy protection is an unacceptable
solution to the piracy problems. We believe that most people are honest
and we feel that it is inappropriate to penalize them for the actions of
the smaller group of dishonest people. I too have felt the frustration
of having a copy-protected disk become "unreadable," not to mention the
inconvenience to hard disk owners. The decision to make this a corporate
policy was made several years ago when we were contemplating what we
should do about the piracy problems in the IBM PC market.
We have had a number of problems with our release for the Atari machines.
It WAS released too early and there WERE a lot of bugs. As soon as we
realized what we had done, we immediately took what steps we could to
alleviate the situation. Our programmers focused all of their attention
on the bugs and worked nights and weekends to find and fix the problems.
We promised free updates to all registered users (and we wouldn't exclude
those who didn't send in their cards as long as they can show proof of
purchase) as soon as we feel that the version is clean. We provide toll-
free support to help our customers through any difficulties they might
encounter and to help us identify problems with our software. This is
nothing different from what we do in any of our markets if we find
problems and I feel it is indicative of our commitment to the Atari
market. I wouldn't want to approach it any differently.
Another serious consideration for us has been the suggested list price.
We are faced with a dilemma here. WordPerfect on the IBM PC has a
suggested list of $495. WordPerfect on the Atari has virtually the same
set of features and the same amount of power; yet, we set the price for
the Atari at $395 reflecting the fact that products on the Atari sell
typically for much less money. We have always given good margins to our
distributors and felt that the market would make its own adjustments.
For example, WP on IBM PCs can be purchased through mail order outlets
for as little as $199. We set the suggested list for the Atari version
at $395 feeling that the "street price" would probably settle in at
around $190, based on what had happened in the PC market. This is still
pricey but we were after the high end of the market and we felt that the
features justified it.
Perhaps the high price has hurt our sales levels but, if anything, the
volume expectations for Atari sales would dictate a higher price. We
ship approximately 50,000 IBM PC WP units per month. We knew from the
outset that the Atari market was not nearly that large but we felt that
the Atari was a natural extension of our policy to support a broad
platform of machines and that it could be a viable market for us. We
still believe that.
Someone suggested that we drop our price and eliminate toll-free support
to cut our costs. That may appear to make sense in this market but it is
inconsistent with our way of doing business. I personally do not feel
that reducing our level of service would help us in this or any other
market.
Finally, what are we doing about piracy? Our legal people pursue pirates
at every possible opportunity. Obviously, we are forced to focus on the
bigger offenders, but we do what we can. We are also active in
organizations such as the Software Publishers Association whose charter
is to stop piracy. The fact of the matter is that we simply can't go
after each and every case, so we need the help of people like you. For
the most part, I like what I've read tonight. I see a high level of
concern among the people in this forum about the piracy issues and the
reputation of Atari users. I'm not convinced that Atari users are any
worse than any other kind of user and many of your messages reinforce my
confidence. However, we can't simply let the issue drop. I feel that it
is mostly a matter of education. There are many people who do not
understand the problem. When educated, they generally choose to do the
right thing.
To reiterate, we have no current plans to "pull out of" the Atari market.
If, at some future date, we were to make the decision to abandon the
Atari or any other market, it would not be based solely on the fact that
we had found our software on 3 BBS systems. The main consideration would
be "can we do our style of business in this market and be profitable?"
Of course, piracy is one factor that can seriously affect profitability.
Due to a prior commitment, I will be unable to join in the CO tomorrow
night but I will be very interested in seeing a log "after the fact." I
hope that this information has helped.
By way of information, we expect to release a "clean" version for the
Atari next week. Registered users will receive an update automatically.
If you have purchased WordPerfect and did not send in your card, give us
a call and we'll take care you.
Dan Lunt, Vice President of Marketing, WordPerfect Corporation*s
Category 18, Topic 16
Message 20 Thu Mar 17, 1988
JR.WILSON [WPCorp] at 12:30 EST
I started to reply to this topic about three times yesterday, but every
time deceided to wait for the official reply that I knew would be coming.
Now that it's here, and you know the scoop from the top, I'll let you
know my feelings. Since Atari WP represents the sum total of the last
two years of my life, along with the rest of our programming and testing
departments, I would hate to see it pulled for _any_ reason. We still
have big plans in store for the ST, and intend to see them through if at
all possible.
Atari has been working on an anti-piracy campagin over the past weeks
which, I believe, can go a long way to help the reputation of Atari
owners. Education is the key, both within our ranks (_none_ of us can
condone stealing software; don't look the other way, but address the
issue!) and without, where preconceived notions of Ataris and their
owners stifle the ability of the system(s). The reputation won't change
if we aren't willing to put forth the effort to see it happen.
Finally, I want to thank everyone here on GEnie for helping us get rid of
the bugs and making WordPerfect a better product for everyone. Next
time, we should have enough experience to prevent a buggy product from
hitting the market.
Jeffrey R. Wilson
Manager, Atari Development
WordPerfect Corporation
----------
Now *before anyones thinks of flaming me, be advised that we (Mil-Atari)
set up a new topic on GEnie, just to get the facts. If you wuold still
prefer to flame, please send hate mail etc. via elm, so we don't waste
time\effort within the newsgroup!
Now that the TRUTH is out, we get on to better things...
-rich
UUCP: {Ihnp4,uwvax}!uwmcsd1!lakesys!rich
--
Disclaimer: The words, expressions posted here are my own.....
Nothing is ever so bad that it can't be made worse by trying to fix it
-- Law of the Hackerruslan@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Robin C. LaPasha) (02/03/89)
Major word - oops! Well, I discovered that my previously reported details about WordPerfect, well, weren't. The student discount is apparently still around; I'd heard about a _local_ problem and not a national policy. And, the problem of spacing endnotes I mentioned as a bug is actually a moot point; if you set the _footnotes_ differently, the program goes ahead and does the change to _endnotes_ if it can't find footnotes. (Still, it took several times calling to find somebody who knew that trick.) When I asked about future stuff, she (tech on the phone) said that there'd be a "maintenance release" in a couple of weeks, and that the goodies would be in 6.0 next year. -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=- Robin LaPasha |Deep-Six your ruslan@ecsvax.uncecs.edu |files with VI! ;^) ;^) ;^)
a23@mindlink.UUCP (Joel Murray) (04/06/89)
> grau375 writes: > > MSG-ID: <1989Apr6.101639.3887@watcsc.uucp> > Posted: 6 Apr 89 15:16:36 GMT > > Org. : University of Waterloo Computer Science Club > > Does anybody know of or heard of any rumours about WordPerfect 5.x > for the Amiga computer? At school we have 'wonderful' PC's running > WP5.0 and it blows away the 4.1 version on the Amiga. With the graphics > available on the world's best personal computer, where is the better > word pro?? > > thanks, Mike The talk on CompuServe (from WPCorp itself) is that WordPerfect _6.0_ is in development for the Amiga and should be released some time later this year (although I personally believe that WP 6.0 will be available next year). // /// Usenet: uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a23 \X/oel ///urray CIS: 73200,3117
grau375@watcsc.uucp (Michael Grau) (04/06/89)
Does anybody know of or heard of any rumours about WordPerfect 5.x
for the Amiga computer? At school we have 'wonderful' PC's running
WP5.0 and it blows away the 4.1 version on the Amiga. With the graphics
available on the world's best personal computer, where is the better
word pro??
thanks, Mikessd@sugar.hackercorp.com (Scott Denham) (04/08/89)
In article <1989Apr6.101639.3887@watcsc.uucp>, grau375@watcsc.uucp (Michael Grau) writes: > Does anybody know of or heard of any rumours about WordPerfect 5.x > for the Amiga computer? ... A regional manager for WordPerfect Corporation did a demo at our Amiga user's group meeting last night (April 6th). This question was, of course one of the first he got hit with. The answer was.... Yes and No. He said there will not be a "5.x" on the Amiga, but there WILL be a "6.x". They are skipping 5, because they have reserved 6 as the starting point for versions that feature a "graphical" user interface. So what you get in Amiga WP 6.x will be like PC WP 5.0, plus a graphical interface. As a matter of interest, he said 6.x for the PC will be an OS/2 product (implying NOT-DOS???). With all the stuff that's in there already, I can imagine they would be hard pressed to go much farther in 640K. Scott Denham Houston, TX
ekins@ingr.com (Brian Ekins) (04/10/89)
>Does anybody know of or heard of any rumours about WordPerfect 5.x >for the Amiga computer? I was at a trade show recently and asked some Word Perfect representatives that question. They said that because of the amount of sales of WP for the Amiga they curently only have one programmer working part time on the Amiga version. This may not be totally true however. The people I talked to were from the Atlanta regional office of WP so their information may not be completely accurate in regards to develpment activities in Utah. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | __ o Brian Ekins | | _ </- Intergraph Corp. 205-772-7633 | | /> ...uunet!ingr!b17d!ekins!brian (UUCP) | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
tim@mcrware.UUCP (Tim Harris) (04/11/89)
On CompuServe a while back there was a discussion on WP5.0 for the Amiga. The word that came down from WP was that they are currently working on 5.0 for the Mac and they sort of use the Mac version to generate the Amiga version. They seemed to think the Mac version was going to take quite a while and said not to expect WP5.0 for the Amiga in less than a year. I guess it boils down to don't hold your breath. Tim Harris
brian@db.UUCP (Brian Ekins) (04/13/89)
>I was at a trade show recently and asked some Word Perfect representatives >that question. They said that because of the amount of sales of WP for the >Amiga they curently only have one programmer working part time on the Amiga >version. This may not be totally true however. The people I talked to were >from the Atlanta regional office of WP so their information may not be >completely accurate in regards to develpment activities in Utah. This is a follow up to my original posting above. I have since talked to Word Perfect and the previous information I received was incorrect. They are working hard on the Amiga software. They have eight programmers working on Word Perfect and some other products for the Amiga. As a Word Perfect owner that is good news to me. Sorry about the misinformation I originally passed along. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | __ o Brian Ekins | | _ </- Intergraph Corp. 205-772-7633 | | /> ...uunet!ingr!b17d!ekins!brian (UUCP) | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
ockenden@prlhp1.prl.philips.co.uk (Paul T Ockenden) (04/13/89)
In article <1989Apr6.101639.3887@watcsc.uucp> grau375@watcsc.UUCP (Michael Grau) writes: >Does anybody know of or heard of any rumours about WordPerfect 5.x >for the Amiga computer? At school we have 'wonderful' PC's running >WP5.0 and it blows away the 4.1 version on the Amiga. With the graphics >available on the world's best personal computer, where is the better >word pro?? I hear on the grape vine that WP 5.n *WON'T* be released for the 'miga - instead the 'miga is going to be used as a test bed for WP 6.x before launching it for the PC. If this is true then three cheers for Word Perfect Corp. - Maybe with their lead some of the other heavyweights will start to look at the machine. -- Paul Ockenden uucp : ....uunet!prlb2!prlhp1!ockenden Software type person ....mcvax!ukc!prlhp1!ockenden Somewhere in England. janet : ockenden%prlhp1@uk.ac.ukc "Blah blah blah......... (Pizza Killers!)" bix : paulock cix : PaulO
jemmrich@carroll1.cc.edu (John Emmrich) (12/06/89)
Does anybody out there know if there will be a new version of Word Perfect? I heard that there would be and then there wouldn't be. Last I heard, there would be a new version. Can anyone out there confirm this? Thanx.
tim@mcrware.UUCP (Tim Harris) (12/06/89)
In article <931@carroll1.cc.edu> jemmrich@carroll1.cc.edu (John Emmrich) writes: > > Does anybody out there know if there will be a new version >of Word Perfect? I heard that there would be and then there >wouldn't be. Last I heard, there would be a new version. Can >anyone out there confirm this? Thanx. According to WordPerfect Corp. they are not totally giving up on the Amiga. They are still making updates to the 4.1 version of WP for it, they are at about 4.1.9+ right now, the latest upgrade was just a few months ago. I think they are waiting to see what is happening with Commodore, if the Christmas campaign is successful and the Amiga starts selling I bet we see the new WP when they finish up the Mac version of 6.0 but if the ad campaign fails and sales stay the same or dwindle I doubt very much if you will ever see any new development from WP for the Amiga. Tim