Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!rochester!rit!ultb!lmb7421 From: lmb7421@ultb.UUCP (L.M. Barstow) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Re: A visit to WordPerfect Corp. Summary: WordPerfect GS hides a lot... Message-ID: <987@ultb.UUCP> Date: 29 Jun 89 14:53:36 GMT References: <653dcanfield@yvax.byu.edu> Reply-To: lmb7421@ultb.isc.rit.edu.UUCP (L.M. Barstow (674SPS)) Organization: Wandering Damage, Cosmo Police, Psi division Lines: 83 In article <653dcanfield@yvax.byu.edu> dcanfield@yvax.byu.edu writes: > > >I must admit that in the IBM market they are very impressive. The IBM market is where WordPerfect got their start, and it is still their stronghold. This is not a cop-out before I've even begun...when I talked to the folks from WP at AppleFest, they seemed quite sure of two things...one - that WordPerfect Corp. was not going to sell a product more powerful than WP-IBM 5.0 for a smaller price, and two - that they weren't planning on raising the price for the Apple series of computers. Now, this presents a problem...the GS version of WP is already powerful (almost as powerful as WP 4.x for the IBM, minus column splitting). With a few minor revisions, they could easily make the GS version *much* better than it is (and they are putting as much in as they can without arousing too much suspicion in the Marketing division.) > >While there I thought I would check out the apple products division and see >what was there. >I was however, extremely disappointed with the II series product. One >of the support people showed me WordPerfect on the GS, talk about slow to come >up I assume you're talking about comparing the boot speed to an ExpressLoaded AppleWorks GS package...WordPerfect takes well under a minute to load on my machine (v2.0), and regular AppleWorksGS takes too many minutes... >isn't near the program that Appleworks is. This leads to what I thought most >disappointing. The program is just a word processor and nothing more. It does >not use what the GS is known for - graphics and sound - at all. I looked >through the menus a little and to be honest, I don't know why anyone would ever >buy and use WordPerfect instead of Appleworks. Now for the tricky part...Having seen the new verion of WordPerfect at AppleFest (v2.1e?), I can safely say this...the menus you see are *VERY* deceptive...they hide half of WP-GS's capability...there are pop-out menus for two or three features, and some other features still use dialog boxes to select options...in general, if you can find it on the IBM v4.x, you can usually find in in the GS...as for the BWABL (Bells, Whistles, and Blinking Lights), WordPerfect was never one for fanciness. The product gets the job done, and well. As for comparing it to Appleworks, well, I've seen AppleWorks GS, and I'm not impressed with its Word Processing features...Sorry, but it doesn't quite rate the praise that WP-GS does. As for the other things, the graphics (i.e.graphs, etc.), IBM v 5.0 WordPerfect does some of that from what I understand; but, until WPCorp decides to let the Apple][GS programmers have at, they won't ever release a product as full-featured as v5.0. The one single feature I've found most helpful so far is the ability to re-define the command keypresses. My tastes in keyCommands is apparently rather strange, and I've re-defined a number of them. Now I don't have to think or hunt for key Commands, nor do I have to use the menus (wasting precious time with the furry rodent :) much. Other than that, well, the Thesaurus is very complete and very useful, as is the SpellChecker (although I admit that it is SLOW - it *does* find what you want, and usually (unless you spell oddly) it finds the right word on the first or second try - more than I can say for most spellers). I also don't have to look at a "simulated page" (black writing on white background) - my single biggest gripe against the "Mac" movement, as I can change the colors to suit my needs. Okay, fine...these are the trivial things...they are the ones I need right now...however, I plan on doing quite a bit of writing in the future, and for that, WordPerfect will be incredilby useful...full merge (not seperate), full page, line, and style control (unless you want to get fancy and do shadow or something silly on a LaserWriter, and even then you can make WordPerfect do that with a little teaching) wherever I want to put it (The whole document isn't affected unless I want it to be, unlike the vast majority of word processors I've seen/used), and other features I haven't found yet because I haven't needed them yet. > >Anyway, I was just curious if there was anyone out there who is using >WordPerfect on the AppleII series and what they like about it. Okay, I hope that was a start...sorry if it sounds like I'm defending the product, but AppleWorks was never one of my favorite products, mostly because of its incomplete utility (I don't use the database much, and the spreadsheet hardly at all, and the word processing section is not as complete as it should be). > >Dan >Dcanfield@byuvax >Danc@yvax.edu -- Les Barstow |Bitnet: LMB7421@RITVAX| "I can read your mind, Phoenix rising... |UUCP: | and you should be From the ashes of a lost hope,| ...rutgers!rochester!| ashamed of yourself!" To a sky of clear blue. | ritcv!ultb!lmb7421| "Stop reading my mind!"