Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ucbvax!DALAC.BITNET!BRIGHT
From: BRIGHT@DALAC.BITNET (BOB BRIGHT)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: re: WordPerfects???
Message-ID: <8801162346.AA18389@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 16 Jan 88 23:43:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: world
Organization: The ARPA Internet
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Al Gaspar <gaspar@ALMSA-1.ARPA> writes:

>I've been considering WordPerfect, and I'm getting a little confused.  It's as
>if there are two different WordPerfects. On the one hand, Pavneet Arora writes
>from Canada and says:
....
  >       Bugs are one thing - fatal bugs another.  I use the following
  >       analogy - If I approached WP and asked them to give me
  >       a copy of the software, and then told them that I would pay
  >       them in a few months i.e. whenever I could afford it, I would
  >       not expect them to hand over the package.  And yet, WP has
  >       taken money from users and then handed over a useless package
  >       without ever notifying any of its users that there are problems.
....
>On the other hand, Rich Dankert replied with glowing praise to a request for
>information on WordPerfect:
....
  >    Contrary to all the comments from user's of Word Perfect in the
  >    negative aspect, I can say that the version I got didn't have all the
  >    bugs that I had seen mentioned. In fact Word Perfect Corp. is
  >    one of the best software makers that I know of. If you OWN the
  >    program, and have a problem with it, and they have a newer version
  >    of it, they will send it to you, second day air sometimes.
....
>What's the deal here?   Are we talking about two different versions of
>WordPerfect for the ST here, is there a different version in Canada, or
>does Pavneet Arora use features that Rich Dankert doesn't?  ?  Can someone

     The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between.  The present incarnation
of WP does have a number of bugs, though few of them are really "fatal".
Most of them fall into the class of minor annoyances (such as the infamous
"key-click" problem).  One of the most serious, to my mind, is that WP
doesn't clean up after itself properly when exiting -- at least the "Canadian
version" :-) doesn't, running on a mono 1040 with nite and moustrap resident.
It frequently bombs upon exit, and when it doesn't, will often lock up
subsequent applications (such as Uniterm).  I just make sure I reboot every
time I exit WP -- no big deal, since it's not the sort of program you're
going to be using to dash off a quick note to the net.
     Word Perfect Corp. should probably be chastised slightly for not
debugging the program a little more thoroughly.  (They can make up for it,
in my books, by making the first upgrade free to current owners.)  On the
other hand, even *with* its current defects WP is by far the best word
processor available for the ST at the moment; certainly it's very far from
being "useless", as Pavneet Arora suggests.  I don't know about you, but I
don't think I could have waited much longer for a really decent word processor
for my ST.

BBB

Bob Bright <BRIGHT@DALAC.BITNET>
Philosophy Dept.
Dalhousie University
Halifax, NS  B3H 3J5