Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!ames!apple!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!pucc!BVAUGHAN
From: BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Barbara Vaughan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: World's Best Word Processor?
Message-ID: <8540@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 31 May 89 20:19:09 GMT
References: <221510@<1989May10> <111700085@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> <555@dvnspc1.Dev.Unisys.COM> <1362@lzfme.att.com>
Reply-To: BVAUGHAN@pucc.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 37

In article <1362@lzfme.att.com>, jwi@lzfme.att.com (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ) writes:

>In article <555@dvnspc1.Dev.Unisys.COM>, gary@dvnspc1.Dev.Unisys.COM (Gary Barrett) writes:
>
>> I understand that WordPerfect is fully featured and widely used, but
>> does that make it the BEST?  I must be missing something.  I have seen
>> people fighting with WP's less than intuitive user interface time and
>> time again.  Excuse me for this flame, but that interface is TERRIBLE.
>
>> Please, someone out there tell me that there is some magic secret
>> (other than key macros) that can make WP acceptable to beginning
>> users.
>
>WordPerfect is intended for the professional business user (several hours
>every day), not for the novice.

My daughters, aged 12 and 16, have both been using WP for all their
school reports for several years. I didn't teach them how to use it
at all. One of them spent some time with the tutorial; the other just
tried commands from the template. My older daughter has become a very
sophisticated user, creating macros and doing chem labs that have dia-
grams and tables. I would think that if my kids can learn it on their
own, practically anyone can.

>One other thing. If you only use the basic subset of WordPerfect,
>you won't have many function keys to worry about. Basically just
>Print (Shift-f7), Exit (f7), Search (f2), replace (Alt-f2), spell
>(Ctrl-f2), block (Alt-f4) and move (Ctrl-f4).
>
I agree; I use a limited subset of WP. Anything beyond my 15 word
vocabulary sends me to the manual, which is a good one. The most
difficult thing was setting it up to work with my printer. By the
way, I've upgraded to WP 5.0 and it's really worth the cost.  I
still use KEDIT to write programs, but I prefer WP for everything
else.

Barbara Vaughan