Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?

Posted Aug 18, 2015 12:31 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much? by pboddie
Parent article: Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team

> > I'm not sure what "intuitive" means in this context, but if you mean "easy to understand for people who had access to desktop machines in the '90s'", then, sure, the LO-style toolbar is more intuitive. That's a rapidly diminishing market, though.

> Easy to understand for people who had access to desktop machines before the ribbon, perhaps. I personally strongly dislike this "forget about your VIC-20, grandpa, we'll have ten people to replace you shortly" attitude that has become even more popular in the age of outsourcing and "swipe to know what to swipe" user interfaces.

And going back to that era, I had access to two word processors, one of which I loved (WordMARC Composer, otherwise known as Pr1meWord). When WordPerfect came on the scene, I rapidly dropped the other two *from* *choice*. And if you're talking about a UI, it didn't really have one - it gave you a "blank sheet of paper" and let you get on with it!

It also had this wonderful feature that *let you specify* where you wanted things on the page! So you could do things properly, lay out the document in your head or on scrap paper, then *get it right* in the word processor. I don't know whether Word has improved or not, but it always used to lay things out how *it* thought best, usually moving all your graphics on to the wrong page, and things like that! (Writer, unfortunately, feels too much like a Word clone to me, so I don't like that either). Sadly, all of Windows, Linux, and hardware has moved on and my ancient copies of WordPerfect no longer run. I can't afford to shell out for a new copy, and ever since Corel rewrote it as a Windows program (v9), it's been a lot naffer anyway. I need to try and get Dosbox, Win3.11, and WP6.1 working and then I'll be happy as larry again :-)

The trouble with so many programs is they are designed FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THEIR JOB. That's why WordPerfect was great - it was designed for *trained* *typists*, and they were very productive. That's why Word was such rubbish (and partly why it won out) - it was designed for people *who* *didn't* *know* *how* *to* *type* - so it appealed to managers who thought it was wonderful and foisted it on everyone else. And which is why the people who CAN type, HATE it.

Cheers,
Wol

Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?

Posted Aug 18, 2015 15:32 UTC (Tue) by markhb (guest, #1003) [Link]

WordPerfect's UI was the infamous template that fit above the F-keys and told you what Fx, Shift-Fx, Alt-Fx and Ctrl-Fx did. But it's still alive today, so not bad for a program that had its beginnings on Data General's AOS/VS.

Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?

Posted Aug 20, 2015 6:16 UTC (Thu) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (3 responses)

It's possible to get WP8 to run on modern Linux. I have it running on Slackware64-current. I don't use it; I just have it as a curiosity. But it does run.

It's not particularly easy to get working. You have to install a battery of ancient 32-bit glibc libraries and disable ASLR. But it's definitely possible, and, if you really love WordPerfect that much, it's probably worth the one-time futzing necessary to make it work.

And yes, WP6.1 in Win31 in DOSBox also works -- or maybe it was DOSEMU, can't say for sure. I've dealt with WordPerfect as the single biggest problem in a non-techie's switch to Linux, so I know all the various ways to get that piece of crap (sorry, still annoyed years later) running. The user rejected the native Linux version (too different from Windows version), modern WP running under WINE (occasional glitches), and WP6.1 in Win31 in some DOS emulator (too different from MODERN Windows version).

After years of WINE glitches, the ultimate solution was modern WP in not-modern Windows in VirtualBox. Not a single complaint since. You may find happiness with WinXP in VirtualBox running WP X9 or whatever they're up to now as well. Try everything, man; use what you love.

I personally stopped using word processors for anything after discovering LaTeX. But to each his own.

Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?

Posted Aug 21, 2015 9:23 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

:-)

WP fanatics probably should switch to Latex :-) I'll stop evangelising WP when you pry Reveal Codes from my cold dead hands (or you implement it, PROPERLY, in some other word processor!)

The problem is no other Word Processor I know has this window where you can edit AS TEXT, and see the gui changes appear. When I use WP, I work in Reveal Codes all the time (yet my wife hates it, and not surprisingly is quite happy in Word - because I can't see what (or more importantly, why) Word is doing what it does, I hate that).

And as I said, WordPerfect just lets me place anything I want, exactly where I want. If I want something *exactly* 1cm from the top and left margins, I can tell WP to put it there! It'll sort everything else around that, rather than sorting that around everything else! (As Word seems to do all the time :-(

Cheers,
Wol

Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?

Posted Aug 23, 2015 4:29 UTC (Sun) by gomadtroll (guest, #11239) [Link] (1 responses)

Whoopi, WP8 :-) My use of WP8 is a Virtualbox instance of NT4 and WP8 OfficePro, 96mb of memory (not bad for an OS + Office Suite), it is just another application running on my workstation, not bad for an OS + Office s.

AOO vs LO, I really don't get most discussions..mostly poltical, not real workflow comparisons.

I use AOO because of its better document fidelity with my archived data, something LO did not give the same priority. That was my decision, LO does lots of other things well, none that would compel me to use LO over AOO.

I have both installed, the shining new LO5 just in case someone is brain dead enough to send me a ooxml doc instead of "exporting/publish to/pdf..

greg

Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much?

Posted Aug 23, 2015 10:33 UTC (Sun) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

I don't this reply to sound like the typical "file bugs please" response that I'm sure you've seen before, but I do wonder if you had raised any of the backwards-compatibility issues you discovered with the LO developers. But I understand doing so can be really time consuming--particularly when your only reproduction case is in a document you might not want to send to the developers.