The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsI hate WordPerfect. I hate WordPerfect. I HATE WORDPERFECT.
Seriously, I've never come across a computer program so incredibly maddening when you are attempting to perform what should be simple tasks.
Unfortunately, it's the default word processor at my office so most of the office documents are on WordPerfect.
Just some of my frustrations:
*I'll have a document with numbered paragraphs. Being slightly OCD, I'll have it so that none of the paragraphs are broken up in between pages. This requires me to have to space out the paragraphs to move them down to the next page. But then when I go to print, WordPerfect will somehow magically screw up my work, and all my paragraphs print broken up.
*The slightest click towards the edges of the page screws up the margins.
*Cut and pastes are always screwed up. And not just cut and pastes from other word processors. I'm talking about cut and pastes between WordPerfect documents themselves. The font sizes don't transfer, the line spacing doesn't transfer, the tabs don't transfer. If I cut and paste something from one Word document to another Word document, it looks exactly the same. But if I try the same with WordPerfect, it never transfers as it should. Never.
It's gotten to the point where any brand new documents I author I simply do in Word. Word might not be perfect but compared to WordPerfect, it's like night and day.
intaglio
(8,170 posts)Free, pretty effective and reads all file formats. Definitely the one to use to avoid paying the fee for the MS Office Suite
Reviews
Tech Radar
PC World
Infoworld which also includes info on Libre World, of which I had never heard before. You might want to check that as well as it too is free.
raptor_rider
(1,014 posts)I love open office!!
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)They started bundling all sorts of crapware with their downloads-some of which is a real pain to remove.
snot
(10,475 posts)Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Too many places only have Word. Word really is a useless piece of junk if you need to insert charts and images, do complicated formatting, etc.
The WordPerfect Reveal Codes are worth the price alone.
One way to avoid printing problems is to make sure you work with the printer you will use selected. Otherwise, if you change the printer just before printing, it may mess up the formatting. Happens a lot printing to PDF, so make sure PDF is the selected printer from the start. Learned this the hard way on 800+ page manuals where a one line slippage throws off everything and started me throwing keyboards, etc.
Good luck.
elleng
(129,800 posts)tho its been years since I similarly wrote 800+ page documents with WordPerfect!
Xyzse
(8,217 posts)Though, I must admit, I also have photoshop, so I can format it to good effect.
GoCubsGo
(32,053 posts)I haven't written manuals with it, but I have been using it since the late 1980s on a frequent basis. I never had any issues with it. Not even printing problems. "Reveal Codes" is the best thing about it. It's great for finding things like extra spaces and other errors.
And, I agree wholeheartedly about Word. I detest it more than words can say. The only time I ever liked it was the original version I used on the original Mac. It wasn't long after that when they started complicating it, and turning it into a perverse, mostly-useless mess. I hate that so many places have only Word as their word processor.
Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)GeorgeGist
(25,293 posts)hamsterjill
(15,198 posts)We use "Word" at our offices now because of the compatability with other Microsoft programs. I miss WordPerfect!
clarice
(5,504 posts)The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,070 posts)If you want a really demonic program, try structured FrameMaker. That one had me screaming and throwing things.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Where do you work? Some retro diner?
Frank Cannon
(7,570 posts)Are the VisiCalc people still around? I've been having trouble getting it to work with VIRUSCAN.
GreenPartyVoter
(72,376 posts)Yavin4
(35,310 posts)elleng
(129,800 posts)Tommy_Carcetti
(43,053 posts)whistler162
(11,155 posts)The legal secretary in our small legal department refused to give up her clickety keyboard and Word Perfect.
Yavin4
(35,310 posts)The new paralegals have no idea what it is. They've never seen one before. Honestly.
EnviroBat
(5,290 posts)That they still made Word Perfect.
I thought it went the way of PFS First Choice...
Populist_Prole
(5,364 posts)Most of it as he cheered on the ebbing rust belt/industrial activity in favor of PC software and financialization.
I reflexively developed a pathological dislike for that product, "sleep number" beds, and Bose wave radios.
RebelOne
(30,947 posts)Then the company switched our PCs to Macs with Word. I hated Word and we all wanted Word Perfect back. I became accustomed to Word but still hated it.
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)Wish I still had it...Word sucks.
Tribalceltic
(1,000 posts)Ahhhh.... the days of 40 character displays, we don need no steenkin spell check. For the younger crowds, 40 characters is about halfway across the paper. I did a 40 page paper on my families genealogy, couple of hours to write, weeks to format. Then put it on a dot matrix single sheet printer. Weeks to print 10 copies.
I moved from Wordperfect to Word and Office when it came out and never looked back. The one thing that I liked about Wordperfect was that the help system was alphabetical. I just went from a-z and found out what it could do, then I knew what to look up when I needed it.
Of course when Mom and Dad sent me off to college, it was with a brand new Smith Corona portable manual typewriter.
Oh the good ole days......... and hey you kids get off of my lawn......
monmouth3
(3,871 posts)lululu
(301 posts)i got one from my parents for high sch0ool graduation, and someone stole it. I feel bad about that to this day.
Skittles
(152,918 posts)I detest the assumptions it makes
avebury
(10,941 posts)No too crazy about Microsoft Word. I can get my documents to look exactly the way I want them to work in Word Perfect. Unfortunately, we are stuck stuck with Word now.
WorseBeforeBetter
(11,441 posts)I haven't used WordPerfect ages, but I loved it and knew all the little tricks. Plus, Reveal Codes? Awesome!
mainer
(12,010 posts)I miss WP. OK, so I'm Stone Age.
Paulie
(8,462 posts)What I really miss though is XyWrite.
Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)I don't understand your distaste.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)It will open older versions documents unlike Word.
It does a far better job of converting to a Word document than the other way around.
It doesn't cost an arm and a leg, my OEM of X5 was $14.
It will open practically any form of word processing document, unlike Word-which won't even open older versions of its own documents.
Still Blue in PDX
(1,999 posts)WP for DOS. There was nothing better for being in control of how your text was going to look when it printed out. Of course now that everything is electronic and interfacing with multiple computer programs my life as a transcription QA person can be made into a personal hell by an old-timey MT who puts in hard returns to make a printed document pretty.
I didn't know WP still existed. It seemed like every update made it more MSWord-like but it didn't work.
Bosonic
(3,746 posts)It's sorta the linux of document creation.
i.e. initially intimidating, but very flexible and powerful. And free.
http://www.latex-project.org/
hunter
(38,240 posts)...Create the document with LaTeX.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX
Those were my first word processors.
I wrote a novel in college using vi. Later I offloaded all my files when my continued presence on the university network was very well past it's expiration date and getting a little sketchy. A few years ago I converted my flawed novel to an ePub an about an hour. Most of that was finding public domain art for the cover.
Later I used PaperClip on my Atari 800 machines. A trivial script will turn any of these PaperClip (or AtariWriter) documents into HTML or anything else I want.
The Atari 800 was the first affordable home computer with a decent keyboard. (Not to be confused with the Atari 400, or the later game oriented Ataris.) Orson Scot Card, back when he was still human and not some perverse gay-bashing Mormon demigod, used an Atari 800 too.
None of my documents are WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet, they are all plain text files. I've got things I wrote in the 'seventies just a few clicks away on my desktop, no problem opening them, cut and paste, no worries about extinct document formats.
Plain text is a very good way to keep one's thoughts organized and avoid distractions while writing. And it's a godsend if you or anyone else ever has to reformat the documents years later using a different system.
Currently I write in plain text using gedit and Markdown (or sometimes the same square bracket limited HTML used here on DU.) I don't worry about the look of the final document until later. It makes cutting and pasting between documents, sometimes written many decades apart, a trivial exercise and not a tear-your-hair-out-yelling-fuck-fuck-fuck!bloody nightmare.
Legal offices especially are stuck on WordPerfect because they do a lot of boilerplate crap.