New Wordperfect Can Save in Epub Format

[Richwood]

Per a just received email from Corel, the new version of Wordperfect Office 2020 can save files direct to Epub format, handy for many ebook reader owners who are also authors. I am enough of a fossil that I used Wordperfect for years as my primary word processing software.

[Quoth]

I bet Save As DocX and convert in Calibre works better.
It does on LibreOffice Writer, which had a plugin for years and then since 6.x a built in Epub export. The PDF and HTML export on Libre Office work better than MS Word 2002.

So Corel and WordPerfect still exists! Amazing. I used Wordstar on DOS, but I had to teach Wordperfect on DOS, about the same time most companies here were using MS Word on DOS, Word 1.x on Mac or even Word 2.0 on Windows 3.x.

[fjtorres]

SoftMaker Office (PC,MAC,LINUX) does it too. Pretty well.
Cheap, too.
But yeah, Calibre is plenty good for most uses.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I bet Save As DocX and convert in Calibre works better.
It does on LibreOffice Writer, which had a plugin for years and then since 6.x a built in Epub export. The PDF and HTML export on Libre Office work better than MS Word 2002.

So Corel and WordPerfect still exists! Amazing. I used Wordstar on DOS, but I had to teach Wordperfect on DOS, about the same time most companies here were using MS Word on DOS, Word 1.x on Mac or even Word 2.0 on Windows 3.x.

I used Wordstar on CP/M (and also Perfect Writer, the two products bundled together) - all provided free on my Kaypro II. A bit later I bought the 'Fat Mac' in 1984 (or was it '86?) when it first came out. Interestingly, when Microsoft Word was first introduced (for that Macintosh computer and before it became available for the DOS world) I bought that when it became available.

For the past few years, however, I use Scrivener solely for my writing; and then, when the writing is finished, I use Vellum to publish the finished product.

[JSWolf]

Wordperfect for DOS was a better program then Word for DOS and when Wordperfect for Windows came out, it too was better then Word for Windows. If it wasn't for Microsoft bundling in trail versions of Word, I think Wordperfect would be the top word processor.

[Dr. Drib]

I think the problem was that the Wordperfect team sat on their respective butts and were late to the game when it came to developing a Windows version.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I think the problem was that the Wordperfect team sat on their respective butts and were late to the game when it came to developing a Windows version.

They were too busy porting it to every other OS under the, ahem, sun.
Amiga, Atari, and 20 flavors of Unix got a gui version before Windows. By then corporations had committed to office.

The same happened with WingZ. Once upon a time it was the most feature rich spreadsheet app on Mac and Unix. (And great for graphing. We used it on Sun and IBM.) By the time they got to Windows, Excel matched it and beat it so corporate buyers were like "never mind".

Too many companies held back from Windows betting on OS/2 or the Unixes just as the DRAM cartel was holding RAM sizes hostage. By the time the cartel was called on the carpet NT 3.51 was out and in ascendance.

Timing, timing, timing.

The funny thing is in '89 Gates was begging for Windows support. The very same companies that wanted Windows to fail forced him to boost MS app development for Windows. And then ended up as roadkill.

[barryem]

My company used Data General mini computers, which is where Word Perfect began. We paid them $60,000 a year for the license for our many terminals and another $80,000 a year for maintenance. They had to run a license renewal program on our computer or the program would stop working at midnight December 31.

Then one year after they'd been so successful on the PC for a few years they told us in November they were no longer supporting the DG. Our license would expire at the end of the year, and it did.

We had one month to buy PC's to replace our terminals, during which time I had to write a terminal emulator that would do the things we needed. We had to buy PC versions of Word Perfect for every PC. I forget how much all that cost but we had several hundred terminals.

We sued Word Perfect and won the suit but we didn't come close to getting what we lost out of them. I forget the details. I wasn't involved in that part of it.

I've had a bitter taste when i think of Word Perfect ever since then. We were their first large customer and we were their biggest customer for years and then they didn't need us anymore.

Barry

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I think the problem was that the Wordperfect team sat on their respective butts and were late to the game when it came to developing a Windows version.

They had a huge disadvantage. Microsoft could develop Word in conjunction with developing the new Windows release – so their office suite was "up and running" when the new Windows came out. WordPerfect had to wait until Windows was released to really begin work on the new version. That's the kind of advantage you get when you have a monopoly, as Gate's and Microsoft have.

Personally I used WordStar for DOS and, for what little time I used a word processor in Windows, I used Lotus WordPro. I still think that was the "cleanest" Windows word processor ever developed. They also had an OS/2 version that I used for a while.

In the Linux world it's almost only Jstar (the WordStar variant of JOE, "Joe's Own Editor"). With Jstar I've ever really left WordStar for DOS.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Wordperfect for DOS was a better program then Word for DOS and when Wordperfect for Windows came out, it too was better then Word for Windows. If it wasn't for Microsoft bundling in trail versions of Word, I think Wordperfect would be the top word processor.

Yep. Word for DOS was basically a glorified text editor. In my opinion WordStar was better than WordPerfect because WordPerfect had you leaving the Home keys to go to the Function keys (which was ackward for me), but I'll admit WordPerfect for DOS was "slicker" than WordStar, especially later on when WordStar was on its way out.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by barryem

I've had a bitter taste when i think of Word Perfect ever since then. We were their first large customer and we were their biggest customer for years and then they didn't need us anymore.

That sounds like something a sleazy corporation would do. But don't be too hard on the modern, Corel owned, WordPerfect. It's a completely different corporation. Before Corel bought them, Novell had bought them. Of course Corel is not owned by Corel anymore... hasn't been for many years. I think (currently) they're owned by KKR, one of the companies that helped destroy Toys-R-Us and the same folks who just recently bought Overdrive from Rakuten.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I think the problem was that the Wordperfect team sat on their respective butts and were late to the game when it came to developing a Windows version.

Actually, I think the problem was when WordPerfect Corp. was sold to Novell. Not long after the sale, the software began a steep and rapid decline. Novell had no clue what to do with it as far as the consumer market was concerned. At the time, I was using WordStar, WordPerfect, XyWrite, and Word because different clients insisted on different software.The the consolidation began and WordStar and XyWrite were the first to go because clients were finding that their vendors were migrating to WordPerfect and Word and insisting that manuscript be turned over to them in templates that had been created for Word or WordPerfect. Then came Novell's disastrous support. Novell had other products it wanted to sell and so devoted little to WordPerfect. Microsoft had the field to itself.

When Corel bought WordPerfect I didn't even consider buying it. Not only had all my clients moved to Word, but my experience with Corel support with Ventura made me certain WordPerfect would be a you-bought-it-you-deal-with-it purchase. Ventura Publisher had been light years ahead of Adobe and Quark for DTP and remained so for several years after Corel bought it. But Corel quickly put Ventura on the path to death and users had no choice but to migrate to CS or XPress. Corel's focus was on Draw as a competitor to Illustrator, but even there it lost the battle.

[Quoth]

MS did Word and Excel for the Mac first, because their Windows didn't really work then.
The 1st release of WP on windows was poor. Word 2.0 was the first MS Windows version and was polished, for a version of Windows that actually worked properly, in 1991.
Much as I dislike MS, I think Excel and Word were the two best programs they produced. Lots of other stuff was copied or bought in: Basic, DOS, MS SQL, Visio being the famous ones.
Word was very good from 1991 to 2003. Then it started downhill after 2003, like Windows itself. Windows wasn't significant till 1991. NT came out in 1993 but was hardly used for Workstations till 1997 (NT 4.0 released in 1996). Windows 2000 was too rushed (NT 5.0) so it was XP (NT5.1) that finally saw many workstations abandon the horribly flawed Win9x/ME, which should never have existed and crippled the NT security model. The win95 Explorer Shell was even available on NT3.51 (upgrade from NT3.5 because MS deliberately added new "fake" win32 APIs to stop people installing Office 95 on Win3.x/WFWG3.11 with Win32s installed.

Basically many programs and companied "died" as DOS faded between 1991 and 1997.

[drofgnal]

Apple's Pages can save to epub as well.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by drofgnal

Apple's Pages can save to epub as well.

Yeah, with some pretty awful code.