[PLUG-TALK] Gag-choke-Windoze-virus-check-barf

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Sat Mar 16 14:56:23 UTC 2019


On Sat, 16 Mar 2019, Paul Heinlein wrote:

> I don't know if WordPerfect lost profits due to that decision, but I do
> know it made it possible to, at some level, understand what was hidden
> within WP's binary files.

WordPerfect's management degenerated into competitive, "me first," factions
which ended up killing the company. I had used the DOS version from 1984 to
1997 and the linux version until it failed on 1 January 2000. Novell owned
the company then and stopped the outstanding tech support and abilitiy to
contact senior executives, and dropped development of their linux version.
Their Provo campus looked more like a college than a business park (I
visited from Pocatello and had a guided tour by one of their VPs.)

> Plus, I've never had a word processor that was as good at actually, you
> know, getting words into a computer as WordPerfect 4.2 for DOS. Once the
> GUIs entered the game, word processing became (imo) more about formatting
> and less about content.

That's my opinion, too. I really liked WP for producing documents and found
that the available replacements (OO.o, LO, Abiword) are, as you write, more
on appearance than substance. That's when I turned to LaTeX for almost all
my writing.

Too often we forget that while all progress involves change, not all change
involves progress.

Carpe weekend,

Rich



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