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Should Microsoft be worried about WordPerfect?

That seems like a fair enough question. WordPerfect was once the leading word processor. It killed WordStar and dozens of other competitors. WordPerfect was once so popular that the support phone number in Orem, Utah, had “phone jockeys” who played music and kept callers apprised of the wait time. With the advent of Windows (and maybe some slick deals) Microsoft captured the catbird seat. WordPerfect was acquired by Novell, a company that had no clue about how to position, develop, or sell a word processor. Novell sold the asset to Corel at about the time the company was trying to develop a demand for Linux. Wordperfect received some attention, but most of the company’s resources seemed to be directed at the Linux project, which was eventually scrapped.

For the past several versions, Corel has concentrated on improving WordPerfect’s speed and user interface, but Microsoft continues to be the sales leader. So should the X3 version of WordPerfect worry the folks in Washington state? In a word, No. That doesn’t mean Word is the right application for everyone. WordPerfect is still the leader in law offices, a market that isn’t exactly chopped liver.

WordPerfect is significantly less expensive than Word, does nearly everything Word does (and some things Word doesn’t), and included the “reveal codes” feature that Microsoft has never been able to replicate. But WordPerfect continues to represent typographic characters such as “open and close” quotes, ‘single quotes’, and dashes (– en and — em) in a way that I used to describe as goofy.

The X3 version of WordPerfect still shows these special characters as members of character set 4 (which means nothing to Windows or any other operating system) but fortunately this version of WordPerfect manages to create characters other programs can understand. The result is open and close quotation marks instead of A and @, open and close single quotes instead of > and =, en and em dashes instead of B and C. (I used Wordperfect to write most of this review and, as you can see, the special characters flowed into Dreamweaver 8 without a hitch.)

That eliminates one reason I haven’t been able to enthusiastically recommend Wordperfect for several years.

Two features that Word has never been able to touch

Click any of the images for a larger view.

The feature you’ll hear about most often is “reveal codes”, which shows all of the underlying formatting in a separate window. Wordperfect applies codes with begin and end tags. This may be one of the reasons that anyone who worked with Wordperfect’s reveal codes view immediately understood how HTML worked. The feature is useful when the applied formatting doesn’t produce the expected effect. Viewing the raw codes can often reveal the problem. Word users, on the other hand, have been known to delete entire sections and type them again because they can’t figure out how to turn off some formatting.
The second feature that Word has never been able to match involves columns. Word has only one style of columns – the kind that allow text to “snake”. These are sometimes called “newspaper” columns, although newspaper columns are actually more complex. Wordperfect users have a choice. Select the number of columns. Choose the column type. By default, the columns will be the same width with equal gutters. The Wordperfect default is half an inch between columns, which is far too much. You'll see a preview of what the columns will look like.
Newspaper This is the same kind of column you’ll find in Word. Text flows from the bottom of one column to the top of the next column.
Balanced Balanced columns start as newspaper columns, but the bottoms of the columns are balanced. If you have too little text to fill the page, the first columns on the pages will break earlier to maintain a similar column length across the page.
Parallel This column format is unique to Wordperfect. Some people consider it a format that scriptwriters would use, but script writers typically use special programs that have other features needed by movie and television producers. Parallel columns are ideal for formatting tabular text without the need for a table. In fact, the only way I know to duplicate this kind of formatting in Word is by using a table and that is a far more cumbersome solution than Wordperfect’s. Note that one of the blocks of columns breaks (marked in red), which can make reading difficult.
Parallel with block protect If it’s important that each horizontal element be complete on the same page, block protect is the solution. If any one of the columns in the section will fall to the next page, then the entire section falls to the next page. Here block protect is turned on.

Other interesting features

Wordperfect continues its ability to read and write virtually every word processor format ever invented. Microsoft's programs can read a lot of file formats, but Wordperfect can read more. When it comes to being able to write files in their native format, Wordperfect is the only choice.

Word, for example, reads 17 file formats and writes 10. Wordperfect reads and writes 77 file formats, including XyWrite, DisplayWrite, Mutlimate, MS Word, OfficeWriter, and WordStar. It's true that many of the products Wordperfect supports are no longer being sold, but it's also true that some people continue to use these products and – even when nobody uses these products any more – there will still be files that were created using those programs. The ability to read these file formats is something Wordperfect users take for granted.

The standard edition (Word, Quattro Pro, and Presentations) is $300 (upgrade $160). The professional edition, which includes the Paradox database product, sells for $400 (upgrade $260).

Because Corel has licensed Adobe portable document format (PDF) technology, Corel products can create PDF documents quickly and easily.

These are just a few of the topics I discussed in a conversation with WordPerfect product manager Jay Larock. I started by asking what today's target market it for the Wordperfect office suite ...
REAL AUDIO 6:25 q-home office.

As with nearly any review, this one does little more than examine the features I feel are most notable in the primary application. Quattro Pro is certainly an adequate spreadsheet application and Presentations is sufficient for anyone who isn't required to create presentations in PowerPoint. Add to these capabilities the clip art that comes with the applications and 900 typefaces.

Overall: Corel Wordperfect Suite X3: 4 cats.

It's not Microsoft Office, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The Wordperfect Office Suite does everything that most people need to do, does some of those things better than Microsoft does, and does them at a lower cost than Microsoft does. To learn more, visit the Corel website.

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