1. Introduction

1.2.1. What's good about WordPerfect?

Several things. In an era when leading word processors gobble dozens of megs of RAM just launching, WP (v. 8.x) is thrifty -- about 6 MB. By comparison, OpenOffice.org 1.1 or Star Office 7.0 takes 54 MB to launch. AbiWord 2.01 uses only 15 MB, and KWord 1.2.94 32 MB. It's a stable, fast, polished, full-featured product. It has "reveal codes". It has a nearly unique "shrink to fit" printing feature that quickly becomes indispensable once you've experienced it. WP's print module uses the MS-DOS version's time-tested, robust printer drivers by default, expanding greatly the range of compatible printers. (WP can alternatively hand off to standard Unix printing subsystems -- lpr/lprng/gnulpr/cups/pdq/etc. -- in "Passthru Postscript" mode.) It has excellent built-in mathematical, financial, logical, and string-handling functions. It has excellent table support and a useful speed-table-formatting feature. It has a robust built-in database engine for table sorting and searching.

It's still the best tool available on Linux for reading WordPerfect .wpd files created elsewhere. (AbiWord, Anyware Office, and wp2latex also qualify.)

1.2.2. What's wrong with WordPerfect?

It's a discontinued product (on Linux). The most-long-term-available version, WP 8.0 Download Personal Edition (WP 8.0 DPE), has deliberately crippled font handling and limited multi-language support, and won't function without fairly antique support libraries. The best version, WP 8.1, comes only bundled with the Corel Linux OS (CLOS) Deluxe and Standard Edition boxed sets, v. 1.0 or 1.2 -- likewise discontinued.

WP used to be the best tool on Linux for reading MS-Word files, but always faltered on some, especially those Fast Saved in MS-Word. But now, Star Office, OpenOffice.org, and AbiWord reportedly do better.

All 8.x versions ship with a broken MS-Word import/export module: This third-party code ("Filtrix") fails with the message "Filtrix unable to convert this file" if the local system clock is set to later than September 9, 2001, because an internal time counter overflowed when Linux system time in seconds since January 1, 1970 passed 10^9 seconds. The problem can be fixed using a wrapper by Valentijn Sessink of the Netherlands firm Open Office, http://www.openoffice.nl/ (not to be confused with Sun Microsystems's OpenOffice.org project), available at http://olivier.pk.wau.nl/~valentyn/wp8fix/.

The integration into standard Linux print subsystems was always poor; ditto the typeface support. Also, TrueType fonts were never supported, only PostScript Type 1 and Bitstream.

Last, though the point may be obvious, WP is proprietary (not open source). Open-source projects die only when nobody cares to maintain them, can be fixed/improved by any motivated party, and can be easily implemented on newer CPU architectures (IA64, PPC). By contrast, supplies of all but one WP version are vanishing, the sole exception occupies a legal grey area, and the difficulty of keeping it running on evolving Linux systems (which can be i386 only) can only increase over time.

It's a measure of just how good WP for Linux is/was that many people consider it still the best word processor for Linux, on balance, despite the above.

1.2.3. Who created WordPerfect for Linux?

Old-timers may recall that WordPerfect originally emerged from Satellite Software, Inc. of Orem, Utah, which later renamed itself to WordPerfect Corporation, which ported it widely from the original x86 assembler version for MS-DOS. (Their initial Unix port occasioned a rewrite to C, which lead to WP for NeXT, which lead to WP 6.0 for MS-Windows, which was the basis for all subsequent version.) That firm eventually sold WordPerfect's codebase to Novell, Inc., which then sold it to Corel Corporation Limited of Ottawa, Canada. Corel then hired a spinoff firm (Software Development Corporation aka SD Corp., formed by the Unix port's manager and developers) to port WP versions 6, 7, 8.0, and 8.1 to both Linux and several proprietary Unix platforms.

Around 1996-7, the initial SD Corp.-written Linux port of Corel WP, v. 6.0, was marketed solely through through Caldera, Inc. of Orem, Utah, as part of two bundles: the WordPerfect and Motif Bundle, and the Caldera Internet Office Suite bundle. In 1997, Corel replaced this with a v. 7.0 that it sold directly (after SD Corp.'s open beta), offering greater file compatibility with other platforms and other improvements.

The zenith of WP for Linux's popularity, however, came with the 1998-2000 v. 8.x series, the most wildly popular Linux proprietary software of that era. (During that time period, Corel attempted to port the entire Corel Office suite, including WP, to Java: Performance was abysmal, and the project was killed after some public betas.)

The latest and seemingly final WP version for Linux was v. 9, better known as WordPerfect Office 2000 (which was technically WordPerfect joined at the hip to several other Corel programs -- Quattro Pro, Paradox, Corel Presentations, Corel Central), produced by Corel Corporation Limited, alone. (Paradox was included only in the Deluxe Edition, and omitted from Standard Edition.)