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posted by martyb on Monday October 29 2018, @06:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the Reveal-Codes dept.

A recent Guardian article encouraging writers to abandon MS Word included a comment from a reader that read:

With 70+ books under my belt, I'm still using WordPerfect 5.1. Luckily there's an excellent website offering free software to enable one to use this DOS software with Windows 10: http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/

If you follow that link you'll find a treasure trove of tools and advice that will help you run WordPerfect 5.1 on any Windows system, as well as Macs and Linux boxes. The author does note that it's much easier on 32 bit systems than 64 bit, but it can be done on either. There's even advice on making printers work.

(Of late I've been using the generally excellent FocusWriter full screen editor for distraction free writing, but if I can get WP 5.1 working....) (And, just for the record, Corel still sells Wordperfect Office.)


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by drussell on Monday October 29 2018, @10:24AM (2 children)

    by drussell (2678) on Monday October 29 2018, @10:24AM (#754996) Journal

    I use WordPerfect 10 and 11 as my main word processor. (Some machines that I use it on have 10 installed, some 11.) Reveal codes is essential for doing good, efficient, consistent layouts. That is why it is still widely used for preparing legal documents.

    I often "fix" people's Word documents by having them send it to me, opening it in WP, fixing it up (mostly deleting all sorts of extra cruft that you find in reveal codes) and saving it back in Word format and sending it back to them.

    I also support a multi-user, daily use legacy system that uses WordPerfect 5.1. I now have it set up on a FreeBSD box with each user having their own "private" but network-aware copy running in a DosBox with a VNC server connected to each instance. Each user can just connect a VNC viewer to their instance, do their import & merge using some macros and stuff developed decades ago which still work perfectly, make any edits and modifications, clean up any formatting, even easily preview their work in Shift-F7-View graphically since it is in a VNC window, then print and save. Repeat, repeat, repeat. :)

    It still works perfectly. Excellent software.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30 2018, @08:03AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30 2018, @08:03AM (#755539)

    Yup. I know a writer and a policy wonk who use WP outta the 80s (mayyybe 90s) because it works like a charm for them. The writer uses word on her macbook and hates it.

  • (Score: 2) by dw861 on Tuesday October 30 2018, @04:32PM

    by dw861 (1561) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 30 2018, @04:32PM (#755701) Journal

    Agreed, as I outline in a response to one of the above comments on my use of WordPerfect under Linux, both native and under emulation. I'd give you a plus 1, but you are already at max.