[vox-tech] Re: [vox] Linux Word Processors?

[Robert G. Scofield]

On Friday 06 December 2002 04:15 pm, Rick Moen wrote:
> 
> If it'll help, I include a (too-brief) rundown on all available word
> processors for Linux as part of my Word Perfect for Linux FAQ,
> http://linuxmafia.com/wpfaq/ .  Please see especially section 8.5 ("What
> alternatives to WP exist on Linux?").

As a WordPerfect fan I think your FAQ is great; really great, and I'll 
probably end up reading the whole thing.

WordPerfect 8 for Linux is one of the two greatest wordprocessors I've ever 
seen.  The other is WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS.  WP 8 for Linux could do things 
that WP 8 for Windows couldn't do.  It just seems like too much trouble to 
try to get it running on the old libraries.  It seems that it would be better 
to switch to something with a future, and WordPerfect for Linux has no 
future.

I had WP9 running before my / partition was reformatted.  I've been debating 
whether to reinstall it, but I just can't bring myself to do it.  Sometime 
ago another person on this list said that he took it off his machine because 
it was so bad.  It is bad.  I wish I had my $150 back from that purchase.  
I'd rather have $150 worth of single malt Scotch.

I'm distressed to read on your FAQ that Gobe Productive is being taken over by 
someone else.  I forked out $70 for the Windows version under an agreement to 
be given the now non-appearing Linux version.  I even posted about four posts 
on this list bragging about the Windows version.  I wish I could have that 
$70 back.  

Thanks to everyone who answered my post.  To answer a question, I used to use 
Star Office 5.1.  What bothered me was not the "desktop" approach.  I thought 
it was a cumbersome and time consuming program.  I don't know if open 
sourcing it will solve it's problems because the problems are in the design 
itself.  I was always fighting the auto-correct and anticipation features.  I 
turned some of them off, but was not always able to turn off all of them.

Printing an envelope was unnecessarily difficult.  There were two different 
ways to do it, and each was cumbersome.  In WordPerfect if you have a letter 
on your screen with the address in it that you are sending it to, all it 
takes is two clicks and the envelope is printed.  It's things like this that 
have led me to say that those who like Star Office have never really used a 
good word processor.  

While I don't like Star Office, I have always admired those of you who use it.  
The reason is that I have always seen the Star Office user as someone who was 
so divorced from Windows that he or she couldn't really understand what a 
good word processor was.  

But then again I'm a lawyer.  And as Chris Di Bona once quipped at a LUGOD 
meeting, lawyers are the only group of computer users who are defined more by 
their choice of a word processor than they are by their choice of an 
operating system because they are so stuck on WordPerfect.

Unfortunately, Chris's quip is outdated.  I've read that only a shrinking 
minority of lawyer's now use Word Perfect.  Such is life under the 
Dictatorship of the Market; the greatest word processor of them all is 
becoming extinct.

Thanks again for *everyone's* post.

Bob