"I think Microsoft gets a lot of criticism that they DON'T deserve," wrote one reader. Some feel that deathblow the Office bundling dealt other productivity applications was just a real smart move on Microsoft's part. While retaining popularity in some markets, particularly legal circles, WordPerfect now generally gets little attention as a Word competitor compared to free software alternatives.īut there seems to be plenty of dispute about whether WordPerfect simply failed to compete or was a victim of Microsoft monopolistic practices. But WordPerfect was late with its first Windows version, and then the bundling of Word with Microsoft Office on many PCs resulted in WordPerfect's sale - first to Novell, then Corel in 1996 - aimed at producing a competitive office suite. Early in the IBM PC era, Satellite Software's WordPerfect 4.X series supplanted WordStar as the most popular word processor, based largely on its macro capabilities, "reveal codes" feature, and the company's reputation for high-quality free support. The basic historic facts of the WordPerfect saga aren't in dispute. Why did WordPerfect - the word processing program beloved by so many loved in the DOS era - lose out to Microsoft Word? That has been the subject of some rather hot debate in my discussion boards this year, even when it was considerably off topic.
But, I adapted.I don't know why, but over the last year readers have several times brought up a topic that is a something of an historic gripe - actually, in terms of the technology world, one that is ancient history. (I admit the WP choice made it something of a PITA when WordPerfect was taken over by Novell and then Corel and slowly became unusable. My fingers rejected WordStar but accepted WordPerfect and a myriad other programs that failed to follow WordStar's lead. Let's face it, it's what you program into your fingers that counts. Several other plain text editors had minimal interfaces too. Even WordPerfect for DOS had what, a single menu line at the top and a single status line at the bottom and happily supported 50 line mode. (Of course, that feature could be handy again now with compact portable keyboards, so it's not necessarily a bad thing either - but is putting up with that limitation for decades really worth it?)Īs for minimal screen interface, WordStar was not alone here. I was having a dig at the fact that the navigation keystrokes were designed to support old keyboards without navigation keys - as if living with outdated limitations was a good recommendation.
A text screen (without GUI elements) makes it easier for me to concentrate on writing.
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