3 ms·

I don't know many people who would want to unless they are just trying to convert or access an old incompatible document.

cryptoz 5y ago
There's a lot of tech nostalgia for old software. Just for fun is plenty reason enough. I also bet there are people out there who prefer it. I wonder if it is snappier than Word? I just opened MS Word on a recent Mac and it took 5-7 seconds to open to a blank document, including requiring me to choose an option and click through first. Just saying.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Try Abiword.
compiler-guy 5y ago
WP is and was wicked fast, and the blank screen, distraction free ui is amazing, the macro language is very powerful also. There were law firms that used it well into the late 90s due to the amazing macros they had going. Think of the complicated Excel macros one hears about. Same thing, only with law firms and lawyers. There are still people who run wordstar (which WP supplanted in the eighties). I wouldn’t use it now, but is was an amazing product in its day.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  There is similar modern software as well.. no need to revert to an unmaintained program just to get something that may be a little faster than a full office suite.
  - compiler-guy 5y ago
    No one is saying that you should. But very few word processors today are anything close to as fast. Maybe abiword. Certainly not google docs or Microsoft word.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      How does open office compare?
      - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
        If you want maintained, that's libreoffice. And no, LO lags on semi-modern hardware.
      - compiler-guy 5y ago
        I haven’t used it, but unless it’s macro language is about as powerful as excel’s, and unless it has no detectable latency at all, it isn’t as good in that department at least.
  - tingletech 5y ago
    it's still supported on windows
- bawolff 5y ago
  Pretty sure it was used well past late 90s. At least late 2000s
  - tingletech 5y ago
    still widely used in the legal world as far as I know
- rietta 5y ago
  1st hand knowledge of contemporary usage in court offices. We still support WPD file attachments as well.
cout 5y ago
I still occasionally use WordPerfect on my PS/2 when I want to get serious writing done. I don't have any multitasking set up, just plain DOS, so no internet or other distractions to occupy my time. (and even if I could multitask, I doubt a 386SX is fast enough to handle an SSL handshake these days)
- kazinator 5y ago
  What, no DESQview? Get with the times ...
dorkmind 5y ago
You must have missed the thread the other day about open source video games that used to be commercial. Psychology departments can run experiments on people where they see what the effect of using Word Perfect is, or otherwise use it as a learning task. So, for example, you can try to design the fastest learning protocol for a given set of functionality being acquired by 90% of subjects. It's fairly safe to assume that most college students don't know Word Perfect, so you should be able to get good results doing A/B testing. You could do experiments like: do people learn Word Perfect faster if they take a 30 minute nap beforehand? Do they learn worse if they do 30 minutes of intense exercise beforehand?
- jchw 5y ago
  Is this account posting output from GPT or another language model? It kind of seems like it.
  - dorkmind 5y ago
    It's just ordinary newspaper-style writing in a shock jock style. (Insert stock joke about Milgram experiment.) I think it goes back to Bolshevism and especially the "talk hard" ethos of Pump Up the Volume. Hip-hop and rap are other influences. https://archive.org/details/pump_up_the_volume_1990 https://archive.org/details/pump_up_the_volume_1990 Also, from an art point of view, I just like the idea of recontextualizing the computer as a device in a psychology experiment. The games you can play with this idea are pretty weird. For example: would you conduct a psychological experiment that attempts to get people better at rationalizing, and risks turning the subjects into monsters capable of rationalizing the decision to perform progressively more grotesque modifications of their body, apparently enhancing their abilities, in the style of Iron Man?
    - kstrauser 5y ago
      Bad bot.
      - dorkmind 5y ago
w0de0 5y ago
My pops won't give it up. You laugh, as you open up vim.
valec 5y ago
that's true, however you're interfering with the weekly hackernews wordperfect nostalgia thread so we're going to have to politely ask you to leave

cryptoz 5y ago

There's a lot of tech nostalgia for old software. Just for fun is plenty reason enough. I also bet there are people out there who prefer it. I wonder if it is snappier than Word? I just opened MS Word on a recent Mac and it took 5-7 seconds to open to a blank document, including requiring me to choose an option and click through first. Just saying.

encryptluks2 5y ago
Try Abiword.

compiler-guy 5y ago

WP is and was wicked fast, and the blank screen, distraction free ui is amazing, the macro language is very powerful also. There were law firms that used it well into the late 90s due to the amazing macros they had going. Think of the complicated Excel macros one hears about. Same thing, only with law firms and lawyers. There are still people who run wordstar (which WP supplanted in the eighties). I wouldn’t use it now, but is was an amazing product in its day.

encryptluks2 5y ago
There is similar modern software as well.. no need to revert to an unmaintained program just to get something that may be a little faster than a full office suite.
- compiler-guy 5y ago
  No one is saying that you should. But very few word processors today are anything close to as fast. Maybe abiword. Certainly not google docs or Microsoft word.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    How does open office compare?
    - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
      If you want maintained, that's libreoffice. And no, LO lags on semi-modern hardware.
    - compiler-guy 5y ago
      I haven’t used it, but unless it’s macro language is about as powerful as excel’s, and unless it has no detectable latency at all, it isn’t as good in that department at least.
- tingletech 5y ago
  it's still supported on windows
bawolff 5y ago
Pretty sure it was used well past late 90s. At least late 2000s
- tingletech 5y ago
  still widely used in the legal world as far as I know
rietta 5y ago
1st hand knowledge of contemporary usage in court offices. We still support WPD file attachments as well.

cout 5y ago

I still occasionally use WordPerfect on my PS/2 when I want to get serious writing done. I don't have any multitasking set up, just plain DOS, so no internet or other distractions to occupy my time. (and even if I could multitask, I doubt a 386SX is fast enough to handle an SSL handshake these days)

kazinator 5y ago
What, no DESQview? Get with the times ...

dorkmind 5y ago

You must have missed the thread the other day about open source video games that used to be commercial. Psychology departments can run experiments on people where they see what the effect of using Word Perfect is, or otherwise use it as a learning task. So, for example, you can try to design the fastest learning protocol for a given set of functionality being acquired by 90% of subjects. It's fairly safe to assume that most college students don't know Word Perfect, so you should be able to get good results doing A/B testing. You could do experiments like: do people learn Word Perfect faster if they take a 30 minute nap beforehand? Do they learn worse if they do 30 minutes of intense exercise beforehand?

jchw 5y ago
Is this account posting output from GPT or another language model? It kind of seems like it.
- dorkmind 5y ago
  It's just ordinary newspaper-style writing in a shock jock style. (Insert stock joke about Milgram experiment.) I think it goes back to Bolshevism and especially the "talk hard" ethos of Pump Up the Volume. Hip-hop and rap are other influences. https://archive.org/details/pump_up_the_volume_1990 https://archive.org/details/pump_up_the_volume_1990 Also, from an art point of view, I just like the idea of recontextualizing the computer as a device in a psychology experiment. The games you can play with this idea are pretty weird. For example: would you conduct a psychological experiment that attempts to get people better at rationalizing, and risks turning the subjects into monsters capable of rationalizing the decision to perform progressively more grotesque modifications of their body, apparently enhancing their abilities, in the style of Iron Man?
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    Bad bot.
    - dorkmind 5y ago

w0de0 5y ago

My pops won't give it up. You laugh, as you open up vim.

valec 5y ago

that's true, however you're interfering with the weekly hackernews wordperfect nostalgia thread so we're going to have to politely ask you to leave