4 ms·

A look back: WordPerfect on DOS (2023)

32 points by TMWNN 2y ago

neverartful 2y ago
It was the best of times (WP5.1) and the worst of times (first versions for Windows). I used WordPerfect for DOS 5.1 extensively and it was a joy to use. It was not WYSIWYG, but it was fast, stable, and very capable. A couple of years later I used one of the early versions of WordPerfect for Windows (I don't recall the version number) and it was a complete disaster. It crashed very often. Hence, my love/hate with WordPerfect.
- russellbeattie 2y ago
  The reason for the horrible Windows version was threefold: 1) Culture, 2) Hubris and 3) OS/2. From Almost Perfect [1], the book linked to in the article: > WordPerfect Corporation was not a platform for personal achievement, a career ladder to other opportunities, or a challenging opportunity for personal improvement. The company did not put the needs of the individual ahead of its own. The company was not concerned about an employee's personal feelings, except as they related to the company's well-being. > WordPerfect Corporation was not intended to be a social club for the unproductive. While other companies might condone many personal or social activities at the office, ours did not. Things like celebrating birthdays, throwing baby showers, collecting for gifts, selling Tupperware or Avon, managing sports tournaments, running betting pools, calling home to keep a romance alive or hand out chores to the children, gossiping or flirting with co-workers, getting a haircut, going to a medical or dental appointment, running to the cafeteria for a snack, coming in a little late or leaving a little early, taking Friday afternoon off, and griping about working conditions were all inappropriate when done on company time. Even though these activities were condoned by many businesses across the country, we felt there was no time for them at WordPerfect Corporation. Sounds like a lovely place to work! Oof. Compare this to Apple or Microsoft or a ton of other Silicon Valley companies. It's no wonder they couldn't find developers: > In January [1990] Microsoft offered to make us a beta test site for Windows 3.0. We accepted their generous offer, but did little more than look Windows over. In hindsight, it is easy to see we should have done much more right away. At the time, we could justify not doing a Windows 2.0 version in favor of completing WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, but it is now difficult to defend our further delays. Unfortunately, we did not have any experienced Windows programmers inside the company to form a development team, and there were not many outside the company to recruit. > In May Microsoft shipped Windows 3.0, and our worst fears became a reality. Just at the time we were decisively winning in the DOS word processing market, the personal computing world wanted Windows, bugs and all. To make matters worse, Microsoft Word for Windows was already on dealer shelves and had received good reviews. That little cloud on the horizon, which had looked so harmless in 1986, was all around us, looking ominous and threatening. IBM's strength and size were no protection. Not even an elephant could ignore the impending storm. > May 31, 1990 was a sad day in WordPerfect Corporation's history. I wrote a press release announcing that we were postponing our OS/2 product, so we could produce a Windows version of WordPerfect as quickly as possible. I wrote, "While we still are strong supporters of OS/2, we have decided to test and release the Windows version of WordPerfect before the OS/2 version. The reasons for the schedule change have to do with the expected delays in version 2.0 of Presentation Manager and particular requests from our customers. This change should move up the release of our Windows product by three to four months and will delay our release of a PM product by four or five months." The book is free online and pretty interesting if you like histories of early computing. It's definitely on the list with the more famous ones like Soul of a New Machine. 1. http://www.wordplace.com/ap/ http://www.wordplace.com/ap/
_mlbt 2y ago
An interesting thing about WordPerfect was that most of the keyboard shortcuts were built around the row of function keys at the top of the keyboard, so they were difficult to remember, compared to modern keyboard shortcuts. For this reason, nearly every WordPerfect user I knew had a little piece of plastic or laminated paper that they placed above the row of function keys that listed all of the keyboard shortcuts on it to help them remember.
- mbreese 2y ago
  The shortcut strip came in the box! And it was all based on F1-F12 and modifier keys alt/ctrl/shift. It was a complete pain to learn, but once you knew a few key ones (F10 was save?), it was very fast to work with. I wasn't very old, but I remember having the same kind of muscle memory then with WP5.0/5.1 that I do now with vim. Autosave wasn't a thing, so hitting F10 often was just done out of habit. But, by far the best part was that you could reveal all of the formatting codes, so you could see exactly how something was styled. It was much like editing HTML by hand, and easier to figure out how something was styled than with almost any WYSIWYG. Here’s a photo of what it looked like: https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/1aemcxc/80s_word_perfect_keyboard_shortcut_keyboard/?rdt=54094 https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/1aemcxc/80s_word_perf...
  - psunavy03 2y ago
    Losing Reveal Codes was the worst part of Microsoft forcing Word down everyone's throat. Word positively sucks in comparison to this day. No, the little "paragraph" icon isn't enough. Reveal Codes showed you in granular form what was going on so you could fix what was borked, instead of ping-ponging back and forth in AutoComplete hell. And it wasn't just on the DOS version. WordPerfect for Windows has/had it too along with the modern WYSIWYG UI.
  - dogman1050 2y ago
    I don't remember the details, but the function key shortcuts changed enough between WP4.2 and 5.1 to slow me down. May have been the first time I grumbled about a SW update breaking my workflow. Some things never change.
zabzonk 2y ago
As a function key hater - hated it. WordStar for me! Does anyone use function keys for word processors on modern interfaces? As far as I can see they are all used for media/screen controls.
- keyle 2y ago
  As a function key lover - what do you hate about keys whose function is to perform a function?
  - zabzonk 2y ago
    Takes me away from the main keyboard - I much prefer Ctrl-X rather than Fn-X. And as I asked before, do you still use function keys with modern interfaces? And if so, which one(s)? And have you ever seen (or used) one of the insane keyboards that were used to manage IBM mainframes and super-minis?
    - keyle 2y ago
      I did in fact, used AS/400 growing up in my mum's office and then later as an internship. And it was so powerful. With muscle memory, you could just F2, F5, F3 combos, press tab twice and start typing [1]. The systems used were the precursor to SAP. Function keys are really powerful. Ctrl+x works, but do these type of ctrl+letter shortcuts all day and you're guaranteed some wrist problems in a few years [2]. As a software engineer, I still put start debug on F5, end debug on F8 and used most of the other keys as well. It's interesting because that comes from my early days as a developer in DOS and then Windows. I now work on macOS though. One of the first things I change on macOS is having permanently the function keys active. [1] arguably the main issue today is our reliance of graphical UI for repetitive work. The fact that you have to look and drag the mouse before clicking and then move your hands to your keyboard to actually type words, is insanely poor. [2] if you're referring to the `fn` key on modern keyboard, we're then in agreeance, these are awful.
      - zabzonk 2y ago
kjellsbells 2y ago
WordPerfect was like vi: forbidding entry point, difficult key bindings, and a joy to use once you got it. Word for Windows even had a mode that replicated the plain blue screen and behavior of WP5.1 for a few years, which I still miss. WP also ran on the UNIX of the day, with look and feel very much like the DOS version. Tavis Ormandy got it working on Linux[0]. [0] https://github.com/taviso/wpunix?tab=readme-ov-file https://github.com/taviso/wpunix?tab=readme-ov-file
- mmooss 2y ago
  > WordPerfect was like vi: forbidding entry point, difficult key bindings, and a joy to use once you got it. Maybe in that way, but I think it's misleading to say a every keyboard-based non-GUI editor is essentially similar. Vi's appeal is the muscle memory of complex commands, because of the moded keyboard - one mode being character insert, the other being commands. Didn't WP use function keys + accelerator keys? That's almost the opposite of Vi's efficiency and muscle-memory.
- wenc 2y ago
  XyWrite: hold my beer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XyWrite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XyWrite XyWrite was hardcore.
- compsciphd 2y ago
  I believe there was a GUI version of Word Perfect for X11 before Word Perfect for Windows existed and Word Perfect was an early user of Wine for Corel's port of Word Perfect for Windows to Linux in their abortive effort to go all in on linux on the desktop (also being an early proponent of arm on the desktop)
russellbeattie 2y ago
I think it's interesting how modern TUI apps never seem to look as nice as mid-80s DOS apps like WordPerfect or Lotus 123. I wonder if it's the blue background.
- lmz 2y ago
  I wonder if it's "responsive design" i.e. variable terminal sizes versus the fixed size DOS terminal.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    It’s both - no fixed window and suspicious use of color. Now and then you find one still working well with thought in it. But it’s rare. The modern terminal could be amazing with Unicode support and 16 million colors …
ttul 2y ago
I remember sitting in front of WordPerfect for many, many hours as a teenager, writing essays and whatnot for school. We were fortunate to have an HP LaserJet at home that my dad used for work. The output looked great and WordPefect’s interface wasn’t terribly hard to get used to. My more sophisticated friend had Windows 3.1 and blew my mind with the WISIWYG capabilities of early versions of Word. Ironically, I now do much of my writing in vi.
enslavedrobot 2y ago
My Dad still uses WordPerfect on his windows XP machine. He recently called me up because he wants to convert one of his "books" into a resizable EPUB. I feel like this legacy format might be the death of me. The USB is in the mail (Dad doesn't even know dropbox exists, gulp).
- shakna 2y ago
  Word can open a WPD file, just fine. If you change the extension to doc, it'll load in. Which also means you can open it in LibreOffice, or use Pandoc or whatever else you would usually reach for. [1] WordPerfect's format is a subset of Word's original. Though, if you want to nerdsnipe yourself, the format is also documented [2], and there's a few libraries here and there for parsing it. [1] Well, almost. The Mac-versions of WordPerfect aren't a subset of Word. See the spec docs. [2] https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats//fdd/fdd000621.shtml https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats//fdd/fdd000...
rqtwteye 2y ago
I am becoming very nostalgic about word processors before around 2003. Back then, they were very predictable, made sense to me, and had all the features I wanted. The latest Word version makes all kinds of wacky choices for formatting, and I can't figure out how to fix them. Numbering is off, and formatting often is totally unpredictable. Not sure what's going on, but I really want Word 2000 back.
- mobilio 2y ago
  It's even worse than you expect! Around 2000 i found that if you have document with header/footer with auto page numbers and merge it with few pages from other document also with page numbers you get huge mess in numbering. Some weird happens like: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, (here is doc N:2) 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, (continues doc N:1) 7, 8, 9 And you can't just reset page numbers, because you need to be on inserted page and there to do reset.
- temporallobe 2y ago
  I still have a Word 2000 installer CD with the original box and product activation key. Wow what a great word processor! Simple, fast, intuitive, and packed with cool features. Modern versions are not fundamentally different, but at the same time are bloated and obtuse. It just doesn’t have that old school snappy feel, that somehow used to feel more responsive and performant on FAR less capable hardware.

32 points by TMWNN 2y ago

It was the best of times (WP5.1) and the worst of times (first versions for Windows). I used WordPerfect for DOS 5.1 extensively and it was a joy to use. It was not WYSIWYG, but it was fast, stable, and very capable. A couple of years later I used one of the early versions of WordPerfect for Windows (I don't recall the version number) and it was a complete disaster. It crashed very often. Hence, my love/hate with WordPerfect.

russellbeattie 2y ago
The reason for the horrible Windows version was threefold: 1) Culture, 2) Hubris and 3) OS/2. From Almost Perfect [1], the book linked to in the article: > WordPerfect Corporation was not a platform for personal achievement, a career ladder to other opportunities, or a challenging opportunity for personal improvement. The company did not put the needs of the individual ahead of its own. The company was not concerned about an employee's personal feelings, except as they related to the company's well-being. > WordPerfect Corporation was not intended to be a social club for the unproductive. While other companies might condone many personal or social activities at the office, ours did not. Things like celebrating birthdays, throwing baby showers, collecting for gifts, selling Tupperware or Avon, managing sports tournaments, running betting pools, calling home to keep a romance alive or hand out chores to the children, gossiping or flirting with co-workers, getting a haircut, going to a medical or dental appointment, running to the cafeteria for a snack, coming in a little late or leaving a little early, taking Friday afternoon off, and griping about working conditions were all inappropriate when done on company time. Even though these activities were condoned by many businesses across the country, we felt there was no time for them at WordPerfect Corporation. Sounds like a lovely place to work! Oof. Compare this to Apple or Microsoft or a ton of other Silicon Valley companies. It's no wonder they couldn't find developers: > In January [1990] Microsoft offered to make us a beta test site for Windows 3.0. We accepted their generous offer, but did little more than look Windows over. In hindsight, it is easy to see we should have done much more right away. At the time, we could justify not doing a Windows 2.0 version in favor of completing WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, but it is now difficult to defend our further delays. Unfortunately, we did not have any experienced Windows programmers inside the company to form a development team, and there were not many outside the company to recruit. > In May Microsoft shipped Windows 3.0, and our worst fears became a reality. Just at the time we were decisively winning in the DOS word processing market, the personal computing world wanted Windows, bugs and all. To make matters worse, Microsoft Word for Windows was already on dealer shelves and had received good reviews. That little cloud on the horizon, which had looked so harmless in 1986, was all around us, looking ominous and threatening. IBM's strength and size were no protection. Not even an elephant could ignore the impending storm. > May 31, 1990 was a sad day in WordPerfect Corporation's history. I wrote a press release announcing that we were postponing our OS/2 product, so we could produce a Windows version of WordPerfect as quickly as possible. I wrote, "While we still are strong supporters of OS/2, we have decided to test and release the Windows version of WordPerfect before the OS/2 version. The reasons for the schedule change have to do with the expected delays in version 2.0 of Presentation Manager and particular requests from our customers. This change should move up the release of our Windows product by three to four months and will delay our release of a PM product by four or five months." The book is free online and pretty interesting if you like histories of early computing. It's definitely on the list with the more famous ones like Soul of a New Machine. 1. http://www.wordplace.com/ap/ http://www.wordplace.com/ap/

_mlbt 2y ago

An interesting thing about WordPerfect was that most of the keyboard shortcuts were built around the row of function keys at the top of the keyboard, so they were difficult to remember, compared to modern keyboard shortcuts. For this reason, nearly every WordPerfect user I knew had a little piece of plastic or laminated paper that they placed above the row of function keys that listed all of the keyboard shortcuts on it to help them remember.

mbreese 2y ago
The shortcut strip came in the box! And it was all based on F1-F12 and modifier keys alt/ctrl/shift. It was a complete pain to learn, but once you knew a few key ones (F10 was save?), it was very fast to work with. I wasn't very old, but I remember having the same kind of muscle memory then with WP5.0/5.1 that I do now with vim. Autosave wasn't a thing, so hitting F10 often was just done out of habit. But, by far the best part was that you could reveal all of the formatting codes, so you could see exactly how something was styled. It was much like editing HTML by hand, and easier to figure out how something was styled than with almost any WYSIWYG. Here’s a photo of what it looked like: https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/1aemcxc/80s_word_perfect_keyboard_shortcut_keyboard/?rdt=54094 https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/1aemcxc/80s_word_perf...
- psunavy03 2y ago
  Losing Reveal Codes was the worst part of Microsoft forcing Word down everyone's throat. Word positively sucks in comparison to this day. No, the little "paragraph" icon isn't enough. Reveal Codes showed you in granular form what was going on so you could fix what was borked, instead of ping-ponging back and forth in AutoComplete hell. And it wasn't just on the DOS version. WordPerfect for Windows has/had it too along with the modern WYSIWYG UI.
- dogman1050 2y ago
  I don't remember the details, but the function key shortcuts changed enough between WP4.2 and 5.1 to slow me down. May have been the first time I grumbled about a SW update breaking my workflow. Some things never change.

zabzonk 2y ago

As a function key hater - hated it. WordStar for me! Does anyone use function keys for word processors on modern interfaces? As far as I can see they are all used for media/screen controls.

keyle 2y ago
As a function key lover - what do you hate about keys whose function is to perform a function?
- zabzonk 2y ago
  Takes me away from the main keyboard - I much prefer Ctrl-X rather than Fn-X. And as I asked before, do you still use function keys with modern interfaces? And if so, which one(s)? And have you ever seen (or used) one of the insane keyboards that were used to manage IBM mainframes and super-minis?
  - keyle 2y ago
    I did in fact, used AS/400 growing up in my mum's office and then later as an internship. And it was so powerful. With muscle memory, you could just F2, F5, F3 combos, press tab twice and start typing [1]. The systems used were the precursor to SAP. Function keys are really powerful. Ctrl+x works, but do these type of ctrl+letter shortcuts all day and you're guaranteed some wrist problems in a few years [2]. As a software engineer, I still put start debug on F5, end debug on F8 and used most of the other keys as well. It's interesting because that comes from my early days as a developer in DOS and then Windows. I now work on macOS though. One of the first things I change on macOS is having permanently the function keys active. [1] arguably the main issue today is our reliance of graphical UI for repetitive work. The fact that you have to look and drag the mouse before clicking and then move your hands to your keyboard to actually type words, is insanely poor. [2] if you're referring to the `fn` key on modern keyboard, we're then in agreeance, these are awful.
    - zabzonk 2y ago

kjellsbells 2y ago

WordPerfect was like vi: forbidding entry point, difficult key bindings, and a joy to use once you got it. Word for Windows even had a mode that replicated the plain blue screen and behavior of WP5.1 for a few years, which I still miss. WP also ran on the UNIX of the day, with look and feel very much like the DOS version. Tavis Ormandy got it working on Linux[0]. [0] https://github.com/taviso/wpunix?tab=readme-ov-file https://github.com/taviso/wpunix?tab=readme-ov-file

mmooss 2y ago
> WordPerfect was like vi: forbidding entry point, difficult key bindings, and a joy to use once you got it. Maybe in that way, but I think it's misleading to say a every keyboard-based non-GUI editor is essentially similar. Vi's appeal is the muscle memory of complex commands, because of the moded keyboard - one mode being character insert, the other being commands. Didn't WP use function keys + accelerator keys? That's almost the opposite of Vi's efficiency and muscle-memory.
wenc 2y ago
XyWrite: hold my beer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XyWrite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XyWrite XyWrite was hardcore.
compsciphd 2y ago
I believe there was a GUI version of Word Perfect for X11 before Word Perfect for Windows existed and Word Perfect was an early user of Wine for Corel's port of Word Perfect for Windows to Linux in their abortive effort to go all in on linux on the desktop (also being an early proponent of arm on the desktop)

russellbeattie 2y ago

I think it's interesting how modern TUI apps never seem to look as nice as mid-80s DOS apps like WordPerfect or Lotus 123. I wonder if it's the blue background.

lmz 2y ago
I wonder if it's "responsive design" i.e. variable terminal sizes versus the fixed size DOS terminal.
- bombcar 2y ago
  It’s both - no fixed window and suspicious use of color. Now and then you find one still working well with thought in it. But it’s rare. The modern terminal could be amazing with Unicode support and 16 million colors …

ttul 2y ago

I remember sitting in front of WordPerfect for many, many hours as a teenager, writing essays and whatnot for school. We were fortunate to have an HP LaserJet at home that my dad used for work. The output looked great and WordPefect’s interface wasn’t terribly hard to get used to. My more sophisticated friend had Windows 3.1 and blew my mind with the WISIWYG capabilities of early versions of Word. Ironically, I now do much of my writing in vi.

enslavedrobot 2y ago

My Dad still uses WordPerfect on his windows XP machine. He recently called me up because he wants to convert one of his "books" into a resizable EPUB. I feel like this legacy format might be the death of me. The USB is in the mail (Dad doesn't even know dropbox exists, gulp).

shakna 2y ago
Word can open a WPD file, just fine. If you change the extension to doc, it'll load in. Which also means you can open it in LibreOffice, or use Pandoc or whatever else you would usually reach for. [1] WordPerfect's format is a subset of Word's original. Though, if you want to nerdsnipe yourself, the format is also documented [2], and there's a few libraries here and there for parsing it. [1] Well, almost. The Mac-versions of WordPerfect aren't a subset of Word. See the spec docs. [2] https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats//fdd/fdd000621.shtml https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats//fdd/fdd000...

rqtwteye 2y ago

I am becoming very nostalgic about word processors before around 2003. Back then, they were very predictable, made sense to me, and had all the features I wanted. The latest Word version makes all kinds of wacky choices for formatting, and I can't figure out how to fix them. Numbering is off, and formatting often is totally unpredictable. Not sure what's going on, but I really want Word 2000 back.

mobilio 2y ago
It's even worse than you expect! Around 2000 i found that if you have document with header/footer with auto page numbers and merge it with few pages from other document also with page numbers you get huge mess in numbering. Some weird happens like: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, (here is doc N:2) 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, (continues doc N:1) 7, 8, 9 And you can't just reset page numbers, because you need to be on inserted page and there to do reset.
temporallobe 2y ago
I still have a Word 2000 installer CD with the original box and product activation key. Wow what a great word processor! Simple, fast, intuitive, and packed with cool features. Modern versions are not fundamentally different, but at the same time are bloated and obtuse. It just doesn’t have that old school snappy feel, that somehow used to feel more responsive and performant on FAR less capable hardware.