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I have had a number of people ask me to post the info that I found
concerning Wordperfect for the Mac. I have included the information from
two sources below. One thing to keep in mind is that EndNote does NOT
have a plug-in module for WordPerfect for the Mac. It is for that reason
that I will stay with Word 5.1. (I dumped Word 6.0 off my machine.)

There are two separate reviews of WordPerfect below. The first is from
Floyd Wallace and lists the "Good, Bad and Ugly". The second is from
David Reiser's who does not talk about the "Bad and Ugly" much.

Jerry

Jerry Flatto                                 "Applying computer
technology is
North Carolina A&T State Univ.                simply finding the right wrench
Internet:flattoj@wolf.ncat.edu                to pound in the correct screw."

======================================================================

This article represent a three-part review of WordPerfect written by
Floyd Wallace and submitted to the Word-Mac listserve. After David
Reiser's review, I would pay careful attention to the BAD and the UGLY.

Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 00:11:08 -0500 (EST)
From: flwalla@netcom.com (Floyd Wallace)
To: word-mac@scu.edu.au
Subject: Switching to WordPerfect:Good
Message-ID: <01HJIZQB9KK28WY208@grove.iup.edu>

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Switching to WordPerfect Mac 3.1

As a longtime user of Word, I recently tried WordPerfect 3.1 when I could
not get Word to run properly (Hint: Word 5.1a is *NOT* 32 bit clean). Here
are my impressions of WordPerfect. I liked some things, hated others, and
found other parts of WordPerfect very confusing. If you are contemplating
switching to WordPerfect instead of upgrading to Word 6, here is what you
should know.

The Good
========
WP has some things that Word 5.1a doesn't (not having Word 6 I can't
comment on WP vs Word 6). WordPerfect will do Watermarks, macros, math in
tables, and other neat stuff. WP 3.1 will center a page between the top and
bottom edges (very nice feature), it has QuickCorrect (equivalent to Word
6's Autocorrect), and a much nicer table editor.

In WP 3.1 Tables can stretch across pages with no problem. This is
something that I have never been able to do in Word 5.1a. In addition, the
range of borders and fills in WP3.1 puts Microsoft's product to shame. If
you can create and edit a table in Word, you already know how to do it in
WP.

Where WP 3.1 really shines is the creation of text or graphic frames. No
tediously estimating the size of your frame, and laboriously positioning it
in the print preview. WP even outdoes MacWrite Pro in the use of frames. I
was able to print picts properly in WP frames that would not print in
MacWrite Pro. The automatic caption capabilities of WP 3.1 make it ideal
for people who prepare tests or other material with a lot of pictures or
figures. I am a teacher, and I use this feature of WP to create tests. It
makes this tedious task a breeze.

The spell checker "feels" faster than Word 5.1a, and so does the Grammar
Checker (which is built-in to WP 3.1). WP 3.1 will also start faster than
Word, which is very sloooooow in loading up. Here are some comparative
times to start three different word processors on my Duo 280 w 18 mb of
RAM: Word 5.1a -- 17 sec; WordPerfect 3.1 -- 14 sec; WriteNow 4 -- 9 sec.
Not bad considering that WP gives you a LOT of extras that WriteNow
doesn't.

WP also gives you a "fat binary" installer that will automatically detect
what kind of Mac you are using and install the correct (68K or PowerPC)
version. The 68K FULL installation takes about 9.1 mb with Foreign Language
support, documentation, some NEAT Bitstream TT fonts, and other goodies

The draw part of WP is far superior to Word's useless Picture Editor. You
can do math operations on tables, and set borders on *CHARACTERS*. You can
also have 256 color text, and search and replace on such things as font,
size, style as well as text, and insert symbols easier than Word's symbol
function. WP 3.1 also has more spacing (paragraph and line) options than
you can shake a Word 6 manual at!

WP 3.1 fully supports XTND. I have been able to open docs in WP that I
cannot open with other Word Processors and that includes MacWrite Pro which
I thought was the champ of "opening."

The Bad
=======
WP 3.1 is slow. It is unusable on my LC II at work (but then, so is nearly
everything else) and is slow even on my Duo 280 w 18 mb of RAM or my Q650 w
8 mb of RAM. I have heard that the *NATIVE* PPC version is fast, but I have
never been able to test this. I DO notice a lag in what I type and what I
see on the screen. Also changing style definitions and ruler markers is
slow, and the text is slow to reformat on the screen. Text scrolls slowly,
and often the screen does not redraw properly (especially if you had a lot
of windows open). WP 3.1 is also much slower with QuickCorrect on, but it
does take care of common typos so you might be able to live with the delay
on a fast machine. My rule of thumb is: WP3.1 requires at LEAST a '040 and
works best on PPC for acceptable use.

WP3.1 has a "Show Codes" option that is totally useless and betrays it's
ugly DOS lineage. You can't edit the codes, so what is the use of seeing
them? The button bar is customizable but nothing else is, including the
menus (as far as I know). The styles implementation is different from
Word's and can be confusing. It took me about a day of using it to figure
out how to work with styles. There is a confusing option to WP3.1
environment settings that allows the ugly world of IBM PC DOS to rear it's
head -- the Paragraph vs. Single Paragraph setting. In the *MAC* world,
changes to formatting of paragraphs only change the paragraphs selected.
The following paragraphs are not affected by this change in perpetuity. Set
WP3.1 to "Single Paragraph" in the Formatting part of the Preferences to do
this. If you want to experience state of the art, circa 1985, choose
"Paragraph." The result is just ugly. It is also confusing. But once you
set WP 3.1 to behave like a *MAC* program you can ignore this "feature".

Online help is *Faster* than Word 5.1a, but more confusing. The
documentation for Macros (yes, WP3.1 has macros) is useless. The Macro
language is quite powerful but very hard to learn and you really have to go
out and buy a book to learn how to use it. But, many tasks can be simply
recorded.

Unlike WriteNow, MacWrite Pro, and even Word 6, there are no character
styles. There is no glossary or "Autotext", but you can use Macros to
accomplish the same thing. You can't paste several formats of the date into
a document, unlike Word 5.1a and MacWrite Pro. You can only have one format
in a document.

Merge is useless in WP3.1. You have to read the manual to figure out that
you can use tables like in Word to set up a data file. Online help is worse
than useless when it comes to merge in WP. The way WP does merge is so
ridiculous that I actually starting laughing when I read the manual. There
is no IF .. THEN .. ELSE structure or any other important control structure
in WP3.1. Without a doubt, WP 3.1 has the *WORST* implementation of merge
of all word processors on the market. If you need merge, don't use Word
Perfect.

The Ugly
========
WP3.1 lets you copy and paste ruler settings like WriteNow and other word
processors. The way it does this is truly bizarre. You click on an icon to
copy the ruler setting, and then you click in the paragraph you want to
paste the settings to and  ... Paste! This is so *UNMACLIKE* that it took
me quite a while to figure this out. The same holds true of copying and
pasting character styles. You can do it, but it's ugly!

There is no section break, unlike Word. You can suppress Headers and
footers on a page (you get 2 sets of headers, 2 sets of footers). Setting
up a "newsletter" with part of a page having one column and part having 2
or three columns is different than Word, but can be done with judicious use
of column breaks.

You can import and export styles and macros, but you do this through a
cumbersome "Librarian" that isn't very easy to use. Some tasks and commands
cannot be done by Macros. You can't invoke a word count by Macro, for
example, and Word Count only works on a document, not a section (there are
work arounds to this, but ... You should be able to do a word count on a
selection in a modern word processor). You don't have Word's Open Paragraph
but you have the same thing *AFTER* a paragraph (why?). Tabs and margins
are just as powerful as in Word but you have to get used to the way in
which WP does things, which is to say not very much like other word
processors. Footnotes and endnotes are two different items, but like Word
you can control how they appear, and the markers (numbers, letters, etc)
used to indicate them. Unlike Word, WP 3.1 will not let you have a section
break to change the appearance of footnotes "midstream" through a document.
Entering footnotes is done through a separate window -- no little black bar
as in Word. I have found this to be a good thing on my two monitor set up
at home, and a bad thing on my Powerbook at work. You can, however, move
the footnote window out of the way and see your text behind it. Unlike
Word, WP 3.1 will not let you split your window into 2 sections, which is
not good if you need to see two different parts of a long document.


Roundup
=======
Word Perfect is great if you don't need to do Merge and you have a fast
mac. If neither of the above is true, then WP is not for you. I'd suggest
switching to MacWrite Pro or WriteNow if you can't upgrade to Word 6. The
other thing to remember is that Word Perfect does things differently,
sometimes a lot differently, than most word processors. It will definitely
take some getting used to. You have to decide for yourself if you will
benefit from switching. WP does have some very nice features that no other
major word processor has, like its handling of tables, frames, previews of
files when opening WP 3.1 docs, and especially multiple languages on the
same page. If you have a spare $99 lying around and want to see for
yourself what WP is like I'd say go ahead, explore. Or try out the fully
functional demo on America Online, and the net (it prints out "Demo" on all
pages). See if you like it. Hey, anything beats the agonizing wait for a
PPC version of Word 6, right?


===================================================================

Date:         Tue, 22 Nov 1994 13:45:49 EST
Reply-To: The H-NET list for the History and Macintosh Society
              <H-MAC@msu.edu>
Sender: The H-NET list for the History and Macintosh Society
              <H-MAC@msu.edu>
From: Marc Bizer <bizer@clipper.ens.fr>
Subject:      WordPerfect 3.1
To: Multiple recipients of list H-MAC <H-MAC@msu.edu>
Status: O
X-Status:

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
The following is from TidBits issue #253, dated 21-Nov-94. Please bear in
mind that David Reiser tends to overlook WordPerfect 3.1's faults.
        --Marc Bizer

WordPerfect 3.1
---------------
  by Dave Reiser <reiserdb@ttown.apci.com>

  [I asked Dave to write this review as a follow-up to the review of
  WordPerfect 3.0 that he wrote earlier this year. Dave would like
  us all to note that his opinions do not necessarily represent
  those of his employer. Assuming my neck continues to heal nicely,
  I'll follow up in a few weeks with some thoughts about how
  WordPerfect 3.1 compares to Word 6. -Tonya]

  I recently dug up my review of WordPerfect 3.0 (from TidBITS-205_)
  and read through it, wondering what they've done for me lately. In
  WordPerfect 3.1, Novell has done quite a bit. In addition to
  enhancing the program, Novell sped up several features, did not
  slow down any part of the program that I've noticed, and did not
  create a disk storage monster.


**New Features** -- The most visible changes to 3.1 are
  QuickCorrect (an automatic typing corrector) and the new features
  for System 7.5, which include support for the Drag Manager
  (exchanging information between files and applications without
  having to copy and paste), Apple Guide (interactive help), and
  QuickDraw GX printing (see TidBITS-243_ for more about QuickDraw
  GX) .

  I haven't used Drag Manager much, but it seems to work as the
  manual says: drag a selection out to the desktop and the Mac puts
  a copy there, available to be dragged into another document (the
  document could be from WordPerfect of from or any other compliant
  application).

  I have seen the future of computer "How To" writing, and that
  future is Apple Guide or its successor. People seem to be of two
  minds about Apple Guide: some are indifferent; others are drooling
  at the thought of seeing a really good help system. Being in the
  latter category, I'll offer the defense that anyone who has done
  much computer support has run across features they have had to
  demo time and again. A help system that can walk the user through
  a process, using a real example of the user's choosing, and
  explaining the operation while it happens, is truly music to my
  soul. WordPerfect Guide (the WordPerfect specific files that run

  under Apple Guide) includes only a subset of topics in the regular
  help file, but it's a good start. If I could only get Novell to
  throw out that lousy clone of Microsoft Help they use for the
  regular help files, I'd be happier. I find Apple Guide a bit too
  slow on a IIci, but for a beginner it probably isn't too bad.

  QuickDraw GX printing makes it much easier to create a program
  that can handle landscape and portrait pages in the same document.
  I've been waiting for the ability to include a few landscape pages
  in a standard portrait document since Apple promised it two years
  before the original System 7.0 shipped. It finally works, and it's
  almost enough to justify the extra memory GX takes. People with
  lots of printer choices on a network will probably appreciate GX
  printing support. I also think that Hoefler Text (one of the GX
  fonts Apple includes with System 7.5) represents a definite
  improvement over the PostScript fonts most of us are used to
  working with. If Apple can get enough companies to create and
  support GX fonts, computer typography will take another leap
  forward. On the other hand, Hoefler Text is kind of tiring to look
  at on the screen.

  QuickCorrect is WordPerfect's name for what I call a typo catcher.
  It fixes simple things that people mis-type, such as "teh" instead

  of "the", multiple spaces between words, no capitalization at the
  beginning of a sentence, or an inadvertent second capital letter
  at the beginning of a word. QuickCorrect isn't a full spelling
  checker, or it would be way too slow. It does catch little
  mistakes quite well, in exchange for a slight hesitation in some
  screen operations.

  You can also use QuickCorrect as a mini-glossary. You can edit
  QuickCorrect's substitution list to include up to 254 characters
  for any "word" you want to be shorthand for the longer piece. For
  example, if you always want to write out "alternating current"
  instead of "ac", just edit the list appropriately.

  Native Power Mac support was added in 3.0a last March, and 3.1
  adds a fat binary install option. PowerTalk support also existed
  in a previous version, but I haven't tried it.


**Speed** -- Scrolling is only slightly faster than 3.0a, but
  screen redraw action is much quicker in normal text entry. If you
  type in tables on a 68030-based Mac, the screen redraw still gets
  jerky when the text is being entered in a cell that is right along
  the edge of the document window. It's sad to see my IIci become
  the slowpoke of the Mac family, but I still find 3.1 serviceable
  on the old machine. Novell says 3.1 will run on a Mac Plus under
  System 6.0.7 in a 2 MB memory partition. I believe it would run,
  but I'm almost positive I'd use a text editor with a mark-up
  language before I'd wait for any long document editing on a Plus.
  Maybe one of these days I'll drag out my Plus and see what it's
  like.

  If you want some numbers (all times in seconds), I'll pick on
  scrolling and word count for the WordPerfect Read Me file, which
  has 67 pages and about 19,500 words. In case you're wondering why
  the file so long, 40 pages are appendices which offer a list of
  all the command key equivalents, an Apple event dictionary, macro
  commands, and macro variables. All this information is available
  online, but not in the bound manual. Apparently Novell took so
  much heat for not printing it that they put it in the Read Me
  file.

>                          jump     jump to       jump        word
> Machine   System         to end   beginning     to end      count
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> IIci       7.0.1 (w/tuner)  19 sec     4 sec      7 sec     35 sec
> IIci       7.5              10         ?          4         19
> 7100 with  7.1.2             4        <1         <1          4
>   L2 cache

  The reason I include multiple jumps is that the first time through
  the file, WordPerfect checks some formatting information as it
  goes, after that it remembers most of what it checked. For anyone
  tempted to inject an "I can do that instantly on xxx," I'll throw
  in the additional test of using the scroll box to go part way
  through a large file. WordPerfect's times are proportional to the
  distance through the file. The "instant" jumps in other programs
  often go away when you go somewhere other than the beginning or
  end. Scrolling with the scroll arrows is much too fast to read on
  the Power Mac. On the IIci, arrow scrolling goes quickly for just
  text, but gets jumpy or slow when graphics are involved.

  In the last review I complained about text entry in a ten column
  by thirty row table. On the IIci, I can still out type the screen
  redraw by the time I'm halfway into the table, but the screen
  redraw is noticeably better than 3.0. (My work-around is to do
  heavy data entry in tab delimited form, select it all, and convert
  it to a table with the Text-to-Table function. It only takes a few

  seconds.) On the 7100, I didn't have to wait for the screen at
  all.

  I've been on a speed binge for a while, and I find myself asking
  whether this much emphasis on speed makes sense. It may, in that
  anything distracting will irritate a writer, and lack of speed is
  distracting. [Indeed! -Adam] Other things are important when
  considering power and ease of use: consistency of the interface,
  ease of access to the most often used functions, predictable
  access to infrequently used features. I've thought for a long time
  that WordPerfect's creators had a strong design vision. Most of
  the time I like their design strategy, so I like the program.


**What's Present and What's Missing?** -- The review of 3.0 gives
  a lot more information about the implementation and features.
  Almost none of that information has changed in 3.1 - except, of
  course for items mentioned here.

  I think the biggest negative surprise in 3.1 is that Outlining is
  still nothing more than flexible paragraph numbering. I guess
  Marketing figured keeping up with Apple was a bigger plus than
  waiting for other major feature additions.

  The other disappointment is the lack of character-based styles.
  The way WordPerfect handles paragraph styles pretty much requires
  that manual formatting changes be avoided if styles are ever
  edited or different styles applied to existing text. Since the
  ability to make those changes is supposed to be one of the major
  advantages of styles, I find WordPerfect's styles not useful
  enough to bother with often.

  WordPerfect now includes Macintosh Easy Open from Apple and
  Microsoft Word translators from DataViz. You can _finally_ export
  to Word format. There is also the choice of the built-in or
  DataViz version of the Word import translator. I think
  WordPerfect's converter does a better job than DataViz's (on slow
  save format files - if you have extensive fast saved Word files,
  the DataViz translator will probably be your only choice). I still
  have several complaints about the how much cleanup I have to do
  after importing files from Word. This issue is my biggest nit to
  pick with WordPerfect. If you're trying to take on the market
  gorilla, you must be prepared to swing from higher trees.

  The Document Experts and clip art that WordPerfect mailed to
  people sending in their registration cards for 3.0 now come as
  disk 6 in the upgrade package. I don't know if first time buyers
  get disk 6 with the rest, or if they still have to register first.
  The Experts, which you can think of as combining stationery and
  macros, have become smarter in some cases. The envelope macro
  (which is a Document Expert run from the Macro menu) allows better
  control of address offsets from the default margins set up the
  first time you run the macro. I still have to trick the envelope
  macro into working properly with my DeskWriter C, but I appreciate
  the improvements.


**Hardware Requirements** -- WordPerfect 3.1 takes up around 12 MB
  of disk space on a 68K based Mac, if you include all the fonts,
  Document Experts, clip art, documentation, and tutorial files
  included in the package. I use a 3,000K RAM allocation for the
  program (even on the Power Mac, as long as virtual memory is on or
  RAM Doubler is in use). Novell claims it will run in 2,000K on a
  68K Mac, but I've always found their minimums a bit optimistic.

  WordPerfect document files are not svelte. Compression programs
  can regularly squeeze 75 percent of the space out of WordPerfect
  files. The Save As dialog box offers a "WP 3 Compressed" option,
  but I haven't been able to get it to give me smaller files,
  despite taking a lot longer to save. I think there is a bug here.


**Pricing** -- Anyone can buy WordPerfect Mac 3.1 for $99 until
  31-Jan-95. Upgrades from prior WordPerfect versions are $59. After
  January 31st, the retail price goes to $395 and upgrades to $69.
  The upgrades are free to anyone who purchased 3.0a after 15-Aug-94
  and until 30-Nov-94. If you do want to take advantage of the free
  upgrade, be sure to upgrade on or before 30-Nov-94.

  All in all, I still like WordPerfect Mac a lot, and I have every
  intention of using it as my main word processor for the
  foreseeable future.

    Novell Applications Group -- 800/451-5151 -- 801/225-5000
      801/228-5077 (fax) -- <wpsupport@aol.com> (support)