WordPerfect 5.1 for MS-DOS was the pinnacle of personal computer word processing software.

[swag]

(My darling bride still insists that a much earlier version of Wordstar was the best).

Lotus 1-2-3 version 3 for DOS was the pinnacle of personal computer spreadsheet software.

Borland dBase IV for DOS was the pinnacle of personal computer relational database software.

Harvard Graphics was a regrettable predecessor to the regrettable Microsoft Powerpoint.

[swag]

1. MS-DOS 3.2 was the pinnacle of Microsoft operating systems.

After that, everything came with a solitaire or pinball game, even the server operating systems.

Novell Netware 4.2 was the pinnacle of file-server operating systems.

[Crabby Appleton]

39. Yep, Novell Netware 4.2 was the pinnacle of file-server OSes

I'm a CNE, CNE3, CNE4, CNE5, CNE6

WP51 was excellent as well.

[NJCher]

2. ah yes

I do so recall wp with those horrid colors and the wp "claw." That program had a depth that Microsoft Word could never even dream of.



Cher

[swag]

3. The loss of "reveal codes" (alt-f3) was the death of word processing.

Now users just fight winword all day over whether productivity lives or dies. winword almost always wins and productivity dies.

[Vidar]

23. I agree whole heartedly -- luckily word perfect 5.2 & 6.0 which I use at

present still have that function.

[Ellen Forradalom]

25. YES

Wow, that was the handiest feature.

[TreasonousBastard]

29. WordPerfect still has reveal codes-- one of the many reasons...

I still use it.

I've got v12, but am tempted to get the latest if I can be assured Corel hasn't completely fucked it up by now.

[Courtesy Flush]

58. We're not supposed to install software here at work

But I installed WordPerfect 8 on my machine. It runs circles around MS Word, and of course, I have Reveal Codes turned on by default at all times.

I find Word infuriating.

[pokerfan]

4. I was a Wordstar fan

One could simply focus on the words instead of colors, fonts, attributes, margins, headers, footnotes, etc.

[MonkeyFunk]

6. ah, me too

I was a wizard at Wordstar.

[swag]

13. All that mnemonic keystroke stuff that made sense too.

When my girl and I got our first 286, she rebelled against WordPerfect (it doesn't make any sense!) and insisted on WordStar. So we ran both.

You should have seen the size of that daisywheel printer we bought.

[TreasonousBastard]

30. But WordStar 2000 was absolutely the best...

product for DOS. It had the best of WordStar and WordPerfect in it and a few of its own tricks. Had to get V2.0, though.

Too bad it got the crap kicked out of it partly for its lousy first version and later for its inability to market the good one. It got lost in the swamp of word processors back then.

[WCGreen]

5. THe Lotus Suite Data Base, Approach, was far better than

Access ever can be...

I ran the whole data base of Cuyahoga County voters on that and merged in Phone numbers with relative ease...

Also, AmiPro was a Lotus based word processer was real slick and easy to use...

I am always fighting with Word because it just doesn't seem to be all that user friendly...

And PageMaker, once you learned how to get that thing going it was cool, well, for the 90's at least...

Funny thing about my tax programs...

They have gotten far more complicated and require much more work to get things done than the old dos based tax programs I started with back in the late 80's...

[swag]

16. The whole Lotus suite got rave reviews, and higher ratings across

the board than anybody else's stuff. I never got to use Approach, but did use Ami Pro, Quattro Pro, and Lotus mail. I once ran UUCP and SMTP on my first NT workstation to deliver internet email to and from everybody else in my office.

Good times: Mmm! I'd wake up with blood on my ass and then we'd get high.

[drmeow]

7. I seem to recall

that I still liked a version or two of WordPerfect after 5.2 and I think I even liked up to WP 7 (whatever was around in about '95 or so) over Word.

A secretary friend of mine and I were talking about this once. We felt that WP was written by and for typists/word processors. Word is written by programmers who haven't the faintest idea how to type a straight document. I've learned to live with it because I have to but I'll never like it as long as I live.

[WolverineDG]

11. There is no word adequate enough to describe my hatred of Word

It's not intuitive like WordPerfect. I agree with you: WP was written by/for people who actually do word processing; Word was written by programmers trying to show off.

dg

[drmeow]

38. I think this programming decision illustrates that

in WP the formatting is applied at the beginning of the section and is turned off at the end of the section when you change it. In Word the formatting is applied at the end of the section. What idiot came up with that counterintuitive design?

I have learned to deal with Word because I've been forced to. I miss WP.

[Kutjara]

59. I actually think Word was written by...

...Microsoft's marketing department. Every version just throws another kitchen-sink worth of pointless and irritating features at the user, while never resolving the usability issues and bugs customers have been complaining about for over a decade. So now I can imbed videos in my documents and autopost the resulting work to youTube, but I still can't get tabs and numbered bullets to work reliably and consistently. Every version of Word is just an increasingly desperate marketing exercise aimed at getting people to upgrade to a new version of a product that already did back in 1990 what 99% of users require from a WP package.

Hell, I remember my first wordprocessor, MultiMate. It could justify text; it let me use a few different fonts; it had bold, italics and underline; it could manage footnotes and headers; it could do superscripts and subscripts. The whole program fit on a 64kb floppy disk, and still left about 40kb for actual documents. To this day, I don't use any more features than that. Yet the current version of MS Word weighs in at nearly 50MB, and creates document files that are up to ten times the size of the ones I used to create with MultiMate (because all that fancy formatting cruft gets included, whether you use it or not).

MS Office is just pathetic. Fortunately, I can use the much lighter iWork on my Macs and OpenOffice.org on my Windows and Linux machines, so I don't often have to deal with Word these days.

[IcyPeas]

8. What about Wang?

it was the bestest.

[swag]

17. I heard that was good stuff.

Named after a real person, too.

[HamdenRice]

33. I remember Wang and Multimate

The first time I saw a word processor, I was just out of college and working as a paralegal for a big law firm. We had to use IBM selectrics, which we thought were the height of technology, with backspace/erase, whiteout, and whiteout tape.

We weren't allowed to submit documents to the Wang word processing machine, which was reserved for attorneys' work.

About 6 years later, I was working for a big foundation that had a Wang machine. We were able to work at home on our own PCs (bought my first around '86), and bring docs in on big floppies. The word processing program that was compatible with Wang was called Multimate. It wasn't ver good, but its main attraction was that it was Wang's program.

Wang collapsed very suddenly as the distributed processing power/pc paradigm took off.

[IcyPeas]

37. and before Wang... Mag Card

we used to use Mag Card machines. I thought that was soooo cool.

[Oeditpus Rex]

9. No love for Q&A?

I can't believe I used to produce newsletters with that. Award-winning newsletters, no less.

I'd still like to have it for databases, though.

[swag]

18. I must investigate this Q&A.

[RetroLounge]

10. IBM DisplayWrite IV was the pinnacle of, uhm,

shit.

RL

[swag]

19. I can't remember the native VAX/VMS word processor.

Now that I think back on it, all that tangled Postscript shit wasn't any worse than html.

Was IBM Displaywrite one of those typewriter things with a read-out?

[RetroLounge]

42. The DisplayWriter was a mainframe junker

Their PC software offering was called DisplayWrite. Clunky and awful.



RL

[ET Awful]

12. Is it weird that I still remember that Shift-F6 was center text?

and if I'm not mistaken, Shift-F7 was print.

:P

[swag]

14. There was a time when you could write your own ticket with such knowledge.

WordPerfect's bundled electronic tutorials were great, and comprehensive.

[Fredda Weinberg]

26. Some of us just kept up ... don't know 'bout you, but I started back in the day selling

CP/M machines ... so it's Linux this week ... portable devices next.

[swag]

27. Me, I got stuck in a Microsoft-bound industry.

I salute your superior knowledge and freedom.

[Fredda Weinberg]

28. I feel your pain ... we have the happiest interns - all they see are

opportunities. It's like programming camp every day ... all they need are results and the game goes on.

[Hand]

32. Did some of my best work on a CP/M machine.

An Eagle II with Spellbinder, as I recall. Amazing what you could get done with a Zylog processor and 64K of RAM. Printed out nice and crisp on a NEC Spinwriter that we called "the mule" after the noise it made when first turned on. :toast:

[DS1]

15. No arguments here.

[ThomCat]

20. I loved using wordperfect.

I wish I had learned dBase instead of Access. :(

I love using Excel. I barely remember using Lotus 1-2-3.

[swag]

35. Okay, I'll admit that I enjoy using Excel.

You've got me there.

[Crazy Dave]

21. I had to repair my attorney's computer so many times

Because his office wanted to keep using Word Perfect 5.1

They finally upgraded about two years ago

[HamdenRice]

22. I still use WordPerfect almost exclusively

I'm up to version 11. It has a nifty feature that allows you to choose the "keyboards" -- that is keystroke combinations -- of prior versions, so I still use 5.1 keystrokes. If I have to give anyone a document in Word, I type it in WordPerfect and use WordPerfect's conversion feature. If I need to give a person a document that needn't be edited, I use WordPerfect and "publish" it as a pdf document.

I agree with what someone upthread said -- that later versions were better than 5.1. When they made their first wyswyg version for Windows they pretty much set the gold standard that hasn't been surpassed. Also agree that it is for people who really understand typing and typesetting.

Btw, WP still has reveal codes. I don't know how anyone can use a wordprocessor without reveal codes.

I have Word, but I don't think I have ever created a document in Word. It's just too horrible compared to WP.

[MrsMatt]

24. Hell, we're still using dBase at my work

we've upgraded to dBase V, but the orginal programs were written in III+.

[DainBramaged]

31. Notepad was the pinnacle of notepad

And when my pencil was sharp, look out world.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


I worked for Hitachi in the mid-Eighties, and they were so cheap that when you needed a pencil, they gave you a "pencil extender" to use until your pencil was less than one inch in length. We said fuck you and went out and bought our own stationary and a locking file cabinet so they couldn't "borrow" ours.

And that's when I discovered the joy of college lined notepads.

[Orrex]

34. For some applications I've used PC-Write v3 for about 15 years

It's a no-frills text editor that has in certain capacities has served me better than any version of Word or Word Perfect.

[Shakespeare]

36. Meh. Having mastered both WP 5.1 for DOS and multiple versions of Word...

...I'll take Word anyday (prefereably the '97 version). I currently use both at my job (a few luddite attorneys around here refuse to give up their WP for DOS). And you can get reveal codes on Word, btw.

Oh, and every single version of WP for Windows utterly and completely blows. Their Windows versions have never come close to being as good as their last DOS version was.

[Yavin4]

40. Wow. You All Sound Really, Really Old

What's next a Matlock thread?

[swag]

41. I stopped watching TV after Andy of Mayberry.

[FloridaJudy]

53. I remember when the function keys

Were on the left side of the keyboard. Where the gods intended they should be. I had this neat little laminated cardboard template that fit around them to remind me of which was which in WP.

I'm older than dirt.

[RebelOne]

61. I remember that template, so I'm older than dirt, too.

Actually, I really am. I'm 69.

[trotsky]

43. Simple, FAST, reliable.

Everything today's software isn't. Got through college on WP 5.0 and 5.1. Great little program.

[skids]

44. Agree but no on 123. Quattro Pro for DOS was better. n/t

[End Of The Road]

45. Oh god Quattro Pro - I had completely forgotten about it. nt

[triguy46]

51. I still think it is easier than excel, especially the 'drill down' feature...

that made it easy to collect data from different worksheets. As far as I know, excel cannot do that. There was also the big lawsuit between Lotus and Quattro over the Quattro Pro option of using 123 look alike screens and commands.

[GOPisEvil]

46. I created many a document in WP 5.1.

It was the standard for the State of Texas into the 21st century. Hell, even after we went to word, I STILL used WP 5.1 because I had so many documents saved therein.

Oh, and I second whoever said Quatro Pro was the superior spreadsheet.

Spelling edit

[Manifestor_of_Light]

55. WordPervert was so much better than Word.

In WordPervert I could change the vertical line spacing, move the margins in, and even get line numbers for my transcripts. Word is so rigid that there was no way I could just set margins and line spacing, and start typing. Word had never heard of trial transcripts and deposition format, so therefore it did not exist.

I started using PFS Professional Write and had to chop my transcripts up into 55-page sections, because of the 64K limit on document size. They had no idea that a trial transcript can be 200 to 250 pages long PER DAY. Some idiot in my local computer club, which is the largest PC club in the WORLD, BTW, (www.hal-pc.org) just couldn't understand why anybody would make a 250-page long document in one file. Asshole.

Sprint by Borland was pretty good too. I wish they had not abandoned it.

[HamdenRice]

57. I also came to WordPerfect via the legal profession

and the legal profession and academia stuck with WP the longest of any industry for the reasons you cite. I don't know how on earth one could easily do legal footnotes in Word.

I'm still using WordPerfect, version 11.

[KatyMan]

62. I loved PFS

Mainly the database, a great tool for making basic databases. And the PFS Write was cool too, but I never had huge docs.
I also second Lotus 1-2-3, used to use it all the time, very straightforward. I hate Excel, to be honest, except to use it to parse long, repetitive scripts.

[YDogg]

47. I'm a Notepad man.

[leeroysphitz]

49. I love notepad as well!

It's got that handy Word Wrap feature... What version do you have?

[YDogg]

54. All I know is it ...

"Creates and edits text files using basic text formatting."

I use it for simple HTML shizzit all of the time.

[EstimatedProphet]

48. Hell yes it was!

And Harvard Graphics 2.3 beats the crap out of any version of Powerpoint too!

[triguy46]

50. Don't forget MultiMate. And Symphony for Lotus 123. WYSIWYG was so cool.

[Kutjara]

60. I loved MultiMate.

Did everything I needed and could fit on a 64k floppy, with about 40k left over for documents (hard disk? what's a hard disk?). There's nothing I do with a wordprocessor today that MultiMate couldn't still handle with ease, if I could find a machine that'd run it.

[Redstone]

52. And "Control-Alt-Delete" was such a sweet sorrow.

Redstone

[FloridaJudy]

63. Ah. yes. The "three finger Microsoft salute"!

I still occasionally find myself trying that when everything freezes in Vista.

I doesn't work anymore. Dammit.

[Lex]

56. Wordprocessing programs should have all functions key based.

Stopping keystrokes to have to screw with the mouse is just stupid.