Relevant portions from Washington Post chat transcript on Monday, February 6, 2006; 2:00 PM
Link truncated:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
discussion/2006/02/03/DI2006020302322.html
Q: Your review of Corel's office suite was pretty depressing. I was a WordPerfect fan until it really became impossible to continue using it. And I've never really gotten the hang of using MS Word-- Word continues to be difficult and unintuitive for me. And, no, I -don't- want a word processing program that works sort of like Word, but not as well. Ack. Aargh.
A: I had high hopes for this update as well; Corel said they paid particular attention to Microsoft file-format compatibility, so I was puzzled to see this version do as badly as earlier releases.
Q. Other than conformity, what reasons would you give any home user to prefer either Corel Suite or MS Office over OpenOffice.org?
A. If you've done all your work in Corel's software and therefore have a large accumulation of WP, QP and Presentations files, then Corel's an obvious choice--but I can't see why anybody else would want to use the Corel suite over Microsoft Office, and especially not over the free OpenOffice.
Q. I like OpenOffice a lot, but OTOH I have to recommend Microsoft Office if a) you need an integrated calendar/addressbook/mail program like Outlook, b) you need to exchange files often with PowerPoint users (OO is great at reading and writing Word files and pretty good with Excel files, but I found it was just too unreliable at generating .ppt files that looked the same in both PowerPoint and OpenOffice's own Impress).
Regarding your WPOX3 review, you omitted Paradox (WPO's database) from the mix in your review. This is understandable given the utter lack of attention Corel has afforded this tool in the last 4 years.
This is a big deal to thousands of users and business worldwide. There is no way to translate Paradox business applications to another tool the way that documents and spreadsheets can be read with MSO or OOo, so Paradox users left out in the cold are left to rewrite their apps more or less from scratch and at significant cost.
What's your opinion on companies that acquire and kill vital applications with no clear upgrade path?
A. I think that it's no way to win over customers or ensure the loyalty of your existing ones, that's for sure.
Paradox... I spent one summer entering data into a Paradox database. For DOS, no less.
Q. A number of things have happened recently:
1. Your review of Wordperfect showed its flaws,
2. I just got a new home computer and decided not to spend the money on a copy of Office and got Open Office,
3. I had problems with a corrupt Powerpoint file that were solved by opening it in Open Office when Powerpoint choked on it.
4. I discovered that Open Office graphs have some features that Excel maddenly doesn't have that are useful for science geeks like myself (the ability to label data points in XY graphs).
All things in my life are pointing to Openoffice as the way to go, keeping an old copy of Office around to handle the occasional translation issues associated with Word and Excel documents.
A. And you're saving a lot of money in the bargain.
Q. Rob -- your review of WordPerfect X3 seemed brutal, to say the least. But it was also nasty and somewhat nonspecific. C'mon, what do you have against WordPerfect? I think the market leader needs some competition, don't you?
A. Me too, and it's getting much more effective competition from OpenOffice. That said, I'm not going to give somebody a pass just because they are trying to compete with the dominant product in the market.
Q. I thought my writeup was more than specific enough--to the point where I even critiques the file dialog boxes in the thing. Yes, I did express some exasperation with Corel towards the end. But you've gotta remember, as I was doing this review I kept running into problems that I critized when I reviewed WordPerfect 11, three years ago.
In your article, "WordPerfect's Unlucky 13th Edition Is Full of Pitfalls," you wrote:
quote:
WordPerfect also stumbled badly at the unavoidable task of reading and writing in Microsoft Word formats. It couldn't even open some Word documents, incorrectly saying they were in an "unknown file format," then couldn't preserve moderately busy page layouts when saving files in Word format.
end
Are you aware that unless a Word user has upgraded to Word2003, that he or she might not be able to open a Word2003 DOC file using their copy of Word97 or Word2000 due to Microsoft having effected changes to its proprietary DOC file format with each successive release, including Word2000, Word2002 and Word2003 so that Word users must use Wordpad to open Word2003 files, and then copy and paste text from the Word2003 document to Word97 or Word2000?
What "moderately busy page layouts" in documents created using WPX3 did you attempt in using Word to save in WP format? Assuming that you did perform such tests, what were the results when the Word document saved in WP format was opened using WPX3? For the sake of clarity, by "moderately busy page layouts," would you please explain/exactly/what you meant?
A. Sorry, but the "It's all Microsoft's fault" doesn't convince me--OpenOffice didn't have any problem opening these files.
Q. As for the moderately busy layouts, one was a resume that used text boxes to position headings for each job title. The others involved text over watermarked images (the watermark somehow became a comment link in Word format, even though the Word format allows watermarks and background graphics).
WordPerfect X3? I mean hey, I took 5 years of Latin, but outside of, say, the Super Bowl (which I think about 50% thought was just "extra large" this year), does anyone use roman numerals? And why mix them with arabic numerals?
Also, a long-suffering WP'er myself, at what point can we file a false advertising complaint against a company that, despite 13 tries, still is nowhere near "perfect?"
A. The next version will use binary math to indicate the version number--it'll be WordPerfect 1110.
Q. I thought WordPerfect 5.1 (for DOS) was, in many ways, as close to "perfect" as any word processor has ever been. You could manipulate the document in just about every conceivable way and it just about NEVER crashed.
A. Yes, but it was for DOS and you couldn't do any real formatting of text as a result. And if I had to fire that up now, I'd have flashbacks to my long-ago days as an intern. I'm not sure I need that...
Q. Can we discuss whether you conducted any tests as to the ability of WPX3 to open documents created using previous versions of WP as far back as, say, WPWin 6.1? If so, what were your findings?
A. I did not. One, I didn't have any WP documents of that vintage. Two, most home users will spend far more time opening and editing Microsoft Office documents--that's just how the world is. (I tested OpenOffice according to the same standard; like it or not, we live in a Microsoft Office world.)
Q. If you ask for the City and State, why do you publish text from persons who refuse to follow the rules?
I do not see any information as to how long this "on line discussion" is supposed to last. Is it one hour, two hours, or what?
I submitted a specific question earlier about the envelop feature in WordPerfect and saw no consideration. Why?
Rob-Clearly you have not run into the problem of being totally unable to find out why WORD is having format problems because it does not have the "View Code" option like WordPerfect. It is hard enough to fix certain things in WordPerfect when you can view the code in a box at the bottom of the screen. I have finally had to copy all the WORD text of a document into a WP document so I could repair some problem or other. I will never rely completely on WORD. Comment?
AND, do any of the PDF conversion programs work and allow one to convert a PDF file, make additions or enter responses to questions, and then convert it back to PDF or does one have to purchase Acrobat by Adobe (at $600 or so) to do that? Thanks.
A. Cranky, aren't we, Lovell?
Yes, being able to open and edit PDFs is convenient. But how often does anybody actually need to do that--and how often can you get the job done just by copying the text you need out of the PDF?
I didn't mention Reveal Codes because I didn't run into any occasion where I needed it. The menu commands and toolbar items were good enough to dress up text as I wanted--as it should be. Reveal Codes made a lot more sense in the days of WP for DOS, when you couldn't display any formatting onscreen at all.
Q. You mentioned in your response to Troy, NY, in connection with his comments about your review of WPX3 in the article, WordPerfect's Unlucky 13th Edition Is Full of Pitfalls," that as you were doing the review, you "kept running into problems that -you had criticized] when -you] reviewed WordPerfect 11, three years ago." Were you reviewing WP11 using one of the "light" versions of WP, such as one of the OEM versions sold by Dell that do not include various third-party components for which royalties must be paid so that it might be sold for a reduced price, such as a copy of WP11 that excludes QuickFinder or the Inso (Stellent) Outside In Viewer Technology, component/only/only in/retail/copies of WP11, as is the case in WP12 and WPX3? Exactly what were the problems that you encountered when reviewing WP11 that you found when you reviewed WPX3?
A. Each time I've looked at WP, I've tested the non-OEM version--what people would buy if they picked it up in a store.
Here are just two problems I saw in WP 11 that are still around: the text-selection problems in Presentation, and the lack of UI consistency between Quattro Pro and WordPerfect.
Q. In response to my previous question re a comment you made in your article, "WordPerfect's Unlucky 13th Edition Is Full of Pitfalls," about your finding that --
quote:
WordPerfect ... stumbled badly at the unavoidable task of reading and writing in Microsoft Word formats. It couldn't even open some Word documents, incorrectly saying they were in an "unknown file format," then couldn't preserve moderately busy page layouts when saving files in Word format. end
-- you responded that:
quote:
"It's all Microsoft's fault" doesn't convince me--OpenOffice didn't have any problem opening these files. end
I don't blame Microsoft for anything and I am not a Corel apologist. I understood that you were reviewing WPX3 against Microsoft Office and by extension OpenOffice, but the questions I asked you had to do with how the Word97, Word2000, Word2002 user must use Wordpad (or even OpenOffice!) to open a Word2003 DOC file that he or she cannot open using their copy of Word due to the DOC format being an "unknown file format" to their copy of Word, whereas someone that uses WPWin 6.1, WP7, WP8, WP9, WP10, WP11 or WP12 experiences no difficulty whatsoever in opening documents created using WPX3. While it is apparent that Word is your word processor of choice, is it not unfair to make such comments about WPX3 as if they do not apply equally to Word or to imply something about Word's DOC file format that isn't true when such documents are open in other versions of Word which no one ever experiences using/any/version of WP from WPWin 6.1 through WPX3? I admit not understanding what your response --
quote:
"It's all Microsoft's fault" doesn't convince me--OpenOffice didn't have any problem opening these files. end
-- meant or how you intended it be applied in response to this question in particular. Would you care to elaborate please on what you meant by this response?
A. This is a long post, so I'll try to keep my reply short.
1) Word is not my word processor choice. On the Mac, I don't have a real choice. On Windows, I use OpenOffice half the time.
2) The ability to read files created with a new version of a program in an older version is nice and a point in Corel's favor, but--in case you missed this before--*it's not about the moral virtues of Corel relative to those of Microsoft.* It's about whether Corel's product holds it own as a replacement for Microsoft's.