WordPerfect

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Later known as Corel WordPerfect.

There’s no question about WordPerfect’s cross-platform compatibility. It is available for DOS, Windows, UNIX, VAX, and NeXT systems, as well as for the Mac. Novell purchased WordPerfect’s parent company and re-sold it to Corel, a Canadian company known most for its Clip Art collections and for its drawing package, Corel Draw.

WordPerfect does everything well, but not spectacularly. Its strength is versatility. It has the most complete set of graphics tools of any of the word processors. In addition to the standard pen and fill tools, and the Bézier-curve drawing tools, WordPerfect's Graphics toolbar gives you the ability to freely rotate graphics. You can also place watermarks (ghosted images or designs imprinted behind text on a page) and overlays (graphics superimposed on the text) with a single button click. WordPerfect can save pages of mixed text and graphics in HTML for World Wide Web publishing. It can save documents in formats that are compatible with almost any other text handler on any platform. It can even password protect individual documents.

WordPerfect has a set of seven different toolbars which enables you, via pop- up menus, to accomplish virtually anything in the way of text and graphic manipulation, from formatting text to generating a Table of Contents. With all of WordPerfect’s toolbars enabled at once, the effect is somewhat overwhelming. Ordinarily, you’d only turn on the ones you needed to use. Otherwise, there’s not much room left in the window for text.

WordPerfect has some excellent shortcut features, such as Make It Fit. This tool enables you to adjust the font, margins, and paragraph spacing of a formatted document that’s a bit too long or too short for your needs, so that it fits the page layout or page count you had in mind.

WordPerfect for DOS

WordPerfect for the Apple IIgs

WordPerfect for PC Networks

Misc

See Also