WordPerfect

WordPerfect version 4.1

WordPerfect Corporation

288 West Center St.

Orem, Utah 84057

(801) 227-4000

Requires IBM PC or compatible, 256K RAM, two diskette drives or hard drive, DOS 2.00 or greater.

$495.00

Reviewed by Bob Weeks

WordPerfect Corporation occupies an enviable position among software publishers. Their product's at the top of the sales charts, it enjoys critical acclaim from reviewers and glowing testimonials from users, and the company has a reputation as one of the best in the business.

What vaulted WordPerfect to this celebrated position? After working with WordPerfect for several years, through its steady revision history and maturation, it's hard to say. Sure, WordPerfect has a feature list that stacks up to any other word processor around, it gets the job done flawlessly and quickly, and generally meets the standards we hold (or should hold) a $500 software program to. But like Peggy Lee on a rainy Sunday night, I'm left with the nagging question: Is that all there is to word processing?

WordPerfect uses conventional word processing technology. It doesn't really break new ground or advance the state of the art in word processing; it just adds refinements and new features to older conventional programs like WordStar.

Nearly all of WordPerfect's commands (except cursor navigation) are stacked on the function keys, leading to an arrangement where each function key controls four different commands. Pressing the function key by itself produces one response, and holding either the shift, control, or alternate key while pressing the function keys produces three additional commands. A color-coded template identifies each function. WordPerfect is primarily command-driven, although some of the function key commands present menus for selecting additional commands. Placing all the commands on the function keys is fine, but many people find it difficult to invoke "alternate-F3" properly, and may hold the function key too long, resulting in unintended effect, or they may strike the wrong key entirely. After all, having to press two keys to invoke a command doubles the probability of getting the wrong command, and recovering from some of these accidents is not easy.

When entering text into WordPerfect, it's much like any other word processing program--just type away. WordPerfect automatically wraps words to the next line when necessary, a feature found on most word processors. WordPerfect keeps track of the pages of the document and displays page breaks as you type, meaning that WordPerfect is document-oriented like WordStar, seeing your document as a continuous stream of text. There's no need to paginate the document before printing (or even before viewing page breaks) as there is with page-oriented word processors like IBM DisplayWrite 3 and MultiMate, which store your document as a series of pages on the disk. Page-oriented word processors have the theoretical advantage that, in the event of a power failure, you'll lose just the single page you're working on, while with document-oriented WordPerfect storing the entire document in RAM memory, the entire document is at risk. But the disadvantages of page-oriented word processing--the continuous need to repaginate, the inability to view two pages simultaneously, and sluggish movement from one page to the next--outweigh whatever small benefit page-orientation provides.

Common text enhancements like underlining and boldface are easy to use--just press the underline or bold key to start the effect, and press it again to end it. If the text you want to underline is already typed, then it's a two step process. First, you must block the text, a prelude to many WordPerfect operations. A block of text is similar to a range in a spreadsheet--a section of the document that you want to do something with. In this case, you block off the words you want to underline (WordPerfect provides several ways to quickly block off words, sentences, or paragraphs) and press the underline key. The same goes for bold, except you'd press the bold key.

After you've done this once--underlining existing text--it's easy to do again, but it's certainly not intuitive the first time through. Most users will place the cursor at the word to underline and press the underline key, a futile action at best, potentially causing problems with underlined text mysteriously appearing later on.

Indenting a paragraph, on the other hand, works the same way whether you're indenting as you type or indenting after the fact. All that's required is placing the cursor at precisely the right place and pressing the indent key. If you try to indent an already-typed paragraph in the same way you'd underline it (by blocking off the paragraph and pressing the indent key), all you'll get is a sharp beep of error. No explanatory message, just the beep. I'm emphasizing this point because one of WordPerfect's oft-touted virtues is that it's easy to learn. This seems more like easy to use, somewhat confusing to learn. Microsoft Word, on the other hand, uses a more consistent way of doing things--always select the text, then issue the formatting command.

WordPerfect shows underlined text as underlined on the screen (color displays that can't underline show the text in reverse video or a color that you select). Behind the scenes, WordPerfect keeps track of formatting through hidden codes, which don't show on the screen during normal editing, but reveal themselves when you switch to the appropriately named reveal codes mode. For example, when you underline text, WordPerfect surrounds the text with the codes [U] (begin underlining) and [u] (end underlining). How do you remove underlining from the text? Switch to reveal codes mode and delete either of these codes. Similarly, since the indent key places the indent hidden code in the text, to remove the indentation from a paragraph, locate the indent code and delete it. It's not absolutely necessary to switch to reveal codes mode to delete the codes, but you have to locate them first, and that's easiest when they're visible.

Becoming familiar with the hidden codes is one of the essential steps to mastering WordPerfect, as nearly everything it does involves hidden codes. WordPerfect's hidden codes are universally hailed as a good idea, and they are, once you get used to them. Critics of WordStar complained that underlining codes and "dot" commands were visible on the screen, but the constantly visible codes may not have been such a bad idea--you soon learn to disregard them while working with your text, and when you need to make a change, it's easy to find the dot command and delete or change it.

WordPerfect implements other formatting (margins, tabs, headers and footers, page numbering, print pitch and font, and many others) through hidden codes. For example, to change the margins, you press the line format key, make the menu selection for margins, and type the left and right margin column numbers. The result is the hidden code. Placement of the cursor is essential in these operations, as that's the point where the new margins (or tabs, or whatever) take effect.

WordPerfect's implementation of margins and tabs, while similar to many other word processing programs, is a minor annoyance. The problem stems from using character columns to measure tabs and margins. For example, when printing at 10 pitch (10 characters per inch), WordPerfect's default 10 character left margin produces one inch of white space at the left of the page. But switch to 12 pitch printing, and WordPerfect maintains the same 10 character left margin, which translates to 10/12 of an inch left margin. Tab stops present similar problems. WordPerfect's tabs, by the way, are measured from the left edge of the paper instead of the left margin, meaning that if you change the margin, you'll almost certainly have to adjust the tab settings. Furthermore, paragraph indents are controlled by the tab stops. Each press of the indent key indents the paragraph to the next tab stop. Using tabs to control such widely divergent functions--columns in a table and paragraph indents--leads to confusion and extra work, perhaps maintaining two separate sets of tabs.

Also, measuring formats by character positions raises problems when using proportionally spaced characters, a common practice since the increasing use of laser printers and letter-quality dot matrix printers. Proportional fonts, the attractive typestyles used by magazines, books, and newspapers, allocate varying amounts of horizontal space to each character. An i occupies much less space than a w, for example. When using proportional fonts, there's no such thing as a character width or "spacing over ten characters," because each character has its own unique width.

While WordPerfect's implementation of margins and tabs is certainly as good as most programs', Microsoft Word presents an alternative. Microsoft Word's measurements--margins, tabs, and three types of separately measured paragraph indents--are handled in inches (and several other measurements). Font changes and proportional fonts--even with tabular material--are handled with ease and precision. Furthermore, Word's paragraph formatting only requires you to place the cursor anywhere within a paragraph to change its indentation and other attributes. With WordPerfect, you have to place the cursor at the precise beginning of the paragraph before you can press the indent key, and you may have to set new tab stops, which may throw off the alignment of a table somewhere downstream in the document.

WordPerfect sports a large variety of advanced features to help with word processing functions. The spelling checker, which ranks with the best, uses sophisticated phonetic matching to generate a list of suggested replacements for a misspelled word. You can add as many words as you want to the over 100,000 words already included. The thesaurus is an unusual feature that's quite addictive once you start using it. Just point to a word you'd like to investigate replacements for and press the thesaurus key. If the word is a headword, meaning it's a referencable word in the thesaurus, WordPerfect shows a list of words. You can replace the word in the document with one of these words, or look up synonyms for any of the displayed words.

WordPerfect includes outlining, but it isn't nearly as flexible as an outlining program like Ready! or PC Outline. WordPerfect's outlining automatically numbers outline sections up to several levels deep in three predefined numbering styles or a custom style you define. You can change the level of outline sections or move them, and WordPerfect automatically renumbers them. The outlining feature lacks an easy way to incorporate paragraphs of text beneath the section headings. WordPerfect can number paragraphs, too.

WordPerfect can create an index, table of contents, and four lists of figures, illustrations, and the like. Indexing, the most useful of these features, is quite easy to use, merely requiring you to point the cursor at a word you'd like to include in the index and typing the index heading or accepting the word itself as the heading. You can mark words as you type them or at a later time. When you're finished with the document, instruct WordPerfect to generate the indexes and tables.

Footnotes are a breeze to create. WordPerfect supports footnotes at the bottom of each page or endnotes at the end of the document, or both at the same time. Typing a footnote is as easy as pressing the footnote key and typing the note--the numbering (and renumbering if you add notes or rearrange text) is automatic. There's an almost endless list of options for numbering styles, line spacing, note placement, and other options to control the appearance of the footnotes.

The merge functions, the key to efficient automation of routine office correspondence, are again flexible enough to handle almost any situation. Merging lets you create form letters by typing a letter containing special merge commands and a separate list of names and addresses. The merge function inserts the names, addresses, and other variable data and creates the letters. Merges from the keyboard, where the merge stops and lets the operator enter the customized data, are quite easy to set up. You can include prompts in the merge, so that when the merge stops and expects an address, you can have WordPerfect display something like "Enter plaintiff's address" at the bottom of the screen. Merging from the keyboard is handy for those letters you send to just a few people, where it's not worth the effort to build a list of names and addresses as it is when you mail regularly to a group of people.

The major feature missing from the merge is a method of suppressing blank lines in the merged document when a merge variable doesn't exist. For example, if you have a merge variable for the company name, and a person doesn't have a company name, the merge will leave a blank line in the address. It's possible, most of the time, to avoid this pitfall with careful planning or clever use of macros. Balancing this omission is a nifty sorter which lets you sort merge data (and other documents) so that letters print out in name, zip code, or any other order you select. You can also perform a selection on the merge file, creating a smaller file containing just your customers in California, for example. Before WordPerfect version 4.1, the sorter was sold separately for $99.00; it's now included free as an integral part of WordPerfect.

WordPerfect also provides easy-to-create macros, which let you automate many operations. Macros record keystrokes, store them on disk, and play them back upon command. Any sequence of keys you press, whether to type your name and address, signature blocks, formatting instructions, or whatever, can be in a macro. With WordPerfect, unlike Lotus 1-2-3, you create macros by pressing the macro key, supplying a name for the macro, and then proceeding with the task normally, turning off macro recording when finished. Macros can stop and wait for input from the keyboard, have a limited decision-making capability, and can invoke other macros.

WordPerfect supports a wide variety of printers; nearly any printer on the market. WordPerfect spools while printing so that you can edit documents while printing. In fact, WordPerfect can print to two printers simultaneously while you're editing.

WordPerfect operates fairly quickly for such a full-featured word processor. Moving around the document is quick, since WordPerfect keeps documents in RAM while working with them, although documents will "spill" onto the disk if they grow larger than available RAM. This ability also lets WordPerfect work with huge documents, limited only by the capacity of your disk. WordPerfect works fine on floppy diskette systems, but a hard drive is necessary to get the most out of this program. If you want to use all of WordPerfect's features--the required program disk, spelling checker, thesaurus, and help facility--you'll need to use four diskettes and be prepared to insert them on command. Besides this inconvenience and the inability to create documents hundreds of pages long, floppy diskette users don't lose any of WordPerfect's functionality. Hard disk users, of course, can load the entire program on their disk and enjoy instant access to these features.

There's no doubt that WordPerfect is one of the top word processing programs on the market. It does all the things we expect a top-flight word processor to do, and it does them well. The difference between WordPerfect and other programs like Microsoft Word version 3.0 (see the July issue of Chicago Computer Guide for an evaluation of Microsoft Word) is more style than anything else. But in some cases, differences in style can add up to real gains in learning, ease of use, and power. If you placed WordPerfect and Microsoft Word on a comparison chart, comparing them feature-by-feature, there wouldn't be much of a difference. But these two programs have such a different style of operation--Word's style sheets, measurements, mouse, operation with laser printers--that they can't be compared that easily. Neither is so superior that users of one should switch to the other, but for those just starting out with word processing and need or want the power of a full-featured program, I feel that Microsoft Word is the better choice.