Just for Fun – How to Use WordPerfect DOS

I happened across this WordPerfect DOS video from 1985, and wanted to share. It occurred to me that some may not even have experienced working with a DOS word processing program, and others might enjoy the trip down memory lane. I admit to saying, “oh yeah, now I remember, THAT’S how we created documents.” The computer with floppies, the keyboard overlays, and the dot-matrix printer (complete with tractor-feed paper) were all amusing memories.

Below the video, I tell you more than you’ll ever want to know about the history of Windows and WordPerfect. But first a word about our instructor. Sharlene Wells was Miss Utah, and won the Miss America pageant in 1985, and two years later starred in this WordPerfect video. Proof positive that winning the Miss America Pageant  really does open doors of opportunity. Interestingly, she was the first foreign-born, bilingual Miss America, as she was born in Asunción, Paraguay.

The first version of Microsoft Windows was released in late 1985, and really didn’t catch on. At that point, home “computers” that were based on game systems – Atari, Amiga, Apple – were already using graphical interfaces, so it wasn’t a new concept, but Windows 1.0 wasn’t taken seriously in the business world. I remember penning articles for computer magazines at the time discussing whether the graphical interface concept would ever catch on (I’m happy to say that I felt it was inevitable).

Windows finally gained commercial success with version 3.0, but the first really viable version in my opinion was 3.1, released in 1992. Windows for Workgroups was released the following year (as version 3.11), and included the amazing new ability of peer-to-peer networking.

Microsoft was for a long time caught between the DOS and Windows worlds, and all the way through Windows ME (Millennium Edition), released in 2000, Windows was still DOS-based.

So, although this WordPerfect video was released in 1985, the same year that Windows was released, it would be another six years until the first Windows version of WordPerfect (5.1) was released. This first version was very unstable, but the following year (1992) a more stable version 5.2 was released. At that point, Microsoft Word for Windows version 2 had been on the market for over a year and had received its third interim release, v2.0c.

WordPerfect had relied on a function-key centric interface. Some will remember the keyboard overlays that showed all the function key combinations. These overlays can bee seen in the video. But that presented a problem with the introduction of Windows, because it did not work well with the new paradigm of mouse and pull-down menus, especially with many of WordPerfect’s standard key combinations pre-empted by incompatible keyboard shortcuts that Windows itself used; for example, Alt-F4 became Exit Program, as opposed to WordPerfect’s Block Text.

Why WordPerfect lost out to Word

Compounding WordPerfect’s troubles were issues associated with the release of the first 32-bit version, WordPerfect 7, intended for use on Windows 95. In the lawsuit Novell v. Microsoft, Novell argued that these problems were due to anti-competitive acts by Microsoft.

While WordPerfect 7 contained notable improvements over the 16-bit WordPerfect for Windows 3.1, it was released in May 1996, nine months after the introduction of Windows 95 and Microsoft Office 95 (including Word 95). The initial release suffered from notable stability problems. WordPerfect 7 also did not have a Microsoft “Designed for Windows 95” logo. This was important to Windows 95 software purchasers as Microsoft set standards for application design, behavior, and interaction with the operating system. To make matters worse, the original release of WordPerfect 7 was incompatible with Windows NT, hindering its adoption in many professional environments. The “NT Enabled” version of WordPerfect 7, which Corel considered to be Service Pack 2, was not available until the first quarter of 1997, over six months after the introduction of Windows NT 4.0, a year and a half after the introduction of Office 95 (which supported Windows NT out of the box), and shortly after the introduction of Office 97.

While WordPerfect dominated the DOS market, Microsoft shifted its attention toward a Windows version of Word; after Windows 3.0 was introduced, Word’s market share began to grow at an extraordinary rate. A Windows version of WordPerfect was not introduced until nearly two years after Windows 3.0, and was met with poor reviews. Word also benefited from being included in an integrated office suite package much sooner than WordPerfect.

Why WordPerfect is still alive and in use

Among the remaining avid users of WordPerfect are many law firms and academics, who favor WordPerfect features such as macros, reveal codes, and the ability to access a large range of formatting options such as left-right block indent directly with key combinations rather than having to click through several layers of sub-menus as Microsoft Word often requires, the fact that the user interface has stayed almost identical from WPWin 6 through WP X8 and that file formats have not changed, as incompatible new formats would require keeping both obsolete software versions and obsolete hardware around just to access a few old documents. Corel now caters to these markets, with, for example, a major sale to the United States Department of Justice in 2005. A related factor is that WordPerfect Corporation was particularly responsive to feature requests from the legal profession, incorporating many features particularly useful to that niche market and those features have been continued in subsequent versions usually directly accessible with key combinations.

My office still uses WordPerfect, although we have to do so concurrently with Word, since it is often necessary to collaborate on documents with clients and attorneys who use Word. WordPerfect claims to be compatible with Word documents, and with most documents that is entirely true, but compatibility problems with pleadings arise often enough that I can’t depend on it, and just use Word when necessary.

Sometimes contract attorneys who work for us have no prior experience with WordPerfect, but that has never been a problem. I have an admitted bias toward WordPerfect, but I will note that when I am forced to use Word, I occasionally run into problems that require me to find an instructional article or video, whereas my contract attorneys have never needed assistance figuring out something on WordPerfect.

As stated in the previous paragraph, one huge benefit of WordPerfect is that it is compatible all the way back to the documents I created in 1991. (Admittedly, I can’t recall ever needing to go back that far, but I could!)  WordPerfect’s ability to work natively with PDF docs is also a big draw for me. Indeed, WordPerfect can open and save in 87 different file formats, so your old MultiMate, WordStar, and XyWrite documents are good to go.

The most recent feature that keeps me on the WordPerfect hook is its ability to publish in mobi and epub formats, making ebook publishing far simpler than with Word, which requires third party conversion programs.