Comparing Wordperfect versus Microsoft Word, bottom line is Word is unacceptable.\u00a0 \u00a0Microsoft\u2019s Word might be able to masquerade as a competent Word processor\u00a0for those who don\u2019t have to do anything more challenging than to write letters or memos.\u00a0 But it’s a complete nightmare to work with for anyone who must do far more complex and challenging projects.\u00a0 Such as formatting a print ready novel.\u00a0 But before comparing Microsoft Word to Corel\u2019s Wordperfect it\u2019s necessary that I bring everyone up to date on how we got to this sorry state of affairs.<\/p>\n
A few years before Windows 95 was getting established, I\u00a0 really enjoyed doing my Word processing with Microsoft products. Back then Microsoft had a beautiful little program called Microsoft Works for Dos. It had three basic components, a Word processor, a spreadsheet and a database module.\u00a0 And each component was accompanied by a terrific hands on tutorial program that was far superior to anything Microsoft has ever produced.\u00a0 But after a year or two the Windows operating system started to replace Dos.<\/p>\n
Microsoft was quick to introduce its Microsoft Word for Windows which according to most software reviews was far more user friendly than Wordperfect’s first releases of Wordperfect for Windows. I wound up getting a copy of each.\u00a0 \u00a0And I kept trying out one, then the other. I quickly found, however, that the not so user friendly Wordperfect was at least as easy to work with as the far more favorably reviewed Microsoft Word for Windows.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t long,however, that Microsoft started to virtually give away its Word for Windows software. Meanwhile I wrote and published my first novel, Death on the Wild Side<\/u>.\u00a0 I even typeset the entire novel with the help of Wordperfect\u2019s excellent technical support.<\/p>\n\u00a0In 1995 I could call Wordperfect any time I liked.\u00a0 Wordperfect support\u00a0 hand held me through the intricacies of line and word spacing, gutter margins, and formatting for two sided printing.<\/h3>\n
But of course that level of technical support costs money.\u00a0 So Wordperfect had to pass the cost of all that superb technical support onto its customers.\u00a0 So it charged them a hefty initial price for its Word processing software.<\/p>\n
In those days, just as now, every time you bought a new computer you had to buy Microsoft\u2019s operating system.\u00a0 But to make the bitter pill of being forced to buy Windows\u00a0 easier to swallow Microsoft\u00a0 often included a freebie or two .\u00a0 That freebie usually included either a free CD of Microsoft Word for Windows or Microsoft Works.\u00a0 At first Microsoft Works contained an abbreviated version of its full blown Microsoft Word software.\u00a0 But it wasn\u2019t long before it supplied the full featured version of Word.\u00a0 Even though its Spreadsheet module didn\u2019t have all of Excel\u2019s capability.<\/p>\n
So here\u2019s what happened.\u00a0 Nearly everyone buying a computer wound up getting some version or the other of Microsoft\u2019s Word for Windows for free.\u00a0 \u00a0Or so they thought.\u00a0 But Wordperfect sales plummeted since its high priced software couldn\u2019t compete with free.<\/p>\n
And as if that wasn\u2019t bad enough, Microsoft, which by this time was the dominant player in computer software heavily advertised its products in such magazines as Computer World<\/em> and P.C. Magazine<\/em>. Well, I think you already know how that one went. Think Computer World<\/em> or P.C. Magazine\u2019s<\/em> going to give a bum review to the company that\u2019s done the most advertising in their pages?<\/p>\n Allow me to demonstrate how such magazines have consistently trashed Wordperfect while giving excellent reviews to a product that is completely unacceptable to anyone who\u2019s serious about his writing.\u00a0 I quote P.C. Magazine\u2019s<\/em> latest review of Wordperfect X-6:<\/p>\n The major attraction of the suite is WordPerfect, the only modern word-processing app that makes gives me almost total control over the way my documents look. Microsoft Word, in contrast, sometimes seems to have a mind of its own\u2014formatting documents in ways I never intended, or unpredictably retaining or discarding formatting in text imported from a Web browser. <\/em><\/p>\n But WordPerfect almost always does exactly what I want. And it\u2019s the only modern app that still formats and organizes documents by inserting normally-invisible “codes” in the text, so when you want to troubleshoot the formatting of your document, you can open a “Reveal Codes” pane at the foot of the editing window, find the code that’s causing the problem and either remove it or double-click it to change its settings. The “Reveal Codes” pane has always looked ugly, but the new version changes the font and color so it’s not as hard on the eyes as it once was.<\/em><\/p>\n In contrast to WordPerfect’s code-based formatting, Microsoft Word and all other modern word-processing apps format documents by “painting” them with attributes such as fonts and margins, and it’s almost impossible to tell where the invisible format “painting” begins and ends. If you’ve ever deleted a few letters in Word, only to find that that the format of a whole paragraph changed unexpectedly, you’ll see the point of WordPerfect’s method. Of course, Microsoft Word performs tricks that WordPerfect can’t do at all, like split a document window so you can edit the first and last page of a file on the same screen.<\/em><\/p>\n It tells us that there is no way to predict how one\u2019s final output is going to wind up looking in Microsoft Word.\u00a0 And that it has a mind of its own. This means that when I write a book, I\u2019m not creating the book.\u00a0 \u00a0I am allowing Microsoft to make my book look the way Microsoft wants it to look. It also tells us that Microsoft\u2019s Word Processor is tremendously difficult to use.\u00a0 Since its nearly impossible to try to figure out how Microsoft has changed a document\u2019s formatting.\u00a0 Or how I can change it so my document looks the way I want it to look.<\/p>\n But let us not forget that Microsoft is paying P.C. Magazine<\/em> a lot more advertising dollars than Corel.\u00a0 So the reviewer who\u2019s being paid by P.C. Magazine <\/em>must come up with some miraculous way to give more stars to Word than he\u2019s giving to Wordperfect.\u00a0 Even though he\u2019s already said that Word is a terrible program.\u00a0 Even though he\u2019s not said it directly.<\/p>\n Now just what kind of nonsense is that?\u00a0 The reviewer for P.C. Magazine’s states contending\u00a0 that it\u2019s nearly impossible to edit a document properly in Word under any circumstances.\u00a0 \u00a0And\u00a0 after he tells us you can\u2019t do it,\u00a0 he claims there’s\u00a0 a huge advantage to\u00a0 to editing the first page and last page of a document on the same screen. Now do you really want to be able to edit the first and last pages of a document on the same screen?\u00a0 I don’t. I can’t even walk and chew gum at the same time.\u00a0 So why would I want to be able to do that?<\/p>\n Nevertheless it\u2019s obvious that the reviewer probably\u00a0 hates Word just as much as I do.\u00a0 But he can\u2019t actually say what he really thinks because he might wind up losing his job.<\/p>\n \u201c For years I’ve been using WordPerfect and Word side-by-side. Neither is ideal, but once you’ve learned\u2014as I have\u2014what WordPerfect can do that Word can’t, you may not be willing to live without it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The bottom line is Microsoft Word gets 4.5 stars whereas Wordperfect only gets 4 even though Wordperfect can do so much more than Word ever could.<\/em><\/p>\n My experiences with Word have been so horrible that I would take if off my computer.\u00a0 If I wasn\u2019t being forced to rely upon it. I have recently published still another book in Kindle format.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to write the e book in Wordperfect. The formatting\u2019s a cinch and the file winds up looking perfect no matter how many pictures it contains, tables or captions. Moreover, Wordperfect converts its wordprocessing files into perfect pdf\u2019s that in theory should work very well when they are uploaded to Amazon\u2019s web site for e book publishing.<\/p>\n Just about everything about Word is terribly difficult.\u00a0 From its outlining feature to doing something as simple as page numbering. The ribbon interface is very difficult to use.\u00a0 Which requires me to do internet google searches on just about anything I want to do in Word.<\/p>\n Since there were 115 pictures this wasn\u2019t a small deal. For one thing, the overall size of the file I was submitting to Amazon was only about sixty percent the size I had calculated it out to be. So when I went through the ribbon to to find the feature for compressing pictures I couldn\u2019t find what I was looking for. Which is all too typical.<\/p>\n But Google informed me where to find it.\u00a0 And sure enough there it was. Word automatically defaults so that it compresses any pictures one puts into his documents. I was overjoyed. Here I had spent days formatting 115 pictures so that each one represented the best compromise I could come up with between quality and file size. Amazon, after all would be charging me more than seventy-five cents each time a customer bought one of my e\u2013books at so many cents a megabyte. I had been thinking the cost would be more like a dollar and a quarter based on my file size. The end result was I had used my graphics arts program to compress my images at a 30 % factor.\u00a0 And here Microsoft was compressing them even more.<\/p>\n When I finished using the e book publishing feature everything turned out letter perfect. I was able to create perfectly formatted columns.\u00a0 And I was able to easily create captions for a large number of those 115 pictures.\u00a0 While easily customizing them to look the way I wanted them to look.<\/p>\n The e book that I wound up with at the Amazon web site was perfect in every way except for two unacceptable glitzes. At this point I don\u2019t know if it was something I did or if Corel has not quite perfected its e book publisher yet. The first problem is that the image or picture for the first page the potential buyer of my book would see was only about a quarter the size it should have been. It looked like a postage stamp.<\/p>\n The second defect was that there were a few lines of code or garbage appearing on the page between the title page and the publishing page. Other than that the table of contents worked like a champ.\u00a0 And all my tables, margins, and captions underneath my pictures were gorgeous.<\/p>\n When I published my Word file to Amazon most of my picture captions were either missing entirely or they were all over the place. The tables were all screwed up as well. I wound up having to delete all my captions, and then when I tried to put new lines of text in that weren\u2019t actually captions but which I hoped would appear similar to captions I found out that they\u2019d appear on top of some of my pictures instead of beneath them or they\u2019d appear a paragraph down from where I had placed them. As for the caption feature in Word, the bottom line is it didn\u2019t work. At least not when it came to doing an e book.<\/p>\n I also had a problem with some of my tables. Many of them would be hidden behind my pictures.\u00a0 And even when I moved the pictures around with my mouse oftentimes I couldn\u2019t find them. But their being there in the first place sure played havoc with\u00a0 how some of my other lines of text appeared. Only after I deleted the pictures could I find some of the hidden tables.<\/p>\n I was having such a tough time that I decided to try saving my Word files in docx format instead of doc.\u00a0 Because it’s a much more up to date file type.\u00a0 \u00a0So I felt that it might allow me to do some things in Word that I had been able to do easily in Wordperfect.\u00a0 Such as my captions.\u00a0\u00a0 But once I converted the 2003 Microsoft doc file to a 2007 docx file and uploaded it to Amazon I found that the docx file format had turned a lot of my formatting to absolute gibberish.<\/p>\n I finally got the job done so now I have a new e book for sale over at Amazon. But it still doesn\u2019t appear exactly as I\u2019d like. So I then moved onto publishing a printed version of my new book. Among other things this meant having to deal with all 115 pictures again since print requires a resolution of at least 300 dpi whereas e book publication is best done at 72 dpi. The pictures would be far larger than the ones I had been putting into my E book file so I wound up having to deal with inserting all those pictures again, captions, etc.<\/p>\n I could line up all my text and my margins exactly the way I wanted them to appear.\u00a0 And when it came to dealing with the pictures, once I had prepared a picture the way I wanted it in my graphics arts program all I had to do was to click on the 72 dpi picture that was already there, go to \u201ccontent\u201d which I found easily with one click of my mouse.\u00a0 And change the filename, and voila, my new picture would instantly appear replacing the old one. My caption if I already had one appeared just the way it had before.\u00a0 And if it didn\u2019t it was very easy to correct.<\/p>\n Sure, all this took a little time but there was no frustration at all because everything worked the way it should work while the process of making all my adjustments and formatting changes was very intuitive.<\/p>\n Make no mistake. Wordperfect is very easy to use and it does what it\u2019s supposed to do. You can write complex books with it, prepare newspaper and magazine layouts, insert pictures while sizing and placing them exactly as you want them to appear. As for Word, as one of the reviews I once read about it suggested, \u201cit handled e-mail very well.\u201d Now I don\u2019t know what email has to do with word processing but I suppose someone has to give Word a star for something that it handles responsibly because as a Word processor, it\u2019s so bad that it shouldn\u2019t be allowed to be sold anywhere.<\/p>\n You might also enjoy reading “Corel Wordperfect outclasses Microsoft Office”<\/a>.<\/p>\n Comparing Wordperfect versus Microsoft Word, bottom line is Word is unacceptable.\u00a0 \u00a0Microsoft\u2019s Word might be able to masquerade as a competent Word processor\u00a0for those who don\u2019t have to do anything more challenging than to write letters or memos.\u00a0 But it’s a complete nightmare to work with for anyone who must do far more complex and … Continue reading Wordperfect versus Microsoft Word<\/span> WordPerfect versus Word\u00a0 P.C. Magazine’s review<\/h3>\n
Now, here\u2019s what P. C. Magazine’s\u00a0 review of\u00a0Wordperfect versus Microsoft Word tells us.<\/h3>\n
So in the last sentence the reviewer states that Microsoft Word allows the user to edit both the first and last pages of a document of a file on the same screen.\u00a0 Which is a total crock.<\/h3>\n
So P.C. Magazine’s review of Wordperfect versus Microsoft Word concludes:<\/h3>\n
My problem is that I cannot upload a Wordperfect file to Amazon\u2019s web site. Instead I must use a doc Windows file or a pdf file.<\/h3>\n
Unfortunately the table of contents that works in the pdf file does not work in the resulting Mobi or Kindle file once I upload\u00a0 and convert it at Amazon. So that alone forces me to go back to using Word.<\/h3>\n
My latest revelation from doing a google search was what I already suspected.\u00a0 Word was automatically compressing the pictures I was inserting into my latest book.<\/h3>\n
Wordperfect\u2019s X-6 Office software now has an e book publishing feature.\u00a0 it will transform the Wordperfect file to a Mobi file.\u00a0 Which I can\u00a0 upload to Amazon.\u00a0 This bypasses the need for using Microsoft.<\/h3>\n
I was forced into using Microsoft Word and it took me something like three extra days doing what I had already done in Wordperfect.<\/h3>\n
Microsoft Word isn’t even compatible with Microsoft Word.<\/h3>\n
But surprise surprise, I\u00a0 no longer had to deal with Word. I might be dealing again with Amazon but this time I\u2019d be uploading all my files to their Createspace web site which is the one that\u2019s used for their paperback printing business. And Createspace does do a good job with pdf files.<\/h3>\n
Conclusion for\u00a0Wordperfect versus Microsoft Word<\/h3>\n
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