WordPerfect began on AOS and then Unix variants on minicomputers, but then WP5
moved to SCO Desktop (Unix) on a PC, then to (MS-)DOS. It was on maybe a dozen
platforms at that time, but was most popular in the 90s on DOS, and for several
years WP/DOS was the most popular word processor.
At that time WP had "office" stable-mates, like LO, but they were less
integrated modules than Writer/Calc/Draw/Base. Of the WP Office apps, only PlanPerfect [a
spreadsheet app with local per-cell variables and threaded functions (like Forth) which
made it uniquely functional] shared much of WordPerfect's code, including styles support.
Probably the best analogue to WP styles is CSS - just as the WP file format looks a
lot, in spirit, like HTML rather than the XML of Word/SO/OO/LO. A style could include
one or many attributes [unlike Writer's categorical set of attributes for each style
type], with its scope independent of the scope of any other style. I just checked
Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#Key_characteristics>; it
has a good introduction on this topic.
I'll see if I can come up with something more, but it has been years since I
followed WordPerfect, and I think it has changed much in those years. I never
really used WP past v5, because v6 and later versions became Windows-only,
using MS-Windows hardware drivers rather than WP's own.
[I found WP printer drivers, in particular, better than Windows printer
drivers. WP's drivers supported higher resolutions than early Windows drivers,
but the bigger advantage was that WP's driver files were user-editable (with
the WPDL utility), so you could fix problems. Of course, for our current
purposes, drivers are a moot issue.]
John
On 2025-08-06 14:43, Eyal Rozenberg wrote:
That is interesting... as a person who's never known anything other than DOS
apps, then MS Office then LibreOffice - I would like to know more about how
WordPerfect approached styling.
Is there a written article or video presenting this somewhere? If not, or even
if there is, perhaps it would be useful for someone to give a talk - at LibOCon
or just online - comparing the style systems of WordPerfect and LO (or just LO
Writer).
Eyal
On 06/08/2025 21:24, John Kaufmann wrote:
Funny: 30-year-old WordPerfect got these right - likely because its styles were not
categorical (like "Paragraph", with it panoply of attributes to be
instantiated, and those attributes often specifiable only within a Paragraph style). For
example, a font size style was relative (Larger, Smaller), and a block quote style could
specify spacings and margins irrespective of fonts.
The SO/OO/LO decision to be a Word work-alike imposed certain costs, like the
styles model. It may be impractical to rethink that decision, but is probably
useful to keep these models in mind as we work out solutions.
John
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