From: mjr@ursa.calvin.edu (Matt Ranney) Subject: Re: A Better WordProcessor Idea Date: Mon, 24 May 1993 14:43:17 GMT
mark@taylor.uucp (Mark A. Davis) writes:
[...]
>Do NOT discount WP, especially for Unix. The product is very robust, and
>stable. WordPerfect Corp has been in wordprocessing for longer than most
>anyone, and this includes Unix.
I don't think anyone is. We were originally discussing ideas for a
new word processing program, and everybody has used them on DOS
machines, so they post their experiences. There are plenty of
COMMERCIAL packages available for Unix, especially for the big name
boxes like Sun.
>Not only does WP 5.1 support nearly all text terminals, it also supports
>graphics previewing on a wyse 160 (works nice), AND INCLUDES a full GUI/
>WYSIWYG mode for running under X (great, although a little slow... they
>supposedly will be shipping an intermediate sped-up version).
It had better be a HUGE speedup. We ordered WP 5.1 after seeing the
glitzy flyer showing off the way-cool GUI features, looking cool as
heck. After you get it going, you quickly find out that its slow as a
dog, and takes up many megabytes of ram just to exist. Under X I find
myself constantly fighting with it to do what I want. Not to mention
that the staff behind their (non 800) support line is clueless
compared to the guys behind the PC lines.
I think WP 5.1's X version is an example of what NOT to do.
>I, for one, have not moved to Linux yet because it will not run software
>like WP and other commercial software. I may move my machine at home from
>Interactive to Linux.
How can you take seriously a OS that is completely free? I mean, *I*
take it seriously, but from a software house's point of view, it
probably seems silly to develop something for a free OS. How big is
the uesr base? Well, we could just ask the company how many copies
they've sold and base our development efforts on that. What? You
mean you have NO IDEA how many people are running it because you DON'T
SELL it? I guess it's kinda suprising that Motif is out now though.
So there's one exception.