WordPerfect vs, MS Word (was: Re: [Ti] Re: OpenOffice on Mac)

[Ardeshir Mehta]

On 23-Nov-05, at 1:20 PM, Mikael Byström wrote:

> TjL said:
>
>> WordPerfect is a much better and easier to use program.
>
> And is available on Mac OS X? If not, how is this relevant in any  
> other way than as a theoretical comparative example? I used  
> WordPerfect 3.5.x briefly under OS 8, but I don't think it was as  
> well designed as a writing tool as the powerful yet easy WriteNow  
> 4. But it was much better than Word IMHO.

I often use WordPerfect 10 on my wife's Windows machine (her  
department - she works for the Canadian government here in Ottawa,  
home of Corel - insists on both). I don't find WordPerfect as  
convenient as the MS Word program on my own Ti-Book, though.

Your mileage may vary, but I find most things in Word better than in  
WordPerfect. The one thing I do like about WordPerfect is its "reveal  
codes" option, which enables me to fine-tune my documents even more  
than I can using Word.

> To the defence of Word I know of handful of talented people that  
> produce great looking docs in word, but I really do think they  
> could do that in almost any application.

That's true.

> Also, the number of the latter is very much outweighed by the  
> people I've seen that make very tasteless and incompetently  
> structured documents with Microsoft Word.

That too is true!

> In my personal experience, you have to fight the app to get the  
> result you want. I suppose it depends on your objective for the end  
> document if you run into the limitations and also your willingness  
> to learn what is IMHO unintuitive and illogical ways of doing  
> things. Your mileage may vary.

For some of my work, even MS Word is not good enough. Check out the  
Introduction and Chapter 1 of my book *Zarathushtra*, available  
as .pdf files from:

<http://homepage.mac.com/ardeshir/Intro-SingleSided-Draft.pdf>

... and

<http://homepage.mac.com/ardeshir/Ch.1-SingleSided-Draft.pdf>,

... which I had to format using Adobe PageMaker (for OS 9).

(And here too I had to fight to get the result I wanted.)


Cheers.