WordPerfect, software the Amiga has been waiting for

Simon Rockman no longer needs to give houseroom to an IBM PC

We all know that the Amiga is much better than an IBM PC.
Unfortunately many of the people who buy large quantities of computers do not. These are the corporations which buy IBMs by the lorry load. Commodore sells the 2000 on the strength of its IBM PC compatibility, and given the blinkered view of the customers Commodore is probably right.
What the Amiga needs is more software which is as good as that on the IBM. And since the Amiga is a better computer, with a better operating system, there is no reason why the Amiga version should not have more bells and whistles than the PC.

This is an ideal scenario. What is amazing is that someone has actually bothered tn do it WordPerfect is not jusl a popular PC program, it is the MOST popular PC program. Forget WordStar. WordPerfect is topping the PC sales charts despite a £501) price tag. To be fair the PC version can be bought discounted to around £300 but that still makes the Amiga version, which costs £19!) plus VAT look like a bargain.
So what has made WordPerfect so popular? For a start it is fast. Moving from the top of a document to the bottom only necessitates a short pause, the search and replace are pretty damn quick and block handling virtually instant.
WordPerfect has the best help options I’ve seen on any program. Just press the Amiga Help key followed by the initial letter of the topic you want help with and the necessary keystrokes are detailed. Type Help followed by those keystrokes and you will get a full page of text on the function.

This cooperation from the software is in stark contrast to the initial display. Until you press the Help key there are no on-screen prompts, rulers or menus, jnst a line at the bottom of thé screen detailing the document name and cursor position and the standard Amigaesque bar along the top.
The keystrokes are far from mnemonic. Control F5 for mark text in preference to WordStar’s control KB. hut you get a keyboard overlay for the function keys, Tn fact you get two overlays. One for the A500 or A1000 and one for the A2000. You soon learn the major keystrokes.
Many expensive word processors offer spelling checkers, but only a few include a thesaurus. The ability to look up a synonym is a godsend for anyone who wants to add variety to texts. I particularly like it for writing vitriolic letters to restaurants where the service is lousy.
You can add and delete words within the spelling checker’s vocabulary, hut the thesaurus is fixed. It has a much smaller range than the paper version, and I often have to resort to the paperback on the shelf.
Une bugbear of the PC version is that the thesaurus covers most of the page when in use, The Amiga version is window-driven, so you can move text ami allocate space in a way you find more comfortable. This is not a gimmick; it makes the software more pleasant to use.
The window approach is extended to the full control of the software. You don’t have to use a mouse with WordPerfect but on an Amiga it seems the natural thing to do.
The software defaults to the standard Amiga screen, and so omits the bottom 50 pixel lines because these do not appear on an American Amiga, The software is well enough written so that you can drag the window down and use the whole screen. This adds about four lines of text tn the screen,
When Commodore’s DTP monitor, the A2024 Headly, becomes available you will be able to fit huge amounts of text on the screen.

Using the mouse for marking blocks is much quicker than a load of cursoring around. There are full mail merge facilities, headers, footers and even mathematical calculation. The ability to define macros saves a good deal of typing, particularly when the work is repetitive. I would much rather press two keys than have to enter my address at the start of every letter. Tn this way WordPerfect is a bit like LocoScript on the Amstrad PCW, storing the standard phrases on disc.
Amiga discs arc slow. Not even the mighty WordPerfect Corporation can do much about that. This means that some of the features which have spoilt me on my hard disc PC have become a pain, spell checking and timed backups in particular.
Amiga developers are given guidelines on how to write a user interface based on =RJ= Mical’s (sic) intuition. Software uses requestors and gadgets. WordPerfect has compromised between the official way of doing things and the IBM way. Wildcards on an IBM use an asterisk, on the Amiga they do not. Yet the Amiga file manager prompts with a df1:*.
Officially you need two drives to use WordPerfect. I found the second drive handy – essential if you want to use the speller or thesaurus. However for simple text editing you could get by with one. But no one is going to shell out £228 for a simple text editor. The Amiga coms with Ed after all; the price is steep but the software is very, very good. Tn America the software is offered to registered students at S99, so it might be worth looking up distant relations.
The block handling is excellent. You can define a block as a vertical column, which is great for updating price lists. Layout commands will work on whole blocks if one is defined. This makes centering an address simple. You type the text, mark it in a block, and then press center. If you prefer to have the text flush against the right hand column you have a single keypress to do that.
When you have a block defined some keys change their meaning. The switch command usually flips you between up to 32 documents, useful if you want to read one document and abstract bits for another. But under block mode it will switch the case. An example of WordPerfect’s brilliance is that here it understands full stops, so an area which has lots of upper case letters can be flipped and the beginning of sentences remain capitalised.

Some word processing features really sort the men from the boys. These are the things which are difficult to program and usually involve shaping the text. One such feature is columned text. A page like this one in a magazine does not have the text running the whole way across. It is divided into two or more columns. This is done fur readability, about 39 characters across being the maximum. Text runs down one column, and then down the next.
WordPerfect has spoiled me. I now find writing with anything else slows me down. I know that I don’t stretch the software, I make little use of the mathematical commands and rarely use mail merging. I’ve not yet done anything more than experiment with footnotes, but then if I found a word processor which only did what I wanted I’d grow out of it.
Complaints? I could do with extra ram to make more use of the printer drivers. Having the word processor and the spell checker un different discs means that you have to swap discs to keep a document on a separate data disc.
But worst of all it is too expensive. £228 is too much for the home user; you won’t get many A500 owners buying WordPerfect. There are cut down versions for the PC called Personal WordPerfect and WordPerfect Junior and it would be good to see those converted, along with a radical price cut.
I’m pleased to see this software on the Amiga. It adds credibility to the 2000’s business machine mantle. It also removes the main reason for using an IBM PC.

Source : AMIGA COMPUTING

Source of information – AMIGA Computing of June 1988 – Download of the magazine below: