Re: What I would like to see

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Re: What I would like to see
by James Richard Tyrer on Saturday 21/Jun/2003, @14:56

> This is how WordPerfect supplanted WordStar, and how MS Word supplanted WordPerfect as the premier word processing application.

Didn't WordPerfect like -- ah -- buy WordStar?

So, please tell us why compatibility is needed.

I have tried to explain why it is NOT.

--
JRT

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Re: What I would like to see
by lit on Saturday 21/Jun/2003, @20:43

> Didn't WordPerfect like -- ah -- buy WordStar

Nope-- never. Both WordPerfect and WordStar ended up in the hands of Corel however. Corel licensed the code for WordStar from Softkey (which became the Learning Company) in 1994, deciding to make a office suite to compete with WordPerfect and Office. They bungled this up, although they did successfully launch another licensed product that became CorelDraw :)

> So, please tell us why compatibility is needed.

Ah, that's easy. Think of it this way: you have an office full of people who have hard drives full of Microsoft Word documents. This particular office has been using MS Office only since about ~1997 (as many have). They have, over the years, piled up a nice collection of full of floppies, hard drives, zips, and DAT drives full of MS Office documents. Depending on what this-place-of-buisness does, it may mean important records, letters, documents, books, presentations, spreadsheets, etc...

So... one day, the IT manager at this particular office goes: "Alright guys.. Money is getting tight. We don't want to pay Microsoft for the next round of licensing for the next Office version. We either are going to stick with our current older version of Microsoft Office or transition into another office suite. Most companies will pick option A, which explains the lack of market prenetation of perfectly capable MS-compatable office suites such as StarOffice.

However, if they do decide to go with another office suite, do you think they going to pick YaYaOffice (which has great MS Office compatablity) or JujujuOffice which has very little MS Office document compatablity?

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Re: What I would like to see
by James Richard Tyrer on Saturday 21/Jun/2003, @21:37

> Both WordPerfect and WordStar ended up in the hands of Corel ...

And then there was no more WordStar. Which was my point, but thank you for correcting my hazy recollection of the exact history.

>> So, please tell us why compatibility is needed.

> Ah, that's easy. Think of it this way: you have an office full of people who have hard drives full of Microsoft Word documents.

Yes, they have hard drives full of old MicroSoft Word documents.

So, please tell us why they need a MS Word compatible wordprocessor? :-)

To make this clear. In order to show why a compatible wordprocessor is *needed*, you need to show why there is a need to ever open these OLD documents in any wordprocessor.

Keeping old finished documents that will never be edited again in a wordprocessor's native format is a sloppy habit that we should get over.

--
JRT

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