'Emacs style' delete line shortcut (CTRL/U) doesn't work correctly in Firefox

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 12 Oct 2018 at 21:01, Peter Flynn <peter at silmaril.ie> wrote:
> My version was for Windows which they gave me to review. I did also
> download their first Linux version, whose filename always amused me
> (knowing some of the people involved :-) This was a gzipped tar file (no
> filetype or extension): GUILG00
>
> The point was that this was shortly after WordPerfect-for-Windows came
> out — a GUI version was believed to be an aberration: the "real"
> WordPerfect was still felt by staff to be the DOS character-cell version
> (6), and many people would agree with them.

Heh. There's definitely some truth in that.

I have mixed feelings about the decline and fall of WP.

I knew it, because I had to support it. It vanquished WordStar as
*the* DOS word-processor, and as DOS was *the* business OS for many
years, that made it important.

But I never personally liked it much. It wasn't CUA-compliant, and I
found the multiply-overloaded F-key UI to be hard to use. I could use
it, but I didn't like it.

However, for its time, WP 4.2 was a classic app. Blindingly fast, the
best printer support in the industry, used everywhere, and powerful.
It had good rich font support, when leading WP apps like MultiMate
didn't even support the "high-end" feature of proportional spacing.
(!)

WP 5.0 was a big buggy but for many people, WP 5.1 was the classic
version. I personally preferred it, because it had decent usable
drop-down menus if you didn't know all the function keys. Also you
could switch WP weirdnesses off (Esc was "repeat character", F3 was
Help (normally F1); in 5.1 you could switch F1 to Help and Repeat Char
to F3, thus freeing up Esc to mean "cancel the last operation", its
more normal operation, and more similar changes.)

But an early hero of mine, later a friend, the late great Guy Kewney,
wrote of WP 5:

"WordPerfect 4.2 was like a bicycle. It was perfect. It did everything
you could want, while being simple, reliable and fast. So what they
did is, they said 'we have the best bicycle in the world, as everyone
says. So what we're going to do is, we're going to put seven more
wheels on it."

(I quote from faint memory, and probably wrongly. Any attempt to
Google it merely finds me quoting it elsewhere.)

I have WP6.2 for DOS at home. Most people thought WP6.x was a
Windows-only app but there was a DOS version in the package too.

It's interesting because as well as the classic character-mode WP,
still fast and clean and efficient, you can also switch it into
graphics mode. Then it has a rather Windows-3-ish full rich GUI, all
drawn in DOS with no Windows present. It renders WYSIWYG fonts, bold
and underline and italics, and on a 21st century PC, it's *fast*.

Here's what it looks like:

https://thewanderingnerd.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/corel-wordperfect-6-2-for-dos-a-look-back/

If you enjoy that, he mentions more screenshots but the link 404s.
They're these, I think:

https://www.danielsays.com/ssg-dos-cwpsfd.html

But as Guy pointed out later:

http://newswireless.site.ramtops.org/index.cfm/article/3963

WP was so dominant and so many people knew its keystrokes that the
first few versions of Word for Windows had a "WordPerfect mode" which
set the text to white on a blue background and understood most of the
WP function key commands. (!)

> They were told in no uncertain terms what to do, and chose to ignore it,
> alas.

Well, not AIUI... along with Lotus, WordPerfect Corp was one of the 2
big players who bought into the OS/2 dream. WordPerfect was released
on OS/2 before Windows, as was Lotus 1-2-3. I think the OS/2
WordPerfect was the first true GUI version with WYSIWYG... I recall
WordPerfect for the Atari ST and for the Commodore Amiga, running
natively under those OS's GUIs, but AFAICR it didn't support actual
GUI operation -- it was still basically a text-mode app in a window.

Here are some pics of the only native Linux version, WP 8:

https://danielsays.com/ssg-linux-cwp8fl.html

I personally rather liked it. I did get it working on Ubuntu 8.
Nothing later, though.



-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053