my beloved wordperfect

S

starmouse

Registered
I am almost completely converted to OS X. Finally. The only thing tying me to OS 9 anymore is Corel WordPerfect 3.5.

I adore wordperfect for it's customizability,
bottomofpage-bottomofnextpage scrolling,
tilewindows,
clean horizonatalinepagebreaks (as opposed to 'here's a pretend piece of paper, grey space, new pretend piece of paper'),
print preview,
invisible margins,
hotkeys,
showcodes,

not to mention that I was actually *raised* in a wordperfect household and have been using it for as long as I have been using a computer .

The fact that Corel had dropped the Mac side of the project several years ago wasn't really an issue until OS X came along. Even then, I figured I could still use it in Classic. After it became clear that my darling was not quite as stable in its new home as it used to be, I began the search for a replacement. I've tried several other programs (Ullysus, Copywrite, Nisus, Mariner, LaTex, Appleworks6, off the top of my head, plus some others that didn't last long enough to make an impression), and nothing seems to have even *most* of what I want.

Recently I've gone back to using WP, but it seems like more and more compatibility issues keep popping up. The latest and most aggravating is an error that appears when I try to open certain files, or just when I leave it idle for too long in the background: "Disk Full Error (-34)"
The size of the file doesn't seem to matter; it will open a 934k file, but not a 96k file. I've got about 40gb of empty space on my hard drive. My disk is *not* full.

I've tried reinstalling from the original CWP3.5 disk, allotting more memory to classic, alloting more memory to WP (though that seems to have been undone by the reinstallation), rebooting, approaching the file like ninja...

basically, I'm stumped and annoyed. What I really want is a permanent fix that will make wp stable in Classic so that I can keep using my little darling forever'n'ever, but failing that, I really need to get these files open. I've tried opening them in some other programs, in a 'just checking' sort of way, with predictable success.

I'd really appreciate any suggestions someone here might be able to give me.

Thanks!

~molly
 
I agree, nothing has replaced WordPerfect. It was the cat's meow.

You have experienced the fact that Classic programs do not act like they do in start up OS 9. But there are a few suggestions you can try.
Trash the wordperfect pref file from the OS 9 system folder>Preferences.
Allocate more memory. When you re-installed, it goes back to default.

What else are you running while WP is? How much memory do you have installed on your computer?
 
Please take the following comments with a grain of salt. I am a freelance designer, and have been for 10 years now.

I have to say I think WordPerfect belongs in the dustbin! :) The benefits/features you mentioned fly in the face of what all the new apps have to offer; particularly InDesign. Can you make a web page straight from WordPerfect? InDesign can! How about PDF's? InDesign exports them natively. I don't know one printer who would love to have a WordPerfect file to print instead of Quark, InDesign or PDF.

If you do any printing at all, you will know that WordPerfect is LESS than perfect. The dotted line page break shifts at inoportune times and the page formatting features are antiquated. I used the program 10 years ago to format a large Mesa City Court Document and I was on the phone to the 1-800 number constantly trying to get things worked out. And yes, I am a VERY experienced computer user so don't reply back asking that question. he he.

And Corel is a bit out of date as well. Illustrator, I think, is far more powerful and user friendly.

I will bet these comments won't help in the slightest, but oh well. :)
 
We all have different preferences and needs when it comes to working with applications. It is always good to hear from different users and get their opinion.

Starmouse, did you install the updater to WP?
 
In a similar vein, I just discovered a couple of WordPerfect files left over on my hard drive. Is there any way to access them? I eradicated all traces of classic from my system quite some time ago :)
 
You could try forcing AppleWorks (or your word processor) to open them.

Click on the document icon, go to the file menu and select Open With. You should get a list of choices. If only other is shown, select that, then point it to the word processor you have. TextEdit might do it.

Or use MacLinkPlus Deluxe to open them.
 
If you have old WP files, you might try making a duplicate of the file and adding the .doc extension at the end and opening it with Word. Or try importing to Word directly to see if you can open the file.

Last resort, try to open it in Text Edit and see if you can at least get the raw text from the doc. You may lose formatting, but at least you will get to see what's in that file. :)
 
Tried all the other applications, the best I could get was Word's "recover text from any file" import option. Unfortunately, that left out some rather important parts. Opening in text edit gave a screen full of giberish with the relevant text interspersed throughout (sorry about the spelling), but it would be a pain to extract it, and again there seemed to be some important parts missing. I finally broke down and reinstalled WP and classic, and managed to save the files as rtf.
 
grain of salt taken. And no, you weren't really helpful ::love:: . It sounds like, as a designer, you're more concerned with the formatting and pagemaking aspects of the programs you're using. Universe on course.

I'm more into straight-up text content, and care less about being able to infinitely scale the thing than being able to negotiate a several-hundred-page document quickly, the way I'm used to doing. I appreciate WP is NOT what you want to be using if you're trying to make really elegant-looking, well-arranged pages. What I like about it is the way it works to make a big hunk of text. I like being able to have three or four drafts stack themselves side-by-side at a keystroke, or zip my way smoothly through half a book with cmnd-up/dn. The dottedlinepagebreaks that can make formatting difficult for you, really help me by keeping the document I'm seeing on the screen as I work whole and unified. The couple inches of blank space that Word or similar can make in the middle of a paragraph tends to throw me off. I like seeing a book appear in an unbroken ribbon, while still knowing where the page breaks will end up.

I'm glad you've found a program you're so happy with. If you think InDesign (Adobe, yes?) has functionality that I'm looking for, I'd be interested to check it out. In the meantime, I think I'm going to settle for Nisus Writer Express in draft mode, supplemented by Copywrite and Stickies.

::angel:: ::evil:: :) :mad: :cool:
 
Cheryl said:
Starmouse, did you install the updater to WP?
Click to expand...

Sorry about the radio silence, I was out of the country. I've deleted the preferences and reinstalled from the original sparkly v3.5 CD. Somehow along the way I managed to disable my system help menus, and I can't remember/figure out, how to allocate more memory. Help?

Thank you so much, by the way. Sorry again for the slooooooow reply to your prompt and helpful one.
 
You do not have an option to allocate more memory in OS X. The system takes care of that automatically.

How much memory do you have installed on the computer?

You can check to see how much memory WP is using while in Classic. With Classic running and WP open, go to the system Preferences (light switch on the dock) > Classic> Memory/Versions.
 
it says '838/6104 KB'

when I open a 97k file, it jumps to about 1044/, and when I try to open an 85k file it goes to about the same place, and gives me a disk full error (-34).

here are my stats, if that helps:


Información del hardware:

Modelo de ordenador: iBook G4
Tipo de CPU: PowerPC G4 (3.3)
Número de CPU: 1
Velocidad de la CPU: 1 GHz
Caché de nivel 2 (por CPU): 256 KB
Memoria: 640 MB
Velocidad del bus: 133 MHz
Versión de la ROM de arranque: 4.7.7f0

I've got 39.74GB left on my harddrive, from 60.
 
Do you have any other programs open at the time you get the error? Try quitting the OS X programs you have open and then give it a try.
 
starmouse said:
it seems like more and more compatibility issues keep popping up. The latest and most aggravating is an error that appears when I try to open certain files, or just when I leave it idle for too long in the background: "Disk Full Error (-34)" The size of the file doesn't seem to matter; it will open a 934k file, but not a 96k file. I've got about 40gb of empty space on my hard drive. My disk is *not* full . . . basically, I'm stumped and annoyed. What I really want is a permanent fix that will make wp stable in Classic so that I can keep using my little darling forever'n'ever
Click to expand...
The last version of the program, still a free download, fixes the disk full error and runs without problems in OSX Classic. The program and one necessary updater, for OS 8/9/Classic, are at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wordperfectmac/. That site also hosts dictionary/thesaurus files for 18 languages, third-party utilities including a Spotlight plugin for Tiger, advanced regular expression and document compare/version tracking, plus about a hundred others, and an active support forum with 1300 members, including several expert users who, like you, just want to keep using WP.
 
Starmouse, I can not assist you in getting WP to run in classic. I do understand getting used to a word processor, and switching to another one can be a bit challenging. You may want to check out Mellel II. It is a real good word processor often not mentioned as often as it should be. You can use it for 30 days demo. If your interested here is the link:
http://www.redlers.com/
 
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