Translate wpd docs?

[Ken Spiker]

We keep getting WordPerfect (.wpd) documents as email
attachments. WordX doesn't seem to recognize them. Is there
a way to get them translated?

thanx,

Ken

 

[John McGhie [MVP Office Systems -- Word]]

Hi Ken:

Yes, but it's expensive. Go to the DataViz website and buy a copy of their
MacLink Plus translation program.
http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/index.html

FWIW you will get a better result cheaper by asking your WordPerfect
correspondents to save the documents out to Microsoft Word or RTF format
before they send them to you. They know bloody well that nothing else in
the world can read WordPerfect format properly

Cheers

We keep getting WordPerfect (.wpd) documents as email
attachments. WordX doesn't seem to recognize them. Is there
a way to get them translated?

thanx,

Ken

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T.]

Not necessarily if they are a dedicated WP user.

Besides, there are billions of people on the internet, how do you know what
another individual is using. A majority of folks using WordPerfect, believe it
or not are lawyers, Judges and Court Systems. Because WP can handle
"Biolerplate" and extremely large documents far better than Word. Among the
preimenent WP Guru's is Randy Singer a lawyer.

I don't know whether I'd recomend RTF. MS version of RTF is, is constantly
changing. Its specification changes at MS whim. The Mac's version of Wordperfect
hasn't been updated since Corel took it over from Novell. (Since they deep sixed
the Mac version as soon as it was purchased from Novell.)

You would be better off using the Dataviz method.

Hi Ken:

Yes, but it's expensive. Go to the DataViz website and buy a copy of their
MacLink Plus translation program.
http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/index.html

FWIW you will get a better result cheaper by asking your WordPerfect
correspondents to save the documents out to Microsoft Word or RTF format
before they send them to you. They know bloody well that nothing else in
the world can read WordPerfect format properly

Cheers



--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

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[John McGhie [MVP Office Systems -- Word]]

Hi Philip:

A majority of folks using WordPerfect, believe it
or not are lawyers, Judges and Court Systems.

Yeah, I know. Make that "American" Lawyers, Judges and Court Systems... WP
has just about disappeared outside of the USA.

Because WP can handle
"Biolerplate" and extremely large documents far better than Word.

That's what they think. It's nonsense. WordPerfect starts to choke at a
document above 160 pages. Word will run up to 5,500 pages before it breaks
out in a sweat.

Word has very advanced "boilerplate" functions that will do more and are
more controllable in a large workgroup, but they may be a bit too complex
for some lawyers to use easily...

I don't know whether I'd recomend RTF. MS version of RTF is, is constantly
changing. Its specification changes at MS whim.

Well, that's what it was designed to do. There is only "one" version of
RTF, and Microsoft publishes it. The RTF "specification" states "Preserve
and ignore what you do not understand." The reason for that is to allow RTF
to constantly evolve. If you send a document in RTF to an application that
does not support all the latest bells and whistles, it simply preserves the
code in the document and ignores it. However, writing the document into RTF
in the first place is best done from the App that made the document, because
to write clean RTF you need to understand the structure of the document.
Once you have the document in RTF the structure has been lost.

All versions of WordPerfect will also write Microsoft Word .doc format.
This is the preferred solution, because that *does* preserve the original
internal structure of the document so that the result can be edited properly
in Word.

So while I agree with Philip that the DataViz solution is a very good
solution, saving to RTF or .DOC from WordPerfect will provide a more
accurate conversion at a far better price.

Cheers

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Thomas Landry]

-----Original Message-----
Not necessarily if they are a dedicated WP user.

Ding, Ding!!!

Phillip - I am a long-time, dedicated WP user (& a
lawyer, BTW), and I'm currently somewhere in mid-stream
of making a decision whether to switch to the Mac G5 for
work use.

Is there any viable alternative on the Mac for
us "dinosaurs" who don't want to have to learn another
wordprocessor? (i.e. too lazy?

I actually have an antique copy of one of the early
releases of WP Mac which I used as my principal
wordprocessing software from about '89 to '92.

Is there a worthwhile version that will operate under
Panther?
Or -
is there any practical way to set up "cheats" in Word so
I can still use all the keyboard shortcuts I'm accustomed
to?

THANKS!
Tom.

 

[Gene van Troyer]

We keep getting WordPerfect (.wpd) documents as email
attachments. WordX doesn't seem to recognize them. Is there
a way to get them translated?

Your best bet is to get MacLinkPlus Deluxe from DataViz.

http://www.dataviz.com

It will convert WordPerfect files to Word.doc format. Not all document
format features are supported, however, so if you are dealing with complexly
formatted files, expect to lose some of the formatting.

Gene van Troyer

 

[Gene van Troyer]

Is there any viable alternative on the Mac for
us "dinosaurs" who don't want to have to learn another
wordprocessor? (i.e. too lazy?

I actually have an antique copy of one of the early
releases of WP Mac which I used as my principal
wordprocessing software from about '89 to '92.

Mac Word Perfect 3.5e with the OS9.1 patch applied should work just fine in
the OSX Classic layer. At least, it seems to work in mine--but I don't use
heavily for much or anything other than opening and converting the
occasional WP file that is compatible, and these are increasingly rare and
tend to have been produced on Macs...

Gene van Troyer