Patrick,
You will no doubt recall our e-mail exchange on the Debian user list in
November 2005, where you first drew my attention to your page about WP8
and Debian. Four sources enabled me to get WP8 up and running: your
page, Rick Moen's "WordPerfect on Linux FAQ"
(http://linuxmafia.com/wpfaq/) and two books which I was able to find on
the second-hand market: Rod Smith's "Using WordPerfect 8 for Linux" and
Stephen E. Harris et al. "WordPerfect for Linux Bible".
The latter was quite useful in that it included the *complete* personal
edition of WP 8 for Linux and the unlocking key. Consequently I did not
have to use the download edition shipped with Rod Smith's book and also
available elsewhere.
The major problem I faced was enabling the WP8 load command "xwp" to
find the library files it needed. As Corel stopped development of WP
for Linux late in 2001, those library files were and are the ones
current as of that date. These files are I think obsolete for any other
application.
Most if not all of the library files WP 8 needs are no longer available
as Debian packages. Consequently, as Rick Moen recommended I downloaded
file wp8-libs.tgz from
http://www.biblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/vectorlinux/veclinux-1.8/packages/wordperfect8/
I first tried to put library files from this tarball in the
conventional directories for such files. However, xwp could not find
them and consequently would not load.
After considerable experimentation I discovered that -- at least in my
box --xwp required that all these library files be in directory
/usr/i386-linux-gnulibc1/lib/. This directory contains not only the
seven library files, and their links, on which xwp depends directly, but
also the thirty files which those seven files depend on, and their links
as well, for a total of 37 files and 37 links. Finally, I added this
directory to the library cache.
This directory is no longer a conventional directory for library files.
Having these libraries, which are probably obsolete for any other
purpose, in a special directory has the advantage that they are isolated
from the Debian package system and consequently will not be interfered
with. I also expect that same arrangement will obtain when I upgrade to
Etch.
I have found however that WP 8 crashes with monotonous regularity.
This tendency is likely due to the fact that WordPerfect was originally
created for DOS and subsequently ported to MS Windows, indeed is still
available in that form. Versions ported to Linux were adaptations of
DOS and Windows versions, the development of which were usually
outsourced.
For this and other reasons I continue to use WP 5.1, which dates from
1990, on Dosemu. I had already a sophisticated system of formats,
styles, macros, etc., on WP 5.1; and I dreaded the task of converting
them all to WP8. Also, preparing a text to meet a deadline is not the
time to learn a new application.
Since CUPS seems to allow WP 5.1 complete freedom to print using the WP
5.1 printer interface, my WP 5.1 documents print as expected.
Consequently, until I learn it I only use WP 8 for tasks which cannot be
done with WP 5.1 through Dosemu. At the moment there is only one: I
convert WP 5.1 documents to ps format and then, using ps2pdf, convert
them once more to pdf, so that people still wedded to MS Windows and
Office can open them with the Acrobat reader. There is also the
advantage that these people cannot monkey with my texts; if they want
changes they have to go through me.
By the way, I never could get the Debian Dosemu package to work.
Instead use the latest developer version of Dosemu downloaded from the
Dosemu website.
Regards,
Ken Heard
Toronto, Canada
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