 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Corel WordPerfect Suite 7 Bernadette Houghton bernieh@iaccess.com.au |
 |
Corel's recent purchase of PerfectOffice from Novell should do much to ease the fears of users who have been wondering about its future. Plagued by ownership changes and failing to make inroads on Microsoft's dominance of the suite market, the future of PerfectOffice and its component applications has lately seemed quite precarious. Despite having what is often regarded as the best word processor, PerfectOffice's various owners have - at least until now - failed to position it strategically in the marketplace. Hopefully this latest upheaval in its life will bring it some stability and help earn it the recognition it deserves.
Corel WordPerfect Suite 7 is an upgrade to Novell PerfectOffice 3 Standard edition. Each application in the suite has been rewritten in 32-bit code and fully exploits the Windows 95 interface. The suite includes WordPerfect 7, Quattro Pro 7, Presentations 7, CorelFlow 3 and Envoy 7. The "professional" edition will be called Corel Office Professional and adds InfoCentral 7, GroupWise and a Software Developer's Kit, with the drawing module of CorelDraw replacing CorelFlow. Both editions will be bundled with Netscape, Starfish Software's Sidekick 95 and Internet Dashboard, AT&T WorldNet Internet access, IBM VoiceType Control (which enables you to gain mastery over your computer by telling it what to do), Quick View Plus, a Corel screen saver, as well as fonts and clipart.
My overall impression is that WordPerfect Suite is a very strong product, intuitive and easy to use. Bryan Leech, in his review of PerfectOffice 3 in PC Update, September 1995, concluded that PerfectOffice's great strength lay in its task-based approach, where the user focuses on a task rather than an application. The latest version of WordPerfect Suite strengthens this approach - with Corel promising an even higher level of integration in the final release - and builds in Internet support as well.
I reviewed a beta copy of WordPerfect Suite. Some features were not fully operational, and because the underlying code had not been optimised, it ran very slowly - matters which should be addressed by the time of the final release. This review concentrates on features added since PerfectOffice 3.
Core improvements
The core applications - WordPerfect, Quattro Pro and Presentations - have direct Internet access through toolbar buttons and document links. Clicking on links automatically launches your browser and loads the site (note: connection to your Internet service provider is made through your usual method). Documents can contain dynamic links to frequently changing data; a stock price spreadsheet, for example, can be updated automatically whenever the file is reloaded. Depending on access rights, documents can be edited and saved back to the server. HTML documents can be converted to WordPerfect, Quattro Pro and Presentations format, and all applications include routing and e-mail capability.
The interface remains very much similar to that of its predecessor, although menu commands and toolbars have been re-arranged in some applications, resulting in a more consistent look and feel.
DAD (Desktop Application Director) has a new look and now includes an Internet bar for fast access to online services and related applications. You can store favourite online addresses/URLs (Internet, CompuServe, America Online and so on) and simply click on them to launch the appropriate software and connect to the site. More QuickTasks have been added and although not working properly in the beta copy reviewed, the final release will include a Save My Place feature that enables you to save work
environments - open files and applications.
File management tools have been improved, with an enhanced search tool and a revamped File Manager capable of previewing graphics and other files. Corel boasts that WordPerfect Suite has more shared code than any other office suite - which should hopefully make the final version leaner and meaner.
PerfectScript - one of the shared tools - now supports custom dialog boxes and cross-application macros. Speller, Grammatik and Thesaurus have been combined into a single tabbed dialog box with Grammatik now able to rewrite sentences. QuickMenus are more consistent, and the most recently used fonts are displayed graphically on the Power Bar - a very useful feature if you use many fonts.
Coaches have been replaced by the PerfectExpert which accepts queries in natural language - for example, "how do I find a file". Depending on your query, the PerfectExpert may be able to help you in 4 ways - Show Me, Guide Me, Do It or the usual "tell me". If you still need assistance, NetWire on the Help menu will take you directly to Corel's technical assistance Web page for that application. WordPerfect, Quattro Pro and Presentations also offer specific assistance to smooth the transition from other software packages.
The final release will support Delphi, Visual Basic, PowerBuilder and Lotus Notes FX.
WordPerfect
WordPerfect 7 has had some useful enhancements.
With built-in HTML 3.0 support, you can also create, edit and view Web documents in WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) format without having to learn HTML commands. Since only Web-compatible formatting features are available, you cannot create non-standard Web pages.
Page layout is much easier to manage. Layout elements such as margins, columns and tables are delineated with guidelines which can simply be dragged to new positions. A shadow cursor follows the mouse pointer and indicates where the insertion point will be if you click the mouse at that point. While this feature could be distracting to some people, I found it very effective. Text can be rotated within tables and imported directly into TextArt and there is a wider choice of page numbering formats.
Hotspots are small buttons that appear next to whichever paragraph, graphic box, table or column the mouse cursor hovers over and give quick, graphical access to commonly used formatting options. For example, the paragraph hotspot enables you to change the justification, bullets and font among other things.
Spell-As-You-Go has been enhanced so spelling mistakes can be corrected on the fly. Misspelled words are highlighted with wavy red lines; right clicking on these presents a list of possible replacements. Format-As-You-Go quickly inserts formatting elements. For example, typing '- - -' or '===' automatically inserts a single or double line; typing a number, letter or character at the start of a line followed by an indent, tab or space automatically creates bullets. You can also correct misplaced capitals (e.g. cAPSFIX), replace multiple tabs with an indent, format numbers such as 1st and 2nd in superscript fonts, or use regular quotes rather than smart quotes with numbers.
|
|
|
Quattro Pro
Like WordPerfect, Quattro Pro supports HTML 3.0 and enables you to read and write Web pages and access them by clicking hypertext links. URL addresses can be entered directly into the File-Open dialog and you can choose to update data linked to Web pages automatically whenever the spreadsheet is loaded. The release version will also support FTP and Gopher.
Over 100 new @functions have been added and the Formula Composer now presents formulas broken visually into hierarchical 'outline' views which can be expanded or collapsed. Once you have become familiar with this presentation it is very easy to enter and troubleshoot complex expressions.
Quattro Pro can create geographical maps, charts and analysis worksheets. Fifty chart types are available and advanced analytical charts can be manipulated to reflect different date ranges; for example, without altering the underlying spreadsheet values, a chart of daily sales can be changed to reflect weekly sales.
Quattro Pro will provide seamless local data, back-end server and ODBC access.
Presentations
Presentations' most useful enhancement is ActionLink, which enables events to be attached to any object or slide. ActionLinks can branch to other slides, connect to Web pages, play sounds, launch other applications or make objects invisible.
Organisation charts can be created very easily - just select a chart style and drag it out on the page. The boxes can be edited directly and moved by dragging and dropping. You can create an aesthetic nightmare of a chart, with different formatting styles to each box and a different structure for each branch of the chart if you wish.
Objects can be animated, have one of over 40 new transition effects applied, or filled with textures or pictures. Bar charts, for example, can be filled with the object they are supposed to represent.
PowerPoint, Harvard Graphics and Freelance files can now be imported.
|
|
|
Envoy
Envoy uses a universal printer driver to create electronic documents from any application. Like most of the other core applications in the suite, Envoy enables mailing and routing of documents and can create links to any other HTML or Envoy file on the Internet. Pages can be dragged and dropped between Envoy files and documents can be annotated using hypertext links, bookmarks, highlighter pens and QuickNotes. The annotations of multiple users can be combined into a single file - with the annotations of different users distinguishable by their colour.
CorelFlow
CorelFlow is not a core part of the suite, simply being bundled as a separate application. The final release may offer a higher level of integration, but I suspect that this will be left largely for the next upgrade. CorelFlow was lately reviewed by Bob Burt in PC Update, May 1996.
Network support
As well as the usual sharing of data, WordPerfect Suite will make life easier for network administrators. Support for NetWare Application Manager and NetWare Navigator means that they no longer need to set up WordPerfect Suite on each computer on the network - they can define standard installation templates to control how the software will be configured on local machines. Auto-update functionality has also been built in, so once installed on the server any future upgrades to WordPerfect Suite 7 can be automatically available to end users.
Support for DMI (Desktop Management Interface) means that WordPerfect Suite will automatically register itself in software inventory tools (eg. ManageWise) that conform to this standard.
Conclusion
It's now Corel's turn to up the ante. Temporarily at least, it has the advantage over the other office suites, with its inbuilt Internet support, very high level of application integration and loads of bundled software. If the final release of WordPerfect Suite lives up to the promise shown in the pre-release, it will provide a worthy goal for the other suites to aim for.
Reprinted from the July 1996 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
