 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Corel WordPerfect Office 2000: Voice - Powered Edition Bernadette Houghton bernieh@iaccess.com.au |
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Most of WordPerfect Office 2000's new features focus on enhancing useability and flexibility, and Corel has also put some effort into increasing compatibility with Microsoft Office. Value for money has long been a WordPerfect Office watchword, and at half the price of Microsoft's offering, WordPerfect Office is a tempting - and solid - product.
I reviewed Office's Voice-Powered Edition which includes
- WordPerfect 9 for word processing
- Quattro Pro 9 spreadsheet
- Corel Presentations 9 presentation graphics
- CorelCENTRAL 9 personal information manager
- Philips' FreeSpeech 2000 voice-recognition program
- Trellix 2.1 for hypertext document publishing
- Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications
- Bitstream Font Navigator 3.0
- Ipso Corporation's Quick View Plus 5.1
- Adobe Acrobat Reader
Plus, as usual, an abundance of font, clipart, photographs and various add-ons which have become standard offerings in WordPerfect Office, e.g. Core] Versions and DAD (Desktop Application Director).
Suite-Wide Improvements
Most of Office's applications look a little different, with rearranged toolbars and menus, and extra property bars. One of the niftiest new features is Corel RealTime Preview which displays your document in different formats as you scroll a selection list. Showcase is a useful learning tool offering a series of sample documents; just click on a document to discover how to achieve similar effects.
You've probably felt the frustration of needing to use a specific feature of an application, only to discover you haven't installed it in the first place. Install-As-You-Go helps keep your blood pressure down by asking if you want to install a feature when you try to invoke it, then doing so without further ado. A nice side-effect is that you can make more efficient use of your hard disk space by installing a minimal feature-set right up front.
The ability to categorise images, sounds and movies in the Scrapbook, search for specific items, and preview them before dragging and dropping into your document is useful. Quattro Pro, Presentations and CorelCENTRAL include a wizard to help you publish your work in HTML format. Word Perfect still has its familiar Internet Publisher, but you'll probably prefer to create Web documents in Trellix instead, it's much easier and quicker. Microsoft's Visual Basic language gives you greater flexibility in automating tasks, particularly tasks which cover multiple applications; it integrates well with PerfectScript, and you can call PerfectScript commands from within Visual Basic.
Corel WordPerfect
I found no noticeable speed difference between Word Perfect 9 and its predecessor, both of which I have installed on my computer. If you share documents with other users, you'll appreciate that WordPerfect 9 continues to use the same file format as it has since WordPerfect 6. And the ability to embed fonts within documents means they'll always look right on other PCs. Among the handiest of WordPerfect 9's new features is Autoscroll, which enables you to scroll your document automatically and adjust scrolling speed with a tweak of the mouse. I liked WordPerfect's ability to fit whole documents or selected areas into a specific number of pages, and the ability to collate multiple-paged documents. You can also add text to shapes on the fly and create tables with a 3D look.
You can edit in print preview mode, and create documents in both XML
(eXtensible Markup Language) and SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language). The user interface is
orientated towards XML, but SGML functionality remains the same as that available with WordPerfect 8.
Figure 1. WordPerfect's Make-It-Fit
Figure 2. WordPerfect's XML Project Designer
Note: The screen captures used in this article have been provided as links to avoid the loss of clarity experienced during reduction of the image dimensions.
Corel Quattro Pro
Most of Quattro Pro's new features arc useful productivity enhancers. In the interests of file compatibility with Microsoft Excel, Quattro Pro 9 supports larger notebook sizes and stores Excel information which it can't use, later converting it back to Excel if necessary. If you're used to working in Excel, Lotus 1-2-3 or earlier versions of Quattro Pro, you can continue to work under the same menu structure.
Enhanced navigation and search capabilities make it easier to move through large amounts of data. One of my most frequent sins is attempting to format cells outside my spreadsheet's range; but that's no longer a problem with Quattro Pro's new ability to restrict spreadsheet sizes. Function Tip-As-You-Type prompts you for the next value requested by a function; very handy if you forget what goes next. Another simple but convenient feature is the ability to total rows and columns by typing in the word "total" next to the rows or columns you wish to tote. A nice touch is the ability to automatically apply formatting to any new rows and columns you add to a spreadsheet.
Workgroup features include support for simultaneous editing by multiple users, with changes made by each user recorded. A review process, similar to that used in WordPerfect, enables you to review individual changes and accept or required. New Web features include the ability to link a notebook to a Web site and have Quattro Pro update the notebook at specific intervals, run Web queries and import data from Web sites.
Corel Presentations
I've been fond of Presentations since version 8, and found version 9 even better. I like the range of sample files and templates, which help you create polished, professorial presentations with little effort. And I like how you can quickly change the whole look of a document in a few clicks. In line with Corel's aim to increase Microsoft compatibility, Presentations now exports slide shows in PowerPoint format.
Enhancements in the current version include over 100 extra predefined
shapes and small graphics such as buttons and arrows. The ability to apply 3D effects, manipulate text and
apply special effects to bitmap images, such as Brightness, Emboss and Smooth is a nice addition.
Presentations can also fit documents to any size page, create books, banners, posters, booklets and handouts,
and print on both sides of the paper.
Figure 3. Creating a chart in Presentations
CorelCENTRAL 9
CorelCENTRAL has undergone a major face-lift. It's a skimpier, lighter product, with less memory overhead and hard disk requirements. It runs faster and is more flexible, mainly because each module - the calendar, address book, memos and card file, opens in a separate window. Day Planner, a new feature, is now the entry point to CorelCENTRAL. Summarising the day's events and tasks, it hides away on the edge of the screen until needed. Day Planner and the Calendar share tasks and events, so when you add something to one it's automatically displayed in the other. New in CorelCENTRAL 9 is the ability to create subtasks for both tasks and events.
Philips FreeSpeech 2000
Instead of using the mouse or keyboard, you can speak to your computer with Philips FreeSpeech 2000 using the included headset. Not only can you dictate into an application, you can actually bark out orders; for instance, tell your computer to set formatting, navigate a document or manipulate windows.
Before you can begin using FreeSpeech, you must train it to recognise
your voice. Training involves dictating a series of short exercises to build up a minimum recorded training
time of 15 minutes. It took me an hour or so to build up to the minimum time; how long it takes you will
depend largely on the speed of your computer and how much memory it has. The more training you've done, the
better FreeSpeech's recognition rate and the faster it processes what you speak. FreeSpeech can continue
learning as you go, so the recognition rate improves as time goes on.
Figure 3. FreeSpeech's training module
FreeSpeech requires a hefty dose of system hardware - the documentation recommends a minimum of 64 MB RAM for WordPerfect itself. Don't even think of trying it with anything less. I have 160 MB RAM on my Pentium 11233 and found this enabled me to dictate at a comfortable pace of around 130 words/minute. Don't judge FreeSpeech until you've done the training, though. I found its recognition rate was virtually zilch before training, but consistently reached 100% in training situations by the time I'd accumulated 22 minutes of recorded training. In non-training situations, the recognition rate reached 70% in WordPerfect, with improvement still occuring. While I didn't quite manage to control my computer totally handsfree - that mouse was hard to resist when FreeSpeech gave me its equivalent of blank looks! - I was able to control WordPerfect a fair bit by voice alone. FreeSpeech also works with Quattro Pro and the other programs in the Suite, although not quite as smoothly as it does with WordPerfect.
Trellix 2.1
Trellix is a visual HTML document creator which uses predefined structures and preformatted page looks. You simply add text, graphics, extra pages and so on into "slots". It's actually much more flexible than it sounds, and you can create your own templates and change the whole look of your document in a couple of clicks.
Trellix also supports "container" pages which you can use to present information from elsewhere e.g. a spreadsheet, another Trelfx page or a "live" web page which updates as the source document changes.
You can distribute Trellix documents to others, along with a Trellix viewer, or export them to HTML format. Alternatively, you can bundle the files into a Trelligram, a self-extracting EXE file which includes the HTML and associated image files. Trelligrams display in the reader's Web browser.
Trellix is a nice program and you don't need to know any HTML. There is plenty of assistance to help you learn it, with Despite Corel's claims, WordPerfect Office hasn't quite achieved 100% compatibility with Microsoft Office. I converted some Word 6 and Excel 6 documents to WordPerfect and Quattro Pro format respectively, then back again. Word problems included watermarks with different formatting when opened in WP, and Excel OLE objects converted with black fills. Further problems occurred when I converted these documents back into Word 6 format. However, I experienced no problems when converting Excel 6 spreadsheets to Quattro Pro.
Assessment
With this release, Corel has got rid of some stuff that didn't quite fit in previous versions, and relied more on industry standards. Netscape, for instance, is no longer part of CorelCENTRAL, and electronic help documents are in the more common Adobe Acrobat format. The new features arc largely useful, practical enhancements, and there is no noticeable performance degradation.
The core programs have continued to improve and become more user-friendly, with most tools easily accessible. I found it a strong product, and the latest upgrade a significant one. Microsoft Office compatibility isn't perfect but WordPerfect Office 2000 can hold its own in other respects, besides being a lot cheaper.
Cost and Availability
Standard edition: $619 ($249 upgrade). Voice-powered edition: $739
($349 upgrade). Available from your local software reseller or from www.ontarget.com.au/upgrade/corel.html
Contact Corel Customer Service if necessary on 1 800 658 850.
Minimum System Requirements
Standard edition: 486/66 processor, Windows 95 or Windows NT
4.0, 16 MB RAM (32 MB recommended), 170 MB fret hard disk space (280 MB for a typical installation), CD-ROM
drive, VGA monitor, mouse.
FreeSpeech: Pentium 166 (Pentium 200 recommended), Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0, 48 MB RAM (64 MB
recommended), 150 MB of free hard disk space before installation (this is in addition to the 170 MB required
by WordPerfect Office itself) and 50 MB after Philips FreeSpeech 2000 Training has been completed; CD-ROM
drive, VGA monitor, mouse, Windows-compatible sound card.
Reprinted from the November 1999 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
