I Really Liked WordPerfect When It Was Viable…
Posted on June 17, 2008
Filed Under Technology |
but, I really regret using it to write the FastDraft for Power Users book in 2003.
Why? Because, now I am trying to push it up to the Field Guide for Investors for the members there who use FastDraft. It is not an easy process. I had to reinstall WordPerfect 11 which I used to use just to get it to open correctly with the proper formating and images. My initial thought was to convert it to some other format that NeoOffice would have an easier time opening.
NeoOffice opened the native WordPerfect file okay, but it did not render any of the embedded images. Bummer.
So, after installing WordPerfect 11, I still have not found a format that renders correctly in NeoOffice or MS Office.
I am left with a few options. One is to continue to rely on WordPerfect, but that is not a wise move, in my opinion. I know people love it, they adore it, they can’t live without it. But, it is going the way of the dinosaur, again, in my opinion.
Another option, is to recover as much as I can and then re-write the rest and re-embed the images.
Another is to just convert it to a PDF and be done with it. I don’t anticipate doing another revision of it unless and until FastDraft is rewritten.
The PDF route prevents the book from being integrated into the Field Guide learning center but, right now, it seems to be the over-all option.
Oh yeah, why did I write the book using WordPerfect? It seemed like a good idea at the time. But, it forced a flaw that I did not repeat when I wrote the follow-on FastDraft book. WordPerfect ties the actual formatting, the look and feel of the final document, intimately with the WordPerfect document. In other words, it won’t render correctly in other applications. So, WordPerfect will create the initial PDF, then other tools will be used to add the other pages and appendices for final form.
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