WordPerfect for UNIX

WordPerfect for UNIX

Tavis Ormandy

Intro

I found this interesting print-ad for WordPerfect for UNIX, apparently the best UNIX product of 1992! (Very) Belated congratulations Corel!

However, this section intrigued me:

But what if you don’t go for the GUI? Just choose the Character version, and
depending on your hardware, you’ll get great-looking features rarely seen on a
character terminal. Like document preview, column layout, and other important
features such as easy-to-use drop down menus and easy-to-understand help
screens.

I understand “column layout” and “drop down menus”, but what exactly does “document preview” mean?

Mystery

Well, a weekend of hacking later and I have it working on modern Linux!

WordPerfect Linux

The answer is it can generate Print Previews using Sixels!

I find this hilarious.

It requires a DEC VT340 compatible terminal (XTerm works fine). I think it needs some tweaking to scale the image, but it basically works!

Here is a screenshot of the Reveal Codes view that WordPerfect users always talk about, and the generated preview!

WordPerfect Linux

WordPerfect Linux

Conclusion

It took a lot of tweaking to get it to work on modern Linux, I’ve put my patches online here.

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