Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

baslinux - [BL] Creating Wordperfect 5.1 files in linux

baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Baslinux mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [BL] Creating Wordperfect 5.1 files in linux
  • Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008 01:51:05 +0000 (UTC)

A question at the end about using X without window manager for programs started from rxvt.

Wordperfect does not work correctly under dosemu. For one thing, I would need to remap Alt-F1 etc. not to switch terminals, and other things don't work. Under xdosemu things still do not work.

VDE free wordprocessor for DOS works somewhat better under dosemu but some commands are broken.

Today someone asked us for a laptop that she could use for wordprocessing and spreadsheets. We combined the good parts from two matching 386s. She does not want linux, and besides it has 3MB and would not run Abiword well. Or dosemu.

We dug out DOS WORD (free). It produces a format (Word 5.0?) that will not import into Word 97 or two free Windows 98 wordprocessors.

Then we tried DOS WORKS 3.0. It produces Word 5.0 or RTF (full of garbage but it does import) or Wordperfect 5.0 or 5.1. Later WORD will import WP 5.1. It was not displaying underline bold or italic or superscript in LCD or BW mode until we changed a setting from text to graphics. It did display different colors in colored text mode for underline etc., like WP51 on color VGA. I cannot remember that green means underline, purple subscripts, etc. I exported to WP5.1 and it refused to import the file back (complained of a locked .tmp file that did not exist), but Wordperfect itself imported the file and it looked wordperfect.

Under DOSEMU, I could also produce plain text without actually viewing the bold or underlines in regular mode, or dosemu -V to use VGA mode and presumably colored underlines which I detest. Or plain text with xdosemu under x, again no underlines showed.

I then tried this on my desktop which has TTL and VGA monitors both plugged into it. WORKS got VERY confused when I switched to graphics mode and may have been displaying upper ASCII. DOSEMU had the same problem on this computer. I recopied works.ini to fix the problem since I could not see to change settings. (Keep backups of everything in another directory).

WORKS under x11/xdosemu in graphics mode works perfectly and produces Wordperfect 5.1 (and probably RTF which is mostly garbage defaults) that Wordperfect can read and WORD 97 and later can import. It is simpler to use than Abiword apart from needing to set up and use dosemu. It is the only way I know of to produce and import Wordperfect 5.1 under linux. It uses far more memory - dosemu.bin itself uses 2.7% of 512MB or close to 14MB memory. Plus icewm and Xvesa.

WORKS under dosemu does import existing WP51 files (once you copy them to /root/dosemu/works. I can use it to convert WP51 to very garbagey RTF.

WORKS with plain dosemu in VGA mode would probably work on a VGA-only setup. One reason for using a dual-monitor system is so I can see underlines in wordperfect rather than colors. Set to mono, VGA WP displays a choice of underlines OR bold, not both. (With Hercules Plus MGA card it displays even italics but this card conflicts with VGA)

Wordperfect itself is still more efficient (fewer keystrokes needed - F8 for underline instead of Alt-T U) but this will be handy for typing short documents or reading/editing longer ones while online researching something. I have not tested most features but I don't use them anyway.

Our DOS CAD program works fine in VGA-dosemu.



I tried to start xdosemu without a window manager:
(Xvesa -screen 800x600x16 &); DISPLAY=:0 xdosemu

It did not work. Nor did trying to start rxvt this way - it wanted a vga font and would not run.

Is there some way to use xdosemu without a window manager?




Sindi Keesan



  • [BL] Creating Wordperfect 5.1 files in linux, baslinux, 11/30/2008

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page