I will now discuss the five books in the order of their physical size. It is probably as well that none of these books try. Since those other computers keyboards are significantly different from the PC keyboard, covering all those “WordPerfects” -which like all word processors are highly keyboard-intensive-is hardly possible, however. Apple and DEC come to mind, and others may exist about which I have not heard.

More bad news, although perhaps it is good news in disguise: none of these books go into WordPerfect implementations for non-IBMclone machines. And beginners must surely account for a large proportion of the readers of the first two (or possibly three) of these books. It is of course true that the only substantive difference between WordPerfects DOS and Windows implementations is in their presentation to the user, but that difference can be nontrivial to a beginner. All of them ignore Windows (as distinct from WordPerfects windowing feature, which all five do cover). Unsurprisingly, this highly successful piece of software has generated whole libraries of books, of which I will discuss five recent ones. Add an exceptionally effective 800-number hand-holding facility, and the reasons for WordPerfects success become obvious. The result is that WordPerfect is likely to be available no matter what the geographic location, hardware environment, or software platform, meaning that an itinerant user is likely to find familiar word processing facilities waiting, wherever his or her travels lead. From its earliest days to its current incarnation, version 5.1, WordPerfect has adapted itself to hardware and system software innovations quickly and well, while staying at least downward-compatible with what preceded.

Frequently and as a rule accidentally, discovering useful new features is a pleasant fringe benefit of using this system. In fact, very few users ever get to know about all of WordPerfects features.

It includes virtually every feature any word processing user ever needs. Granted basic typing ability, WordPerfect is easy to learn, as I was relieved to find when work requirements forced me to become WordPerfect-literate without benefit of documentation and on short notice (is there any other kind ). That makes it the greatest of application software successes, in fact the greatest of all software successes after MS-DOS. WordPerfect is reported to have a 75 percent share of the word processing software market worldwide. Below the supercomputermainframe range, word processing is likely to be among any computers applications.

Wordperfect 5.1