Re: WordPerfect 8 on Sid
Patrick Wiseman <pwiseman@mindspring.com> writes:
> That had better not be the case. Why on earth would you break perfectly
> good software?
WP8 was linked against libc5 and X libraries also linked against
libc5.
Many distributions are no longer shipping those libraries. Even
Debian will stop shipping them (if they aren't already). Those
libraries will get harder to find. It's possible that newer kernels
or versions of X will break something in that old binary. It may be
unlikely, but if it happens you are in trouble.
No matter what else, making WP8 work on newer and newer machines will
continue getting harder and harder.
And you suggest that WP8 is "perfectly good software". It's not.
The WP8 that's downloadable has some rather severe bugs across the
board, and is crippled to boot. The version that was sold wasn't
crippled, but had the same bugs. The best version out there was the
version bundled with Corel Linux OS, but where are you going to find
that these days?
Furthermore, I don't believe WP8 is 100% file-compatible with current
WP. It'll be able to load current documents, and current WP will open
its documents, but some formatting will break round-tripping it.
Corel is not supporting this software, so users will have to live
with any bugs they find. (And they'll find them, trust me.)
> I'm in a WordPerfect shop (and profession - it still enjoys a 75% share of
> the legal market); word processors which aren't 100% filetype compatible
> with WP are of no use to me.
Good for you. I'd still suggest a better solution would be a current
WP in VMWare or a Windows box, but that's your call.
But ThanhVu Nguyne does not have your particular needs, and has no
particular need to deal with the hassles of WP8.
> This kind of "advice" really irks me; it's not responsive to anyone's
> question, and it's nonsense besides.
My advice was responsive to the need, not the question. Anyone who
can't find the info online about getting WP8 to work on Debian (or
anything else, I know I posted it enough) probably needs the advice I
gave.
Having supported users of WP8 when it was current, I don't know why
anyone would want to get themselves into it now without very good
reason. A machine not big enough for OO is not a very good reason.
--
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
Windows needs a Shredder icon. Click and drag Program to ...
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