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[GrannyGeek]

Oh yes, The Learning Company. They bought up a bunch of companies: Broderbund, Parsons Technology, SoftKey, others whose names I've forgotten. Then I think they refocused or something and a lot of the programs that still existed were available through Broderbund.

If someone spent all that money to buy out the rights and licenses so WSWin could be open sourced (and rewritten from scratch, which it really needs), they wouldn't make their money back. So it's probably not very likely that such an "angel" would ever come along. We'd probably have better luck getting WSWin to run under Wine. It will load, but it basically doesn't work and locks up once loaded. I've never had the time or inclination to trouble shoot the Wine error messages. I wouldn't be surprised if something could be fixed.
--GrannyGeek

[GrannyGeek]

I am trying it as I speak. It works well except for one thing; I haven't found any way yet to output documents from WS7 directly to my printer (the same wirh Protext). All is not lost because I can always save them as text, load them into OpenOffice and then print them out using CUPS, but it'd be nice to be able to print directly from the program as intended.

I think the old style word processors have the new ones beat for ease of text manipulation though. For example, Ctrl-/ changes the case of text in Protext, Ctrl-Alt-S selects a sentence for moving around in PC-Write (and it's easier still in PC-Type). Would that the code from those could be open sourced for use in Linux.

I've never tried DOSBox or DOSemu, but I've heard that you can use the printers you have set up on the Linux host. I notice that there is a forum at www.wordstar2.com . You might post the question there. There is also a link at that site for Need Help? Contact Us that takes you to
 http://www.wordstar2.com/modules.php?name=Feedback

By the way, WSWin 2 has keyboard shortcuts for the items you mentioned (changing case, selecting a sentence with a keystroke).
--GrannyGeek

[lm8]

I followed the WordPerfect for Linux FAQ, downloaded several libraries and got it working at some point a few years ago.  Was not impressed with this version of WordPerfect and it was not nearly as useable as on Windows.  I really like WordPerfect, but for using it on Linux, I'd personally go with one of the DOS versions over the Linux version.  A lot of things just seemed to work better with the DOS version, including whatever passes for WYSIWYG features and font handling.  There are also several free add on utilities you can get for the DOS versions, like standalone dictionary front end and ways to update the grammar check system.

There's an interesting article on running old DOS word processors here:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2005/11/25/free-file/
It includes a link to freely download Word for DOS.
Unfortunately, WordPerfect for DOS isn't free for download, so if you don't have a copy, you're kind of stuck.  However, bits and pieces of it were released.  Some references here:
http://short.stop.home.att.net/freesoft/txtedit1.htm#wpedit
http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/

At one time WordPerfect did not run in DOSEmu, but that was a long while ago, so I assume it does now.  It does run in DOSBox and I run it that way.  Note that DOSBox does not have printing support and was not meant to print.  There is a patch to DOSBox that will let you print to a serial device.  When I want to print WordPerfect documents from DOSBox, I use the print to file feature.  Once the document is saved to file in postscript format, you can use Ghostscript and whatever front end/viewer for ghostscript that you prefer to actually print the file.  Takes some work to print, but if you want a capable word processing program (which can handle laying out books, cards and more) and don't have a system with the resources to run Open Office or a latex based application, using a good quality DOS word processor in DOSBox is a convenient alternative.

[Lyn]

The good folk at FreeDOS have produced a live CD running assorted games, maybe a project could be set up to produce a live CD with office programs on?  I used FreeDOS as the base in old machines that were returned to the public and we used assorted shareware/freeware programs on it. 

[sledgehammer]

lm8

Thanks for the suggestion re wordperfect on dosemu.  I have used foxpro 2.6 on dosemu for years but am having trouble installing WordPerfect dos 6.0.  I have the CD (and password) and am confident it will run once I figure out the install.  And, though much less likely, who knows - perhaps someday I will also get WordPerfect linux working again.