On Mon, 7 Sep 2020 07:10:50 -0400, Thomas Jones-Low <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On 9/6/2020 11:24 PM, Jeff Zeitlin wrote:
>> I've been going through my copy of the files on the HIWG CD; I've
>> discovered the following:
>>
>> In ADVENTUR:
>>
>> The files GBV.1, GBV.2, GBV.RTE, and GUSHMEGE.SUB are word processor files.
>> The file signature ("magic number") appears in Notepad as "ÿWPC", which
>> suggests "WordPerfect Corp". Current versions of Word and LibreOffice
>> Writer open them without comment or complaint.
>>
>	A few years ago I found that the version of Word would not open these files.
>But there was an additional free patch for Word, available from the Microsoft
>support, which would allow converting the older wordperfect (and a few other
>older format) into the Modern word format. In some cases Word would display an
>error which required setting Word security settings to allow reading the files.
>
>	I promptly converted these files to PDF so I didn't have to worry about it again.

Untl comparatively recently, the "competition" between WordPerfect and Word
was viewed more like a "cold war" from Microsoft's side (and perhaps to a
lesser extent from WP's side), and they refused to support the format in
any way (WP would read, but not write, Word docs). After WordPerfect sold
itself to Novell, Word surged ahead (because Novell completely bungled
marketing and support-and-enhancement), and Microsoft graciously allowed
former WordPerfect users to convert their documents to Word format.
WordPerfect saw a resurgence when Novell sold it to Corel, and now both
programs will read and write both (all three, really, since MS has both doc
and docx now) formats.

During the "cold war" period, WordPerfect was the word processor of choice
for legal (and government) documents, as it did a better job of supporting
some of the peculiar requirements of the legal profession (e.g., numbering
the lines of a document). Word, however, was generally seen as somewhat
easier to use, and was dominant in most other contexts.

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--
Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
Freelance Traveller
    The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Resource
xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com
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