I am a faithful devotee of WordPerfect. For those of you who may not know what WordPerfect is, it is a word processing program that, in my opinion, leaves Microsoft Word in the dust. I began using WordPerfect more than 20 years ago. I began with version 4.2 and have faithfully upgraded through 12 versions. Just this past week, I upgraded to their latest version (X4) and was eager to check out something. Do you have any idea what it was?
Well, I can tell you that it wasn’t to see how well it converts Microsoft Word files. Nor was it to see how well it allows you to edit .pdf files. The first thing I did after I installed this latest version of WordPerfect was to type in the word, “Philippians.” Why, may you ask? Because I was curious to see if WordPerfect X4 had learned the books of the Bible, and sadly, it still has not.
You see, nearly all word processors come with a built-in spell checker. When a word is misspelled or when a word is used that has not been placed in the spell-check database, that word will be flagged as suspect with a red underline. When I typed in, “Philippians,” my WordPerfect underlined the word, meaning that it is unknown and unrecognized. As fundamental as the names of the books of the Bible are, the developers of WordPerfect have not seen fit to include their names into the database.
Now, before you tell me how to add the books of the Bible into the database so that WordPerfect will recognize them as legitimate words, let me tell you that I already know how to do that. But I choose not to do so. For me, that red edit line that shows up underneath the names of the books of the Bible is a constant reminder to me of my purpose. The world is still filled with people who do not know God, and who need to be taught.
Steve,
Just recently did I add Philippians to my WordPerfect program, only because I had to re-type it so many times for our lectureship on “Philippians,” and wearied of the “red line.”
BTW, in the same vein, apparently our ancient brothers and sisters of Gaul have no clout with WordPerfect programmers, either.
Rick
OpenOffice recognized it.
If you love WordPefect, more power to you, but I wish more people knew about the open-source application OpenOffice which does everything Microsoft Office does (and reads and writes MS Office files) and it is 100% free.
http://www.openoffice.org/
Hey Roger,
Yes, I would have a hard time giving up WordPerfect as my primary word processor, however I have Open Office on my computer, and encourage people to use it who do not want to purchase Word. It seems to be a very good program.
Hello Steve,
Just had the opportunity to hear you today (March 21st, 2009) at the West Ky Leadership Workshop at Briensburg church of Christ. Thoroughly enjoyed you and all the speakers…most uplifting.
I did a little research when I returned home on the Internet to locate your merceMail. I read your first article from March 5–It Still Doesn’t Know.
As a retired computer teacher/district technology coordinator, I also was a die-hard fan of Word Perfect until I started using Microsoft Word. Just wanted to poke a little fun at you and let you know Word does recognize Philippians in the spell check. tee hee
In Christian Love,
@nita Driskill