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Which word processing software was considered the absolute best on Win 3.xx?

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CompaqGuy1993

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I'd like to use my old 486 to do some serious writing, and am just wondering which software was considered the best at the time. I grew up using MS Write, so I am out of the loop on the subject.
 
Plasma said:
Best is subjective but it probably comes down to either Word or WordPerfect.
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I always enjoyed MS Works 3, cheap, easy to use, plenty of generic features.

Word and WordPerfect likely more robust, Works 2 always felt broken.

There were a few desktop publishing programs that worked under Win3x near its EOL that could do more heavy duty layouts but not user friendly for basic typing.
 
486 covers a lot of ground. A slow 486 with limited memory may not be ideal for some of the later versions I will mention.

Word for Windows: Version 2 is the choice for the earlier 486s. Version 6 thanks to the attempt to merge the code base with Mac Word runs noticeably slower and needs a lot more memory but a DX4 with 16 MB of RAM would still be more than enough.

Ami Pro (3.1): Faster than Word but slightly less friendly. Probably the all round best. I think there were also some licensed versions sold by others but I am blanking on those names.

WordPerfect: 5.1 was unbelievably buggy. 5.2 was just slow and clunky. 6 was okay. 7 is the one to get if you like WordPerfect. Note that there are also several 32-bit versions of WordPerfect 7 with different install requirements. One 32-bit version would run on Win95 but not NT and the 32-bit versions were not Win 3.1 friendly.

Describe (Voyager 5.0): Describe was the OS/2 word processor. Very fast but somewhat strange. The Win16 and Win32 ports maintained good performance. 5.0 was the first version to have a very good manual. Voyager took the manual and a CD with all 3 releases and sold it for $50 just before Describe closed down. No box with the Voyager release.

Wordstar for Windows/NBI Legend/Xoom Word Pro: Not a good one. Each of the products using the same code base had different bugs. Closer to a desktop publisher that permitted editing.
 
krebizfan said:
486 covers a lot of ground. A slow 486 with limited memory may not be ideal for some of the later versions I will mention.
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Mine is pretty stout. I've maxed ram to 56MB, CF Card, 1MB VLB ET4000/W32, and I am using an Evergreen 5x86-133MHZ CPU upgrade. So I'm thinking I've got a pretty decent range of options power wise.
 
Gotta admit that I started with WordStar 0.9 under CP/M, then moved to 3.0 and then 4.0 under MSDOS. Moved to Wordstar 2000 for a few years, then moved onto Word. Currently use LibreOffice under Linux.

Now, that's for word processing. For programming, completely different toolset.
 
WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS is the last word processor I really feel like I invested a lot of time into truly mastering. Wrote tons of macros for it for office automation and actually did some semi-serious desktop publishing with it. Never really used the GUI versions of WP much, they always felt kind of buggy and just... off.

MS Word ruined word processing so far as I'm concerned, but the sad fact is that it was the number one dominant program on Windows pretty much from day one and nobody else ever really had a chance. (It's no secret how much pressure MS put on computer vendors to bundle their suite, and who wants to go pay money for a different program and deal with the hassle of installing it when they can just take the small markup to get something preinstalled?) WordPerfect dominated some niches like the legal profession going into the 1990's, and documents in WP format stuck around for a long time, but it seems like instead of anyone buying WP for Windows they'd just keep keep WP for DOS around as a backup for when document conversion to Word failed (which it did, a lot). And then it only took a couple years for the powers that be to get sick enough of trying to deal with mangled manuscripts that Word took over as the standard interchange format.

RIP "reveal codes".
 
krebizfan said:
WordPerfect: 5.1 was unbelievably buggy.
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I cannot remember anything at all that appeared as a bug to me. Could you give us some examples, please?

I used WP 5.1 for a very long time until I was forced to switch to MS Office 97 because people weren't able to read my docs anymore. So WP 5.1 on itself is fine but I wonder what modern program can still read its products? Although I'm not a MS fan, I rather advise you to use a MS product that fits your Windows version. In that way modern programs at least can read your documents.
 
If you're a fan of WP51, look for WordPerfect 5.1+ for DOS, originally released in 1994 and then re-released by Corel in 1996. Features added in 5.1+:
  • Imports WPDOS 6.x files and saves 5.1 files in 6.x format
  • Retrieves graphics in formats used by WPDOS 6.x, Presentations 2.x, and later versions
  • Faxes directly from within WPDOS
  • The List Files screen can be sorted by date, size, or extension as well as by filename
  • WPINFO integrated into WPDOS for information on available memory and other features
  • WP Office for LANs 4.0 users can mail the current document as a message
  • Startup option /? displays all startup options
  • Ships with ScreenExtender and Bitstream FaceLift Special Edition
  • Slightly improved stability and memory management
 
Ruud said:
I cannot remember anything at all that appeared as a bug to me. Could you give us some examples, please?

I used WP 5.1 for a very long time until I was forced to switch to MS Office 97 because people weren't able to read my docs anymore. So WP 5.1 on itself is fine but I wonder what modern program can still read its products? Although I'm not a MS fan, I rather advise you to use a MS product that fits your Windows version. In that way modern programs at least can read your documents.
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The topic here was Windows word processors so the version was WordPerfect 5.1 for Windows. The PC Magazine review (Jan 14, 1992) mentions UAEs and other bugs, low speed, and some of the idiosyncrasies like the different features available depending on whether the user chose to use a Windows printer driver or a WPDos printer driver.

Amusingly, when I tried to locate the WPWin 5.2 bugfix list, I instead turned up https://kb.iu.edu/d/aajh where WPDos 5.1's spell checker would crash the computer. Fixed quite quickly though.
 
AMI Pro was popular before MS Word killed everything else. I used it quite a bit back in the day.

Wordperfect was only good in DOS.
 
rittwage said:
We have a client that still insists on using WordPerfect. (Attorneys...). Unbelievably, it still exists. There is a version 2021.
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Sheesh, really? All the stuff on PACER was WordPerfect 5.1 format back in 1995, but Word was showing up within a year or two of Windows 95 taking over the planet.

Think it's all PDF now? Hrm... yeah, that's what Google seems to tell me.
 
rittwage said:
We have a client that still insists on using WordPerfect. (Attorneys...). Unbelievably, it still exists. There is a version 2021.
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WordPerfect has been a neglected zombie product for years. Most law firms I know of started switching from WP to Word in the early to mid-2000s. Then they hung on to Word 2003 for as long as they could, because like me, they hate the ribbon.
 
AMI Pro and Microsoft Word for Windows are the only Win 3.x word processors worth using. WordPerfect's windows entry was late, buggy, and had too may ties to the DOS world (when your word processor needs a "Reveal Codes" mode, you've royally screwed up the user experience).
 
Trixter said:
when your word processor needs a "Reveal Codes" mode, you've royally screwed up the user experience
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If I had a dollar for every time I've had to chase down some invisible mess of stale corrupted formatting information embedded in a Word document... well, I probably could buy a hamburger or two, but every time I would have killed for Reveal Codes.

The other great thing about reveal codes is it could be used to make specific, mathematically precise changes to formatting information by modifying the codes themselves or moving them around to ensure they were nested in the proper order. (Which can be a non-trivial problem with Word documents, especially if whoever made it originally just formatted it by "swiping and setting" instead of properly using styles, et al.) Used properly you could essentially treat them like HTML/CSS tags, which was really powerful for the time.
 
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