Re: [libreoffice-design] Styles - thread on styles vs direct format

WordPerfect began on AOS and then Unix variants on minicomputers, but then WP5 moved to SCO Desktop 
(Unix) on a PC, then to (MS-)DOS. It was on maybe a dozen platforms at that time, but was most 
popular in the 90s on DOS, and for several years WP/DOS was the most popular word processor.

At that time WP had "office" stable-mates, like LO, but they were less integrated modules than 
Writer/Calc/Draw/Base. Of the WP Office apps, only PlanPerfect [a spreadsheet app with local per-cell 
variables and threaded functions (like Forth) which made it uniquely functional] shared much of WordPerfect's 
code, including styles support.

Probably the best analogue to WP styles is CSS - just as the WP file format looks a lot, in spirit, like 
HTML rather than the XML of Word/SO/OO/LO. A style could include one or many attributes [unlike Writer's 
categorical set of attributes for each style type], with its scope independent of the scope of any other 
style. I just checked Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#Key_characteristics>; it 
has a good introduction on this topic.

I'll see if I can come up with something more, but it has been years since I followed WordPerfect, 
and I think it has changed much in those years. I never really used WP past v5, because v6 and 
later versions became Windows-only, using MS-Windows hardware drivers rather than WP's own.

[I found WP printer drivers, in particular, better than Windows printer drivers. WP's drivers 
supported higher resolutions than early Windows drivers, but the bigger advantage was that WP's 
driver files were user-editable (with the WPDL utility), so you could fix problems. Of course, for 
our current purposes, drivers are a moot issue.]

John


On 2025-08-06 14:43, Eyal Rozenberg wrote:
> That is interesting... as a person who's never known anything other than DOS apps, then MS Office 
> then LibreOffice - I would like to know more about how WordPerfect approached styling.
>
> Is there a written article or video presenting this somewhere? If not, or even if there is, perhaps 
> it would be useful for someone to give a talk - at LibOCon or just online - comparing the style 
> systems of WordPerfect and LO (or just LO Writer).
>
> Eyal
>
>
> On 06/08/2025 21:24, John Kaufmann wrote:
> > Funny: 30-year-old WordPerfect got these right - likely because its styles were not categorical (like 
> > "Paragraph", with it panoply of attributes to be instantiated, and those attributes often 
> > specifiable only within a Paragraph style). For example, a font size style was relative (Larger, Smaller), 
> > and a block quote style could specify spacings and margins irrespective of fonts.
> >
> > The SO/OO/LO decision to be a Word work-alike imposed certain costs, like the styles model. It may 
> > be impractical to rethink that decision, but is probably useful to keep these models in mind as we 
> > work out solutions.
> >
> > John


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