Corel WordPerfect Suite 7

Review on Corel WordPerfect Suite 7

Corel WordPerfect Suite 7 is an upgrade to Novell PerfectOffice 3 Standard edition. Each application in the suite has been rewritten in 32-bit code and fully exploits the Windows 95 interface. The suite includes WordPerfect 7, Quattro Pro 7, Presentations 7, CorelFlow 3 and Envoy 7. The "professional" edition will be called Corel Office Professional and adds InfoCentral 7, GroupWise and a Software Developer's Kit, with the drawing module of CorelDraw replacing CorelFlow. Both editions will be bundled with Netscape, Starfish Software's Sidekick 95 and Internet Dashboard, AT&T WorldNet Internet access, IBM VoiceType Control (which enables you to gain mastery over your computer by telling it what to do), Quick View Plus, a Corel screen saver, as well as fonts and clipart.

WordPerfect

WordPerfect 7 has had some useful enhancements.

With built-in HTML 3.0 support, you can also create, edit and view Web documents in WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) format without having to learn HTML commands. Since only Web-compatible formatting features are available, you cannot create non-standard Web pages.

Page layout is much easier to manage. Layout elements such as margins, columns and tables are delineated with guidelines which can simply be dragged to new positions. A shadow cursor follows the mouse pointer and indicates where the insertion point will be if you click the mouse at that point. While this feature could be distracting to some people, I found it very effective. Text can be rotated within tables and imported directly into TextArt and there is a wider choice of page numbering formats.

Hotspots are small buttons that appear next to whichever paragraph, graphic box, table or column the mouse cursor hovers over and give quick, graphical access to commonly used formatting options. For example, the paragraph hotspot enables you to change the justification, bullets and font among other things.

Spell-As-You-Go has been enhanced so spelling mistakes can be corrected on the fly. Misspelled words are highlighted with wavy red lines; right clicking on these presents a list of possible replacements. Format-As-You-Go quickly inserts formatting elements. For example, typing '- - -' or '===' automatically inserts a single or double line; typing a number, letter or character at the start of a line followed by an indent, tab or space automatically creates bullets. You can also correct misplaced capitals (e.g. cAPSFIX), replace multiple tabs with an indent, format numbers such as 1st and 2nd in superscript fonts, or use regular quotes rather than smart quotes with numbers.

Quattro Pro

Like WordPerfect, Quattro Pro supports HTML 3.0 and enables you to read and write Web pages and access them by clicking hypertext links. URL addresses can be entered directly into the File-Open dialog and you can choose to update data linked to Web pages automatically whenever the spreadsheet is loaded. The release version will also support FTP and Gopher.

Over 100 new @functions have been added and the Formula Composer now presents formulas broken visually into hierarchical 'outline' views which can be expanded or collapsed. Once you have become familiar with this presentation it is very easy to enter and troubleshoot complex expressions.

Presentations

Presentations' most useful enhancement is ActionLink, which enables events to be attached to any object or slide. ActionLinks can branch to other slides, connect to Web pages, play sounds, launch other applications or make objects invisible.