Brian also demonstrated BarLaunch, similar to Windows' Quick Launch bar but far more versatile. One feature he specifically pointed out was that a button can be configured as a "group" and that the group can launch all applications and documents in that group at the same time. You can read a more detailed evaluation of BarLaunch in the February issue of Sacra Blue.

Corel's WordPerfect
Craft works for the Field Marketing Team as a Product Specialist. He spends 70-80% of his time traveling, advising potential customers how WordPerfect is the solution for them—workflow issues. Workflow is one of the biggest and yet most overlooked aspects when dealing with software.

The average percentage of features used in any word processor by the typical user is 5%. The more technically inclined user hits only 10-12%. So the better question to ask is not whether one should upgrade to new features, but rather how can one use what's available more effectively.

Many user difficulties encountered are often blamed on the specific application in use at the time, but there are many interoperations with other software and hardware and the problems may lie there. It could also be the case that there are loose screws between the headsets. So it does become vitally important to acquire and install updates and service packs to resolve legitimate bugs and to study how applications are supposed to work instead of rambling through at the school of trial and error.

As other software companies release updates, so too must Corel. WordPerfect Office 2002 has two service packs of its own. The first solves numerous printing issues and the second is to accommodate Windows XP. Buying a product off the shelf doesn't mean one is getting a version with the latest updates. Boxes could have been sitting in a warehouse for a number of weeks (a relatively long time).

Robert gave a brief overview of Corel's marketing efforts and where Corel is going as a company, followed by a tour of WordPerfect, the charting features of Quattro Pro, and finally a showing of Presentations. He didn't go through all the features that would do the demonstration justice but wanted to particularly go through the new things, enhanced features, workflow issues, and finally tease us with Bryce, Corel's 3-D graphics program.

There are three areas Corel wants to excel in: choice, compatibility, and performance. In addressing the issue of WordPerfect vs. Word, it's like David and Goliath—and there is a herd-mentality out there. Corel is targeting their market—Robert's area is the business/government/legal market. For documents with heavy formatting, created by those who consider themselves as power users, or wordsmiths, Corel wants it known that WordPerfect is the word processor of choice. Computers and software are tools, used to accomplish the task at hand. Use the right tool for the right job. If 70% of your time is spent formatting the document, then use the tool that makes formatting easy.

The issues of compatibility must be addressed for the simple reason of "file sharing." Using personal computers and word processors in the earliest of days was individualized. The documents you created were typically printed yourself.

Today, however, the paradigm is communications among different platforms and applications. The playing field must be leveled, and several methods exist for doing that. One is Adobe's Acrobat PDF format. Documents created in PDF are independent of the computer being used (provided a reader has been written for that platform—sorry, Amiga!) WordPerfect 2002 now includes the ability to create a PDF version of a document, including such objects as watermarks and hyperlinks.

To improve performance and eliminate downtime, Corel has wrapped their applications inside CARM, Corel Application Recovery Manager. After a crash for whatever reason, the user can save the work in process and follow up with an automatic crash report notice sent to Corel.

Seventy percent of all new features and enhancements come directly from user feedback. Any other new features are the result of collaboration with other companies and software usability focus groups. Feedback is collected by various means, not the least of which is from user groups, where assembled users can present en masse their comments and complaints.

There are two editions of WordPerfect to choose from: Standard and Professional. The standard edition includes WordPerfect, Quattro Pro, Presentations, and Corel Central, a personal information manager. The professional edition includes Paradox and Dragon Naturally Speaking 5.

Corel is focusing on upgrading specific user segments—their specific market. At one time, they were spread a mile wide and an inch thin. The new CEO, in place for the last year and a half, now has Corel targeting only those users that need and can appreciate the strengths that WordPerfect has over the competition. Corel is also maintaining their market lead in the graphics arena with CorelDRAW. But what many people may or may not realize is that there are a lot of things happening behind the scenes.

For example, Macintoshes account for approximately 4-5% of personal computer usage. And 99% of professional graphics applications users choose Macs. Last year, Corel released ProCreate, a high-end application for professional graphic artists, and at the same time, Apple released their new PowerMac G4 line called ProCreate. Corel was first in having a major application ready for the new Mac OSX.

Corel recently bought MicroGraphics, a technical graphics company whose software integrates with AutoCAD. Many industrial companies use the MicroGraphics line. Now, Corel intends to incorporate their Draw engines into the MicroGraphics line to make an even more powerful application. Corel also acquired SoftQuad, a premier XML company. Corel is excited about this because XML technology is where software development is headed in the next few years. SGML is a very powerful markup language. From that came two other languages: HTML and XML. XML separates data from formatting. This is important because it doesn't matter if one uses an application to create "closed code," since a co-editor can grab the data and use their own application to open it up.

One of the new and exciting things in WordPerfect 10 is that the user interface changed hardly at all from prior versions, thus providing a much shorter re-learning curve. There are, however, many ways one could customize their workspace. For example, by right-clicking on any toolbar, a customize function permits the user to reconfigure the toolbars and menus like those from WordPerfect 8, 9, or even Word 97. Corel is saying this is your tool, make the tool appear any way you wish.

WordPerfect permits a user to create custom toolbars appropriate for the type of document being created—a legal toolbar, for example. The legal toolbar was created for easy implementation of common legal document objects: Tables of Authorities, Table of Contents, and legal style settings. Many other customizations are available in the Settings dialog windows.

Special notice was made of a WordPerfect DOS/6.1 keyboard setting. When Windows 95 came on the scene, many of the WordPerfect keyboard shortcuts were lost to the operating system. The settings dialog will restore the keyboard shortcut collection back to WordPerfect. Those who are fast typists appreciate these functions at the keyboard because controlling the program with the mouse reduces workflow considerably.

Another enhanced feature is the Scrapbook, containing clipart, images, sounds, and movies. In a header area, a JPG image was dropped and was easily moved and resized, a context-sensitive control toolbar appearing with those tools appropriate for manipulating image objects. On the other hand, "reveal codes" is still available, emphasizing the point that WordPerfect gives the user power and control.

One of the favorite tools for power users is "real-time preview." This allows one to preview a formatting change before it actually gets applied to the document. WordPerfect creates a fly-out window that shows a sample of what the formatting change would look like.

"QuickWord" permits a user to assign words, phrases, and whole paragraphs to a simple but unique combination of characters. For example, "MGD" could be converted to a full signature block for Michael G. Davis, Esq.

Robert showed what a "sub-document" is and how it is represented in WordPerfect. A sub-document is one section of a master document, like a chapter in a book. One use of sub-documents is as boilerplate, standardized text, non-changing except for references, that can be dropped into a main document as easily as one drops in an image. Another use for sub-documents is the master document skeleton with individual documents subordinate to it. For example, when a team of writers are individually responsible for their assigned chapter or section, the master document, when printed or previewed, pulls in these various sub-documents together where linked. The sub-documents can even have been created using other word processors.

Corel says their file format hasn't changed since version 6. Users need and want forward and backward compatibility to avoid problems and increase workflow. Corel's file conversion filters are also superior to Microsoft's, he said. Corel's Professional Services division has used WordPerfect to read in a Word 97 document and then resave it in the Word 2000 format. The conversions are better than Word could do it.

WordPerfect's table-generating features are enhanced with table-editing controls. The control toolbar brings to easy access a collection of predefined table layouts that can be created initially, or layout formats that can be applied to an existing table.

As mentioned earlier, WordPerfect 10 includes the ability to publish directly to PDF (including that Word sub-document).

Quattro Pro is a spreadsheet application that makes it easy to derive meaningful data—this workflow issue again. So Robert showed a critical aspect of spreadsheets and charting. He went quickly and efficiently, highlighting a range of data and instantly creating a visual analysis of it. He further made some important edits and added legends all in a matter of seconds. The real-time preview applies to Quattro Pro as well. Not happy with the current chart? Preview the same data using any of the dozens of other chart types and styles.

An aspect of chart displays is "rendering." Rendering, in the case of Quattro Pro, is to give charts the appearance that the graphic arts department got a hold of it. (Would you expect anything less from Corel?) This gives the business presentation a whole new professional look to it.

Presentations, Corel's slideshow maker, is really not that hard to use. Those who are not experienced with applications of this type have available a step-by-step wizard and an array of templates that result in perfectly acceptable presentations. More experienced users will appreciate the Master Gallery, a collection of professionally designed templates.

Robert said that applications such as Presentations are best used to finalize editing and apply formatting to prepared text. In other words, make your bulleted lists, explanatory text, and hyperlinks in WordPerfect, then import that work into Presentations. For example, make an outline in WordPerfect with several levels of indent. The outer level is applied to the topic header across several slides, the next level distinguishes individual slides, and finally the last level is the bulleted or numbered points on that slide.

Corel, the company famous for its graphics programs, has installed the ability for Presentations to show animated GIF's, Flash, and Rave images. Double clicking on an image brings up an embedded image editor, complete with filters and special effects.

Again, one can publish the Presentations slideshow to PDF or to a stand-alone "Show on the Go" executable.

Bryce (not part of the WordPerfect Office 2002 suite) is a graphics application that is unique in that it is designed to render extremely realistic, if not also fantastical, landscapes. Considering that image creation and editing is developed on a canvas metaphor, Bryce's landscape creation is developed in a director's chair overlooking a stage. The objects include complete control over the physical laws of time and space aspects of the landscape.

Bryce also includes the capability for "distributed rendering." A complex scene may take days to render—to convert it from the underlying blocky, wireframe view to the textured, colored, illuminated, and other applied special effects view. So the user can distribute chunks of the rendering tasks to other computers on the local network or out on the Internet. Corel has implemented methods of access to their computers at night for the sole task of rendering images for owners of the Bryce graphics package.