Running WordPerfect on FreeDOS

In the 1980s, my preferred word processor was WordPerfect. It was a great word processing system. WordPerfect was fast, powerful, and streamlined. I liked that WordPerfect "got out of the way" so it only displayed my text, plus a small status bar at the bottom of the screen.

I used WordPerfect throughout the 1980s, but moved on to a different DOS word processor soon after 1990.

I haven't run WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS in a long time. Sure enough, it installs and runs great on FreeDOS! I tested WordPerfect on FreeDOS 1.2, running in a QEMU virtual machine.

But WordPerfect could be very challenging to use. WordPerfect used the function keys to access the different features, like turning bold text on or off, or centering a block of text, or saving your work. Each function key F1 to F12 could be modified using Alt, Ctrl, or Shift, with a possible set of 12 × 4 = 48 different key combinations. But in practice, not all of the function combinations were used.

In my test, I wrote a simple document that demonstrated centered text, and simple formatting.

A powerful feature of WordPerfect was Reveal Codes, which allowed you to see how the word processor translated your document. Have you ever messed up a document in LibreOffice or Microsoft Word, adding some random formatting, and you wish you could go in and remove the one weird formatting code? With Reveal Codes, you could do that.

As an experiment, I loaded my test file into LibreOffice, and it imported correctly. Granted, this wasn't a very complex document, but it was interesting to see that LibreOffice could read WordPerfect files.

If you're interested in learning about the history of WordPerfect, you may also want to read Almost Perfect by Pete Peterson. You can buy it on Amazon, or download the free ebook version from the author's website.