Aerospace Software Ltd.

WordPerfect Howto

Mandrake 10.2

Scope

This guide explains how to install WordPerfect 10 on Mandrake Linux using Cross-Over Office version 4.2.

Many moons ago, Corel tried to make WordPerfect work on Linux and the very first version of Linux that I tried, was actually Corel Linux and WordPerfect. Corel almost succeeded - unfortunately the program crashed too often to be usable. It took a few more years of work by Codeweavers, for WordPerfect to be finally viable on Linux.

There are now only a few tricks to it: You need a new copy of Cross-Over Office, you need to make your own launch script and once you have WordPerfect running, you have to disable the Advanced File Menus.

I have tried WP 2000, 2002 and 2005 (Versions 9, 10 and 12 respectively). Of these, only version 10 will install.

Wine

Get Cross-Over Office here: http://www.codeweavers.com, version 4.2 or higher.

Pay them their dues and install it. I use Cross Over to run QuickBooks version 6 and QuickTax, which both work great. Today, I got the urge to try WordPerfect again and was pleasantly surprised.

Install WordPerfect

Version 10 is the only one that works on CxOffice.

Click Star, Cross Over, Office Setup.

Click Install, Unsupported Software, Other Exe File, Browse.

Insert the WP10 CDROM and wait a few seconds for it to auto mount. Click Next to install WP. It will complain about the version of Internet Explorer, just carry on.

After a while, the WordPerfect installer will complain about BDE (Borland Database engine) and terminate. Then Cross-Over Office Installer will do its thing, simulate a Windows reboot and then you can click Finish.

Fixups

Now you will have a new entry in the menu: Star, Windows Applications, Programs, WordPerfect Office 2002, with an entry for WordPerfect 10. However, if you click this, it won't work. It won't work for me anyway.

If it works - Cool, you are done. If not, make a text file called wp10 on the desktop looking something like this:

#! /bin/bash

cd "~/home/herman/.cxoffice/dotwine/fake_windows/Program Files/corel/WordPerfect
Office 2002/Programs/"
/home/herman/cxoffice/bin/wine wpwin10.exe

Modify this script to suit your installed paths, then make it executable:

$ chmod 775 wp10

Now you can run it and it should launch WP10. If it won't work, type the lines on the command line in a console and look at the error messages.

Once you have this launch script going, you should be able to fix the menu as well. Right click on the Star button and run the Menu Editor. Create a new menu entry under Windows Applications, click Add New Entry, give it the Title WordPerfect 10 and put the two lines in the script in to the Command box, separated by a semi colon, something like this:

cd "~/home/herman/.cxoffice/dotwine/fake_windows/Program Files/corel/WordPerfect
Office 2002/Programs/";/home/herman/cxoffice/bin/wine wpwin10.exe

Finally, once WP is up and running, click Tools, Settings, Files and clear the check box for 'use enhanced file dialogs'. If you leave that active, WP will hang up when you try to open or save a document!

La Voila!

Now go forth and convert all the lawyers in the world to Linux...

Have fun!

Herman