WordPerfect 8.0/8.1

I had purchased Corel Linux 1.0/WordPerfect 8.0 many years ago. WordPerfect 8.0/8.1 are based on very old Linux libraries (shlibs5), which have often been ignored in newer distributions. Fortunately, new Linux distributions have often re-included the old libraries, apparantly to cater for all those Wordperfect users! Wordperfect seems to have the only English grammar checker available for Linux (Grammatik V), although it is quite easy to run Grammatik IV using a DOS emulator such as Dosemu

I have not been able to install WordPerfect on my Linux system since well before SuSE 7.x series. I have also been unable to install WordPerfect on some versions of Mandrake. There are now VERY helpful instructions on WordPerfect on Linux FAQ. In summary, this is what I did...

• The Wordperfect 8.1 binary is on the Corel 1.0 Linux Installation CD-ROM. Version 8.1 of Wordperfect has a small number of improvements compared to the 8.0 version. It can be found in the `dists/corellinux-1.0/corel/binary-i386/' directory, the filename is wp-full_8.1-12_i386.deb. (However your `version' number may be something else other than `12').
• Convert the `.deb' (Debian) package to an RPM using
  alien -r wp-full_8.1-12_i386.deb
  and then install (logged in as root) with
  rpm -ivh wp-full-8.1-13_i386.rpm 
  For some strange reason, `alien' converts the release number for 12 to 13!
• Still as root, you need to execute the binary
  /usr/lib/wp8/shbin10/wpfi
  `wpfi' creates the file in /usr/lib/wp8/shlib10/wp.drs, without which WordPerfect (or even `xwpfi') will not run. You can now run WordPerfect with the command `xwp'.
• You might want to install some fonts. The WordPerfect 8 CD-ROM contains a lot of Type1 fonts in the `fonts' directory (much more than on the Corel 1.0 CD-ROM). These are copied into `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1'. You then need to execute the commands `type1inst' and `mkfontdir' in the `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1' directory as described in the FAQ. For good measure, I also ran `SuSEconfig' as root.
• I also copied the Cliparts from the WordPerfect 8 CD-ROM into the `/usr/lib/wp8/wpgraphics/' directory.
• To finish font installation, I ran the program which `/usr/lib/wp8/shbin10/xwpfi'. This program can only be run as root. It also requires access to X. If you run `xwpfi' from a console, remember to type in the command `xhost +localhost' before logging in as root, or log in using the `sux' instead of `su' command (if X has been started by a `normal' user). xwpfi will allow you to choose a font directory, which will be `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1'. I selected `Passthru Postscript' as my printer.
• The last modification I did was to install the MSWORD filter fix, as described in the FAQ.