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A look back: WordPerfect on DOS (2023)

(technicallywewrite.com)
32 points TMWNN | 2 comments | 01 Apr 25 21:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.421s | source
1. enslavedrobot ◴[01 Apr 25 23:29 UTC] No.43552377[source]▶
My Dad still uses WordPerfect on his windows XP machine. He recently called me up because he wants to convert one of his "books" into a resizable EPUB.

I feel like this legacy format might be the death of me. The USB is in the mail (Dad doesn't even know dropbox exists, gulp).

replies(1): >>43552499 #
2. shakna ◴[02 Apr 25 00:00 UTC] No.43552499[source]▶
Word can open a WPD file, just fine. If you change the extension to doc, it'll load in. Which also means you can open it in LibreOffice, or use Pandoc or whatever else you would usually reach for. [1]

WordPerfect's format is a subset of Word's original.

Though, if you want to nerdsnipe yourself, the format is also documented [2], and there's a few libraries here and there for parsing it.

[1] Well, almost. The Mac-versions of WordPerfect aren't a subset of Word. See the spec docs.

[2] https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats//fdd/fdd000...