Latest WordPerfect Suite Boasts Microsoft Office Compatibility for Less

Parlez-Vous Microsoft?

Given MS Office's market dominance, its file formats are becoming a computing lingua franca. That's why Corel is working hard to make importing and exporting files between WordPerfect and Word, Quattro Pro and Excel, and Presentations and PowerPoint easier and more accurate. For example, let's say an Excel file you're importing contains formatting that Quattro Pro does not support. The new version of Quattro may be able to silently preserve the formatting so it can be reinstated when the file is exported back to MS Office. Corel will also add basic support for Visual Basic for Applications, MS Office's scripting language. (The suite's existing scripting tool, PerfectScript, will remain intact.) The Corel suite's own file formats, except for Quattro Pro's, won't change. Quattro Pro needs updating to ensure that it is compatible with large Excel workbooks.

The gotcha: MS Office 2000 will support alternative file formats that meld HTML and XML; documents saved in those formats will supposedly keep their formatting, whether they're opened in an MS Office app or a Web browser. But until Corel adds support for these new file formats--which it will eventually--folks who buy its office suite can't use them. At least they'll have company: MS Office users who don't upgrade to Office 2000 face the same dilemma.