Talk:WordPerfect

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Price that Novell paid for the WordPerfect Corporation

There was confusion in the article about how much Novell paid for the WordPerfect Corporation. A Washington Post article said $855 million in stock, but more (also very reliable) sources said $1.4 billion: NY Times, 2024, NY Times, 1994, Washington Post, 1994, Tidbits, 1994. I've removed the $855 million from the article. (Perhaps the discrepancy is because the $1.4 billion was in stock, and that stock is now worth only $855 million. If so, this isn't usually the way such things are normally reported, but possibly Novell was trying to spin its sale of WordPerfect to show a lower loss.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:23, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

@John Broughton: Both figures are real and both can be given in the article to avoid confusion. When the deal was announced in March 1994, the Novell stock being exchanged was worth $1.4 billion. But Novell's stock price began a significant slide, in part because the market didn't believe in the acquisition; see this June 1994 Deseret News story for instance. By the time the deal actual closed in June 1994, the Novell stock being exchanged was only worth $855 million. See this Deseret News 1996 story or this 1996 RTG News item. Most subsequent news stories, including the originally cited WaPo 1996 one, use the $855 million figure. The NYT 2024 case you point to is an obit writer who found the March 1994 announced amount and either didn't look further or didn't think the revised closing amount was relevant. Wasted Time R (talk) 21:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Show Codes

Note that the contemporary reviews do not emphasize "show codes" as a special feature. Because that was a normal, expected, basic feature. As in almost every other normal, basic text processing program. Including Wordstar, the market leader.

I don't know when people started to think that "Show Codes" was a special feature of WordPerfect. Maybe as MS Word evolved into Word 6 and WordForWindows. People have certainly thought that since the turn of the century, but even then the idea was an anachronism. 1.159.83.148 (talk) 22:31, 16 February 2025 (UTC)